PRIVATEERING, NOT PRIVATIZING

by Peter D. Moss

Big business operatives continue to seek "opportunities" here and abroad. They call this globalization, deregulation and privatizing, all superficially inoffensive terms. But once we realize what they are really up to, it turns out that privateering is more descriptive than privatizing. In 1993, Bill Clinton held up a plastic card to the TV cameras, which was supposed to provide single payer health care to all Americans. Using incredible but invisible lobbying efforts, Clinton was stopped in his tracks. One excuse was that universal health care was Hillary Clinton's idea and she was not elected to propose policy. There was no public outcry, no media time or space to analyze the advantages of democratizing health care or even to present the simple truism that the source of an idea whose time has come is at best irrelevant. Once the insurance lobby bought enough supporters against democratizing health care, they declared victory and announced that universal health care lacks voter support. No effort was made or publicized to discredit the insurance industry.

Historically, privateering was the business of pirates, murderers and thieves who attacked commercial and military ships for plunder, with maimed and dead victims the usual by-product. Today's big business privateers do not use cutlasses or daggers. Today's privateers use lobbyists and lawyers to bribe legislators and judges to help them exploit mankind legally. We keep hearing that everything done by Enron, Global Crossing, World Com, Xerox and their ilk is "legal." But unjust enrichment, even without the fingerprints of insider traders, is a civil cause of action. So is cooking books, and auditors "approving" cooked books or shredding records incriminating them. Corporate takeovers of public necessities for private profit is privateering, not privatizing. The privateering of prisons (whose inmates can't vote and draw no sympathy) is well advanced if not completed; one security analyst gloated recently that it is the fastest growing industry. Today we face big business privateers and their conservative lobbyists and think tankers' efforts to privateer Social Security, public schools, public water supplies, and other public services. I plan to describe the privateers' efforts, as well as laws that can prevent the harms privateering will cause in these areas. I believe a better world is possible and can be legislated.