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Wealthy Corporations Win When Public Services are Privatized.

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When public services are privatized, it ensures that business and profit concerns will become more important than human life, and spells disaster for those who already struggle to make a life for themselves.

Privatization of public services makes corporations gods over the lives of all mankind, in that it gives them legal power to inflict upon their customer base whatever measures the corporate entity believes will create profit for them alone.

College business classes teach up and coming business professionals that a corporation has a responsibility to try and maximize company profits in order to fulfill their obligation to protect the rights of the shareholders.

In America we have already seen that the corporate agenda has no regard for whether or not they pollute water or air as long as the company is making money for its owners and shareholders.

This manifest corporate mindset will not be different when public services are privatized, and one would be foolish to think otherwise.

We already know that there have been attempts by our government to force fluoridation into all public water systems, which was protested by some in government from the beginning and has since been proven to be detrimental to health, as fluoride is a known toxic agent at certain levels of consumption and its long-term effects can cause many illnesses.

When public services are privatized not only would a corporate entity have the ability to inflate the price of these public services, privatization would create a situation where they could possibly place toxic agents in the water supply unbeknownst to the general population, as controls on testing may not be widely implemented.

Within agencies that are already established to safeguard the public health through inspection measures, there is a lack of effectiveness as they cannot check every company regularly due to shortages of staff and resources, nor do they check all products even when they do inspect.

The American public should not assume that the handling of inspection of water supplies when public services are privatized will be handled any more efficiently or effectively than they are now within the agencies already established to inspect safety concerns related to business.

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Pitfalls of Privatization

One can review the history of times that private corporations have been caught red-handed not following safety guidelines, or having instances of sabotage and unsafe product handling, to see that it would be very easy for someone to kill or injure a mass of people by contaminating a public water supply, for instance.

This is something we should all consider before we just assume that turning our water supply over to a private company is an issue that will not affect us; it could very well have mass toxic consequences if we just let this happen.

Also considering that there has already been an instance where a public electric service has been abused at the hands of a private corporation, referring to Enron, we should not assume that if all public services are privatized that this same situation won’t occur on a worldwide level, which would be much more difficult to ascertain due to the geographic immensity of the market.

Public services encompass many areas that people take for granted such as public highways, public lands and campgrounds, public utilities, public schools, public libraries, public broadcasting, public recreation facilities, public health care, public transportation, and other public services.

If we allow the privatization of public services to happen, many of these services could become highly controlled or too costly to afford, making them beyond the reach of much of the population, or they could become non-existent altogether.

If a corporation decides that any product becomes unprofitable, they usually eliminate that product from their line; this would also be the case with public services that we may be taking for granted now.

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When Public Services are Privatized

Measures are already in place to allow private corporate leasing of public lands for the purpose of oil exploration and extraction, which could create a situation where previously one could obtain a government permit to cut firewood, but once a private corporation has leased that land, those permits would no longer be under government control and would become unavailable.

People who rely on wood as their main source of winter heating would become subject to purchasing all their wood rather than being able to obtain a permit to cut it themselves; also those that currently make money selling wood they have cut may find themselves out of business due to corporate takeover.

The point is, we should not idly stand by thinking this precedent will have no affect on our lives and futures, as it could and probably will have very grave effects on every aspect of our lives.

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