Privatization

Abstract

Chapter 10 explores the harmfulness of privatization.

Appendices

Appendix

About Increasing Production

Thus far, five deadly social activities have been discussed. These are, or have become, the instruments of the greedy 1 percenters to replace human values and progress for quick financial benefits. There is one more activity that can be added to these, but that activity also has many social benefits. This activity is misutilization of industrial technology.

The term, misutilization, is used here which needs to be emphasized. Although industrial technology is creating more efficiency and, therefore, ability to produce more with less, it is accomplished by continuing utilization of less people and more technology and robotics. One may ask, just what is wrong with this picture? The critical point is that if the gains in productivity are not shared with the whole society, then the whole process becomes another deadly social activity. It must be noted that machines don’t eat, don’t require income, don’t get medical problems, do not need retirement benefits, etc. In other words, when the technology is developed and productivity increased, the cost operations become cheaper because it requires fewer workers. If technological advances are used to replace people, this situation becomes very attractive to the financiers. Although outsourcing created millions of lost manufacturing jobs, industrial technology advances, it may be claimed, will mean an even greater loss of jobs for our labor forces. The worse point in this situation is that almost all industrial progress in our productivity is aimed to replace people. This certainly generates much more cash benefit to the greedy billionaires.

The Counterpoint

As mentioned earlier, this particular topic is not considered as a deadly social activity. The reason for it is that increased productivity also makes a country richer and provides more and better products and services for all. In fact, this is the goal of all developing countries to become developed. Perhaps the distinction in the general orientation is not to stop increasing productivity but making sure that the benefits of increased productivity will reach and benefit everyone in our society. However, at this point in time, we are far away from such a mature orientation.