Privatizing Ports and Other Critical Functions

Evaluating the Dubai port operations issue, Walldon below makes a critically important point in these days of unthinking de-regulation and rampant privatization.

I don't like the fact that a British company was doing it either. I don't even think it should be done by a private American company. Some things just
shouldn't be privatized, and in my mind port security is one of them. Look at
the disaster that privitization led to with the airport screening people. The
tendency in any kind of privatization like this that's on a contract to the
government is to reduce the service rendered to the minimum, provide that
service with the lowest paid and least qualified people you can find, and walk
away with the profits. The problem is that once the contract is let, there is no
competition, and, even at contract renewal time, government functionaries will
find it easier to stay with the company they know than to re-institute a search
for a better alternative.

I am all for minimizing regulation and maximizing the free market. I seldom consider "profit" a dirty word, although "golden parachute" and its ilk is usually another story. Most of us “lefties” – i.e., progressives and proud card-carrying liberals -- stopped believing in Soviet-style state-planned economies, if we ever did (and few actually did), absolutely no later than 1989. However, if the purpose is good (oh, let’s say not dumping PCBs into the Great Lakes and destroying the fishing industry, or not sending your 8-year-old daughter to work 12-hours-a-day in a decrepit coal mine, or operating an aircraft carrier, just to name a few), we just happen to draw the line when it reaches the point of failing to achieve the purpose intended.

Back in the bad old “Progressive Era,” and at least as late as the 1960s, most intelligent policy-makers at least understood to ask one question: Will the operation face any competition, or not? If not, if there still may be value in a profit incentive, can it be regulated well-enough with enough public accountability to prevent gouging and service deterioration from rampant profit maximization? If not, maybe it should not be privatized. Duh.