Written by the EPSU, from the last page:<p>EPSU is the European Federation of Public Service Unions. It is the largest federation of the ETUC and comprises 8 million public service workers from over 275 trade unions; EPSU organises workers in the energy, water and waste sectors, health and social services and local and national administration, in all European countries including in the EU’s Eastern Neighbourhood.
Good to see serious empirical work tearing down the tenets of neoliberal ideology. Too many things get accepted as self-evident truths.<p>I'm always curious about the profit in the private-public-partnership stories. The reduction in waste, even if it were real, does not just go back into the budget - a part of it must leak out as profits (a manifestation of the second law of thermodynamics in economy, maybe). So, taxes -> profits. Not a problem, I guess, if the contracts between gov and corporations are not too long-term, the competition is healthy, and the tenders are not rigged. Now, that's interesting - the government is assumed to be too corrupt and incompetent to manage these jobs itself, but when it comes to organizing an honest, competitive tender, it's doing that perfectly? :)<p>And, ultimately, a company on the market is driven to be efficient, that's easy to understand. But a company with a multi-year tender is not on the market.
There is a good reason the public sector operates at a loss, it's because it serves the interest of the entire country, which no company can pretend working for.<p>If for example some bus company operates at a loss and receives public subsidies, it's because it can allow people who can't afford gas to go to a job, which is a net gain for the country as a whole.<p>While it's true that the democratic process is not always working very well, it's the reason why the public sector is not always efficient. But it's much better than an autocratic system. Democracy is just the least worst system there is.<p>A company has only inputs and outputs for the sake of check and balances, accounting's only role is to make sure it belongs in a sound economic logic, while a government is a single monolithic machine, often interacting with companies, but for the interest of the citizens.<p>(I did not invent all of that I heard chomsky talk about "operating at a loss".)
Well, as the percieved public/private divide goes there is also the rampant free market ideology being a strong part of our zeitgeist which usually includes glorification of private enterprise and dismissal of the efforts of the public sector.<p>Usually most people doing the work in both are just regular people whose work ethic depends on the general culture and not upon private/public divide. I.e. nepotistic governments probably function as a part of an equally nepotistic economy and so on. IMO, IANE (I am not an economist ;) ).
I've long suspected that the efficiency of the private sector is greatly exaggerated. In the minds of the public, the huge percentage of businesses that fail, often from strategic missteps or inefficiency, don't seem to get factored in. It seems to be about comparing the Fortune 10 vs. all of government.
Ontario's provincial Auditor General just produced a report on our increasing use of PPPs in areas like services and infrastructure. It's available here:<p><a href="http://www.auditor.on.ca/en/reports_2014_en.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.auditor.on.ca/en/reports_2014_en.htm</a><p>One conclusion is that residents of Ontario have spent up to $8 billion extra for the privilege of having private industry handle projects that could have been managed and financed publicly.<p>One wonders the extent to which this private industry has infiltrated government to work on the inside for its own benefit.<p>A Story on the auditor's report:<p><a href="http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2014/12/10/ontarios_misplaced_and_expensive_fascination_with_publicprivate_schemes_walkom.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2014/12/10/ontarios_mispl...</a>
The public sector is under a lot more scrutiny than the private sector (in some countries you can track every penny spent by the government). Its inefficiencies and faults are on the media every day. That, I think, is why people usually see the private sector as better than the public sector.
Summary (from TFA): "...there is now extensive experience of all forms of privatisation [with] many studies of... comparative technical efficiency... results are remarkably consistent across all sectors and all forms of privatisation and outsourcing: there is no empirical evidence that the private sector is intrinsically more efficient. The same results emerge consistently from sectors and services which are subject to outsourcing, such as waste management, and in sectors privatised by sale, such as telecoms."
I've always assumed that the privatisation game is so easily corrupted and rigged towards milking the taxpayers with one-sided deals, that the losses offset any potential efficiency gains. So many anecdotal stories that I've lost count. Seems I may have been right scientifically, rather than just bitter (for once).