Those with blind faith in private enterprise say it solves all our problems. And generates all wealth.
I don’t agree. If it did I do not believe its supporters would need to take control of parliament to ensure they can capture the public sector to deliver wealth to their friends.
Two hundred years or so ago this process involved seizing land because the private sector could not work out how to generate wealth for itself before the coming of railways. As Wikipedia notes:
Enclosure is the process which was used to end some traditional rights, such as mowing meadows for hay, or grazing livestock on land which is owned by another person, or a group of people. In England and Wales the term is also used for the process that ended the ancient system of arable farming in open fields. Under enclosure, such land is fenced (enclosed) and deeded or entitled to one or more owners. By the 20th century, unenclosed commons had become largely restricted to rough pasture in mountainous areas and in relatively small parts of the lowlands.
The process of enclosure has sometimes been accompanied by force, resistance, and bloodshed, and remains among the most controversial areas of agricultural and economic history in England. Marxist and neo-Marxist historians argue that rich landowners used their control of state processes to appropriate public land for their private benefit. This created a landless working class that provided the labour required in the new industries developing in the north of England. For example: "In agriculture the years between 1760 and 1820 are the years of wholesale enclosure in which, in village after village, common rights are lost".[1]
I’m surprised the author thought you had to be a Marxist to think that: it seems pretty much universally accepted that this is what happened at the time.
This process is, I suggest, happening again. Private enterprise has no clue how to generate wealth right now. I mentioned the consequence a while ago. Private business has no idea what to invest in now, no new product to make, no big idea to offer.
So this government is offering it the NHS, education and more so that public benefit can be enclosed for private gain.
This is what happened two hundred years ago.
And it’s happening again.
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Shouldn’t this post be entitled “Enclosing the public sector”, or am I missing something?
I agree with it, by the way
That is the long and the short of it.
They have no other goal.
Rent seeking private sector bureacracies (‘service’ conglomerates) are to be forcibly inserted into strategic control of mature, in place public assets and to do with them what they will.
I have often heard the private sector state that only the private sector could generate wealth. I’m not an economist but it would seem nonsense to me.
Richard – I presume it is possible for the non-private sector to create wealth – financially I can see no reason why it wouldn’t…
I guess the real question is wealth for whom?
I agree, Richard. Obviously the private sector generates some wealth – in our region of the East of England there’s some amazing high-tech stuff going on in places like Cambridge and Norwich for example (ably assisted by the East of England Development Agency, which the govt has decided in its “wisdom” to abolish, sadly).
But there are huge private firms like Serco and Capita that are just marauders – taking over huge swathes of the public sector and running it for shareholder benefit rather than either customers or workforce. The next Labour govt – which I do believe will be in place by 2015 at the latest – needs to tackle this looting of our collective wealth.
Strangely, one of the first people to see what was going on (back in the 1980s) was the Conservative former PM Harold MacMillan, who complained about “selling off the family silver”. He was of course dismissed by the Thatcherite Tories as a senile dodderer, but he was absolutely right. If only we had a few more people like that in the Conservative party today.
You don’t have to be a marxist to notice this.
I’ve seen this attributed to Samuel Pepys, but it might just be a clear eyed proliterian lament of the time:
The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from off the goose.
“I’m not an economist but it would seem nonsense to me. ”
Not being an economist should be a badge of honour. You are as well watching Sky Sports 1, 2 and 3 in order to understand the world as listening to mainstream economists.
The nobel prize for economics was created in 1968 by a swedish bank to transform a useful empirical dicipline into an arm of neo liberal propoganda.
I’m very fond of chalmers Johnson’s description of this event as the “single most destructive action by a friendly state the world has seen”.
That is not to say there are not good economists.
You just never hear about them.
It has gone beyond selling the silver, it’s closer to burning down the house to keep the corpse of neoliberalism warm.
@Strategist
Corrected now!
Sorry
@Online Accountant
Of course the public sector can create wealth
Wealth is a complex issue
But I contest it is created by people for people
What it is not so good at is creating wealth captured by individuals for their benefit alone
But that is a very narrow subset of wealth
It just happens to be the one those with hat form of wealth are obsessed with
[…] d) There is no sign of any technical innovation, new market development, or wave of creativity that gives any indication of he market having reason to fill the economic vacuum that the government is creating. The market has not been crowded out by government — the market is unable to find new services or products to sell which people want which is why its only approach to expansion is to capture the public sector. […]
[…] d) There is no sign of any technical innovation, new market development, or wave of creativity that gives any indication of he market having reason to fill the economic vacuum that the government is creating. The market has not been crowded out by government — the market is unable to find new services or products to sell which people want which is why its only approach to expansion is to capture the public sector. […]