Privatization and Oligarchy
Cass Sunstein: I'm not capitulating, I'm nudging
The main goal of any sensible oligarch is to get high returns with no risk. Real estate mortgage-backed securities served that purpose in the run-up to the Great Crash. Oligarchs didn’t buy RMBSs; they served them up to others and took huge profits from a scummy mélange of cheating home-buyers and telling half-truths about their own involvement in the deals.
Another great way to make money risk-free is to tap into taxpayers through privatization. The idea is that government provides necessary services, paid for by taxes. If you can get the government to bow out, you can put that tax money into your own wallet. For-profit proprietary schools, which let you tap into the flood of student loan money Uncle Sam offers to those trying to better themselves, are a great example, as we learn in the New York Times.
The public justification for privatization is the fantasy that the private sector does a better job than government at everything. The anti-tax movement fits right into this nasty little idea, because state governments cut funding to