The Shock Doctrine Special

Naomi Klein's excellent book Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism is something of required reading for today's American consumer and has been for a couple of years now.  Crisis precipitates change.  The problem then is manipulating a crisis to precipitate a particular change that you want, and we've seen how this can be abused time and time again to continue to consolidate power in the hands of the few, hence the phrase "disaster capitalism".

Case in point:  the massive state budget shortfalls of 2010 and 2011 absolutely count as a crisis.  The "disaster capitalism" solution of course is to sell off as much of the state's assets to the private sector in order to raise money.  Henry Blodget:

What assets?

Assets like roads, bridges, state parks, public transportation systems, and universities.

If New Jersey were to sell the New Jersey Turnpike, for example, it would immediately raise tens of billions of dollars, which would radically improve the state's financial health. And a private road operator might do a better job of running the turnpike than the state can.

Is that a crazy, wacko, radical idea?

In the case of roads, transportation, and other infrastructure, no. There's actually plenty of precedent for it.  And there's no reason other than convention why city bus and subways systems are publicly run and interstate systems, including airlines, are private.

In the case of universities and state parks?  Well, there, the idea is a lot more radical.

Ahh, but we're talking much more radical here, much more than parks and universities.   Remember Blackwater?  Triple Canopy?  Other private military contractors?  Privately operated school districts?  Police and firefighters?

There's a lot of privatization out there possibly.  And all of them run at a profit, not with the public's interest in mind.

What will states sell in order to balance their budgets?

We're about to find out.