Privatization

Chapter 12 looks at the results of three decades of privatizing previously public services in countries embracing neoliberal leanings. These policies bring into sharp relief the values inherent in and moral limitations of markets. The blanket claim that by introducing ‘contestability’, the interests of consumers will be necessarily better served is impossible to establish, either theoretically or empirically. The claim rests on unbridled faith in the efficiency of markets – in the special sense analysed in Chapter 8 – and on arguments in bad faith put by those associated with financial and investor interests. Also complicit are politicians and policy makers listening to the long dead voices of ‘defunct economists’ and looking to a career future in the rarefied world of bankers and lobbyists.