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malkusm
09-27-2010, 09:25 PM
I'm in a seminar this semester on "Privatization," and I figure this forum will have some good ideas for a topic.

What I don't want:

1) Anything related to the Fed or central banking. As much as I'd love to do it....I run the risk of being cut down and given a bad grade for it.

2) Anything that lacks any meaningful academic research/citations.

Professor's guidelines (AKA "What I do want"):

5. Possible topics: The following is a list of potential topics. They are only suggestive, since your ability to write on
a topic depends on the availability of information as well as your own interests.
a. Efficiency in ..... (e.g., US local government operations, a SOE, a formerly privatized company, e.g. British Air)
Availability of data may pose a problem.
b. Public-private efficiency comparisons: methods, results, and pitfalls
c. The impact of privatization on employment (either in general or in a specific country)
d. Privatizing telecoms (or airlines or oil companies or ...; in either a country or in general)
e. The privatization experience in China (or any other country)
f. The privatization of YPR (the Argentinean oil company or any other company)
g. German unification and privatization
h. Contrasting privatization initiatives in Russia and the Czech Republic (or any other pair of countries)
i. Privatization and ... (e.g., economic growth or financial market development)
j. Privatization techniques (e.g., stock market sales, sales to management and employees, sales to “controlling
interests”)
k. The role of foreign entrepreneurs in privatization initiatives
m. The use of contracting by the US Department of Defense or Dep’t of Energy or any other government agency
n. Contracting out in Australia (or anywhere else)
o. Privatization’s success (or failure) in the transition countries
p. Undoing privatization in the wake of the 2007-2009 global financial crisis
q. Gainers and loser from privatization

Bottom line: I want to challenge both myself and the class. I have to give a 45-minute presentation on my paper later in the class, discussing the various aspects of privatization in the topic that I choose....so I want some ideas that are not too far on the "extreme libertarian" end of the spectrum, but also something I'm relatively interested in.

Brett
09-27-2010, 09:27 PM
Private Libraries have always fascinated me for reasons I can't understand. Probably because I opposed them because I love free books, but I'd love to see a Blockbluster/Netflix delivery system for renting books.

Do you need something that's been done on a larger scale in real life? Or do strictly theoretical things work?

malkusm
09-27-2010, 09:37 PM
Private Libraries have always fascinated me for reasons I can't understand. Probably because I opposed them because I love free books, but I'd love to see a Blockbluster/Netflix delivery system for renting books.

Do you need something that's been done on a larger scale in real life? Or do strictly theoretical things work?

It would definitely be preferable to have concrete examples of the privatization in action. :o

Matt Collins
09-27-2010, 09:56 PM
http://www.Mises.org is a good place to start for scholarly work as is http://www.Cato.org


Puts it in very simple and easy to understand terms:
http://www.server.theadvocates.org/ruwart/categories_list.php

nayjevin
09-28-2010, 01:04 AM
On privatizing the post office:

What would happen if the post office had competition?: Wilton Alston

http://www.lewrockwell.com/alston/alston21.html

emazur
09-28-2010, 01:38 AM
How about privatization vs. corporatization?
YouTube - Neocons and privatization vs. corporatization (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=382PSjkYXo4)

You'll often hear about the IMF coming into a debt ridden country, the water or whatever is run by the government, and they send in a corporation to take over the operation and suddenly the water gets a lot more expensive. The citizens decide that privatization = for profit = too expensive for "the people", therefore socialism is the answer. But they cannot distinguish between the competition of free enterprise and a "private" company that is appointed by a governmental agency. Free enterprise isn't free when the government appoints the enterprise.

Another possible topic: sometimes it is considered better for the government to impose to directly run or impose a monopoly on something that people think would become more expensive if run by competing private companies, such as landline telephone or cable tv services or some utility. Does that argument sometimes hold water? Discuss with case examples where such a service actually was privatized.

nayjevin
09-28-2010, 01:52 AM
Corporatism (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/corporatism) - Political system in which power is exercised through large organizations (businesses, trade unions, etc) working in concert with each other, under the direction of the state.


