Digby raises a good point at Hullabaloo, about the fact that there is a lot of money to be made by expanding the security state. We pour billions into collecting haystacks of data and then start searching for the needles, and some folks are getting very rich indeed as more and more of the work involved in getting us to Orwell is outsourced, which, in turn, leads to ever more vigorous lobbying for ever more intrusive spying. Meanwhile, we taxpayers, in addition to losing our freedom, are getting almost no bang for the buck when it comes to actual protection from the people the NSA claims to be hunting.
This seems to be an American disease, though I suppose the British will emulate us. There are certain state functions that it is desirable to keep outside of private hands, but we seem to have totally lost sight of that fact. Before privatizing our spying we privatized our prisons, which now lobby for more criminal laws. Educational “reformers” are panting to put our public school systems safely into the hands of for-profit entities. Somehow we are to believe that the lower teacher’s pay that will inevitably result will yield better educational outcomes. Chicago even privatized its parking meters, with predictable results. And let’s not forget our worst in the non-third world health care system, afflicted as it is with the twin evils of for-profit hospitals and for-profit health insurance companies.
We have come to a strange place in our national life. It was once a given that there are certain services and activities that were peculiarly the province of the state, such as running prisons, distributing vital commodities, such as water, and that there were other services, such as education, for which there should be a public option, providing an assurance that everyone, regardless of their financial position, could get that service at high quality. This notion may no longer be expressed in polite company. It appears to be an article of faith that anything the government can do, for-profit rent seekers can do better. The fact that experience proves otherwise never sinks in.
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