Privatization=Death of Nations

That's what it is, no more, no less. Countries (the USA) CANNOT outsource those duties such as police functions, military functions, transfer of commonly held natural resources, prisons, tax enforcement, etc. unless they are determined to sign their own death warrants. These functions are INHERENTLY the role of government. "Privatization" and "small government" are phrases that identify those who look to a New World Order based on wage slavery supporting a global corporatacracy.

Can someone point to even one instance when "de-regulation" has led to improved circumstances for the American citizen (consumer)?

Today it's oil - tomorrow it will be water.

But outsourcing the Presidency for the next two years could be interesting.

That's an interesting analogy. For most of my life, I've believed that nationalism was mostly a bad thing. But as you suggest, the process of privatization is so far advanced and so internationalized that it seems like it may be too late to do anything. On the other hand, when people learned of the sale of US port facilities to the UAR, there was immediate reaction. Unfortunately, the response to that may be the disappearance of news about international privatization on the premise that people can't protest what they don't know about.

I'm still trying to think of an advantage that I've gained from deregulation.

Phoebe Loosinhouse wrote: "Can someone point to even one instance when "de-regulation" has led to improved circumstances for the American citizen (consumer)?"

1. The deregulation of airlines created the biggest boom in air travel in history. Prices went down by as much as 50%. Air travel by Americans went up about 30%. Lower prices, more availability of flights, better safety record: win/win/win for consumers.

2. Deregulation of telephone companies led to enormous downward pressure on prices, as thew rip-off rates for long distance under the AT&T monopoly did not last. The idea that all phones were black, rotary and expensive is gone. Competition in telephones has been an enormous benefit for consumers.

3. Trucking rates have declined enormously since de-regulation of interstate trucking. The competitiveness in that industry led to enormous logistical efficiencies for consumers, and lower costs.

Need any more?

"Aside from the deregulation of the air industry can someone name an instance where deregulation has helped the consumer?" but I decided that it would be intellectually dishonest for me to write that. I agree that deregulation of the air industry has overall been a boon to the consumer, BECAUSE it is one of the few industries where smaller competitors arose to compete with the big guys. I personally hail Southwest as my travel savior for opening up travel routes and hubs and charging reasonable prices for them when I had been paying through the nose otherwise. However, it is still an extremely competitive industry and many do not survive and I think the overall health of that industry is in doubt with many airlines either in, or dangerously close to bankruptcy.

I think the deregulation of the phone companies MAY be another case, although I personally still think phone rates are ridiculous. I cannot believe that I personally pay approx $100.00 a month for fairly conservative use of a land line and a cell phone plan. I don't think it's any great bargain and I feel that I pay way too much. In this case, although deregulated - the various companies still keep themselves in close step as far as prices. For my land line, I have exactly 3 choices and amazingly enough, they all seem to hover around 25.00 a month for basic services - no one has broken open any barriers as far as I can see.

I don't know anything about trucking and couldn't begin to make anything like an intelligent comment about that. I would like trucker input into how deregulation has changed their industry either for the better or worse.

BUT, I do know that utility de-regulation has resulted in monstrosities like ENRON gaming the California electrical grid and I haven't heard of any case of utility deregulation that appeared to result in lower consumer costs.

I believe that privatization is shifting the combined "Wealth of Nations" into private hands. These private hands are multinational and have no loyalties except to lining their own pockets.

In my area, we have ONE television cable company.

I see the concentration of money and power into fewer and fewer corporate pockets.

together with privatization. They are opposite sides of the same "fool's gold" coin. Although they are different, there are more similarities than divergences.

Lower prices don't begin to compensate for the elimination of discretionary income.

Privatization of public services is just another way to siphon capital from the commonweal into the pockets of the rich. When those ruined schools and prisons are dumped back into the public domain there will be nothing left of their pension systems, cash reserves, surplus property or anything else of value.

"Today it's oil - tomorrow it will be water." Too true.

They can thank Enron and the guy who worked for Enron getting the gov'ts to sell their utilities - GW Bush himself.

Why do electorates keep falling for the same old bill of goods? False advertising, the mother's milk of capitalism.

That's what "Globalization" is all about. Multinational corporations are making countries compete with each other to see who will be the best corporate whore in a race to the bottom of regulation loosening and standard cutting. Western nations are becoming corporatist puppets and, I fear, we can do nothing to stop it. All the West will soon be consumed by a de facto oligarchic corporate state. A single "universal" state controling an entire civilization is the inevitable endpoint of a dying civilization.

"It is most unlikely, I fear, that the worldwide state will be established by the will, or even with the acquiescence, of the majority of mankind. It seems to me likely to be imposed on the majority by a ruthless, efficient, and fanatical minority, inspired by some ideology or religion. I guess that mankind will acquiesce in a harsh Leninian kind of dictatorship as a lesser evil than self-extermination or than a continuing anarchy which could only end in self-extermination.... The case of the Vichy regime in France during the years 1940-45 shows that, even in a country in which the national consciousness is as strong as it is in France, national interests may be subordinated to class interests by the rich. If the Axis had won the Second World War and if Hitler's Third Reich had survived, I think there would have been a conspiracy between the German Nazis on the one hand and the `Vichysois' and the `Quislings' in Germany's satellites on the other to hold down the masses in all the countries under Nazi Germany's domination. I could imagine a conspiracy of this kind on a worldwide scale."

— Arnold Toynbee, Surviving the Future, 1971

The corporatists want to make the individual irrelevant, and are holding up
the US propaganda model to every nation on earth as a model in how to disempower
and destroy all political coherency for total-control fascism. THe corporate
world is very excited... as if nobody but corporate citizens lives on this earth.

Wait a minute, are you saying we're not slaves?

Our guys are the same sell-outs as the Repugs, hence their strange silence on issues we scream about - they have been co-opted with a few notable exceptions like Conyers, Boxer, Feingold, Kerry, Kucinich, Kennedy, etc. Personally, I welcome a schism in the Party, so the Vichys and the DINOs can have a "Come to Jesus" moment with those of us who still care about Truth, Justice and the American Way. Bring it ON!

100% correct.

But it helps explain why nobody's signing up to defend America.

Had offshoring, et al, not taken place so rapidly, things would be considerably different.

who coincidentally happen to be the ones who make the rules.