Privatization (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/privatization) - The transfer of a company or organization from government to private ownership and control.

Definitions from user-edited Wiktionary.org (http://www.wiktionary.org).

nayjevin
09-28-2010, 01:58 AM
I would speak of the accepted definitions and the means by which consensus of those definitions has been reached.

The difference among definitions of the relevant words might be enlightening.


Corporatism - Political system in which power is exercised through large organizations (businesses, trade unions, etc) working in concert with each other, under the direction of the state.

Here, 'concert' could be 'cahoots'.


Privatization - The transfer of a company or organization from government to private ownership and control.

I don't like 'transfer' here, it seems to me more a disengagement of the tentacles.

Bman
09-28-2010, 02:40 AM
The easy target IMO is education.

Imperial
09-28-2010, 03:19 AM
I think studying Russian privatization during the post-Soviet years would be really interesting. Yeltsin had that concept of 'schock therapy' for the Russian state, but it seems like a lot of KGB officers and well-placed individuals ate up privatized industries. It would be interesting to analyze exactly how privatization went down there- you would likely find lots of hints about corporatism at play.

mczerone
09-28-2010, 08:34 AM
You may want to look into railroads - there is a ton of existing literature on gov't owned/ran vs. privately owned/ran rail companies.

Plus you'll get examples of "nominal privatization" where a private company is given gov't monopoly privilege along with subsidy and strict regulation, and how this structure compares to true private businesses that have to compete for profits and has no socialized losses reimbursed by subsidy.

Jordan
09-28-2010, 09:12 AM
I would choose b. Public-private efficiency comparisons: methods, results, and pitfalls.

45 minutes is a really long time. Like, a really long time. This is the only one, IMO, that would allow you to sculpt a well put together argument (with tons of examples) without having to dilute your research material too much.

You could really do three different topics like education, mercenaries (that would be fun) and something else. Since your professor is also interested in the results, you could compare the results of PPPs to public and private programs and do a breakdown of resource allocation. Public-private partnerships spend X on Y whereas fully public and fully private entities budget to spend X and X on Y.

I just think that would be cool as hell. At the end, you could average the things together, and create the "Malkusm Inflator Number for Government" (MING!) where you put together a multiplier to find certain sectors where public-private allocate dollars most unlike the private sector. This would help show the disconnect between resource allocation in the public, public-private, and purely private sectors that can be mostly attributed to the limited number of "market actors" making the decisions on government spending.

Your MING algorithm would take a lot of time and number crunching, but it would get you at least 10 minutes of discussion material and prove to your professor that you fully understand the mathematics and statistics end of economics.

OT: I wish I had papers/presentations like these.

erowe1
09-28-2010, 09:13 AM
I think something along the lines of what Folsom does in this book (http://www.amazon.com/Myth-Robber-Barons-Business-America/dp/0963020315/) could make for a really interesting paper on privatization.

I haven't read the book, but I'm pretty sure it's the same one that I read a review of by Bob Higgs (I think it was chapter 35 of Against Leviathan (http://www.independent.org/store/book_detail.asp?bookID=53)).

Basically, what Folsom supposedly does is contrast different examples of highly successful entrepreneurs around the end of the 19th century (i.e. the robber barons), and show how some relied on special partnerships with the government and others did not, and that the ways government created monopolies for certain robber barons in railway or steamships or what have you tended to result in inferior productivity compared with those entrepreneurs who tried to go it alone.

I think if you could peruse that book you might come up with an example or two that would make for a great term paper. And if you go with this topic, be sure to complement your research with Higgs' review of Folsom too--they don't get any better than Higgs.

teacherone
09-28-2010, 09:21 AM
September 26, 2010
Anger as a Private Company Takes Over Libraries
By DAVID STREITFELD
SANTA CLARITA, Calif. — A private company in Maryland has taken over public libraries in ailing cities in California, Oregon, Tennessee and Texas, growing into the country’s fifth-largest library system.

