OPINION: We still need the private sector, but it’s critical to understand its limitations and the difference between the public and private roles.
When the pandemic began, the Trump administration doubled down on a privatized response to what was—and what remains—a public health crisis, putting states in competition with each other to buy personal protective equipment and COVID-19 tests.
Understanding the difference Bottom line, the market failed, and then the public came to the rescue. We still needed the private sector, but it’s critical to understand the difference between the public and private roles. For example, private prison companies—which operate jails, prisons, and immigration detention centers for the government—operate on per diem contracts based on occupancy. These companies have a track record of lobbying for stricter sentencing laws—one of the causes of the world-leading incarceration rate in the United States. They do better when more people are incarcerated and have used their political clout to make that happen.
Some argue that relying on market-style competition—often called “privatization”—is the best way to distribute public services. As I write in “The Privatization of Everything,” a new book I co-authored with Allen Mikaelian, while competition can generate new products and new ideas, it can have downsides.
The problem at the core of a privatized, market model for education is that it depends on creating winners and losers. The idea is that parents will choose the good schools that will survive and grow and avoid the poor schools until they improve or fail.
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