Now the company, Library Systems & Services, has been hired for the first time to run a system in a relatively healthy city, setting off an intense and often acrimonious debate about the role of outsourcing in a ravaged economy.

A $4 million deal to run the three libraries here is a chance for the company to demonstrate that a dose of private management can be good for communities, whatever their financial situation. But in an era when outsourcing is most often an act of budget desperation — with janitors, police forces and even entire city halls farmed out in one town or another — the contract in Santa Clarita has touched a deep nerve and begun a round of second-guessing.

Can a municipal service like a library hold so central a place that it should be entrusted to a profit-driven contractor only as a last resort — and maybe not even then?

“There’s this American flag, apple pie thing about libraries,” said Frank A. Pezzanite, the outsourcing company’s chief executive. He has pledged to save $1 million a year in Santa Clarita, mainly by cutting overhead and replacing unionized employees. “Somehow they have been put in the category of a sacred organization.”

The company, known as L.S.S.I., runs 14 library systems operating 63 locations. Its basic pitch to cities is that it fixes broken libraries — more often than not by cleaning house.

“A lot of libraries are atrocious,” Mr. Pezzanite said. “Their policies are all about job security. That’s why the profession is nervous about us. You can go to a library for 35 years and never have to do anything and then have your retirement. We’re not running our company that way. You come to us, you’re going to have to work.”



more:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/business/27libraries.html?_r=2&pagewanted=print

erowe1
09-28-2010, 09:26 AM
In the whole topic of privatization there's an important distinction to make, that between having a government simply lease out some service to a private company that the government still remains responsible for, and having the government actually relinquish responsibility and letting private businesses try to provide that service in a competitive market. Usually in modern politics "privatization" just means the former.

Theocrat
09-28-2010, 09:47 AM
I'm in a seminar this semester on "Privatization," and I figure this forum will have some good ideas for a topic.

What I don't want:

1) Anything related to the Fed or central banking. As much as I'd love to do it....I run the risk of being cut down and given a bad grade for it.

2) Anything that lacks any meaningful academic research/citations.

Professor's guidelines (AKA "What I do want"):

5. Possible topics: The following is a list of potential topics. They are only suggestive, since your ability to write on
a topic depends on the availability of information as well as your own interests.
a. Efficiency in ..... (e.g., US local government operations, a SOE, a formerly privatized company, e.g. British Air)
Availability of data may pose a problem.
b. Public-private efficiency comparisons: methods, results, and pitfalls
c. The impact of privatization on employment (either in general or in a specific country)
d. Privatizing telecoms (or airlines or oil companies or ...; in either a country or in general)
e. The privatization experience in China (or any other country)
f. The privatization of YPR (the Argentinean oil company or any other company)
g. German unification and privatization
h. Contrasting privatization initiatives in Russia and the Czech Republic (or any other pair of countries)
i. Privatization and ... (e.g., economic growth or financial market development)
j. Privatization techniques (e.g., stock market sales, sales to management and employees, sales to “controlling
interests”)
k. The role of foreign entrepreneurs in privatization initiatives
m. The use of contracting by the US Department of Defense or Dep’t of Energy or any other government agency
n. Contracting out in Australia (or anywhere else)
o. Privatization’s success (or failure) in the transition countries
p. Undoing privatization in the wake of the 2007-2009 global financial crisis
q. Gainers and loser from privatization

Bottom line: I want to challenge both myself and the class. I have to give a 45-minute presentation on my paper later in the class, discussing the various aspects of privatization in the topic that I choose....so I want some ideas that are not too far on the "extreme libertarian" end of the spectrum, but also something I'm relatively interested in.

How about a statistical analysis of economies (say, between 1900 and 2000), measuring employment and GDP amongst nations who had higher privatization in their markets in comparison to nations with socialization of the markets?

eqcitizen
09-28-2010, 10:55 AM
I like the post office idea because Lysander Spooner tried to open a private mail system and it was successful until the feds shut it down.

Also look into roads and waterways. Walter Block has done amazing work in this field.