The glories of privatization... cont'd

Chicago recently privatized their parking meters in an effort to raise operating cash for the city. The private companies immediately did away with free parking on Sundays and holidays, quadrupled rates, instituted 24 hour a day / 7 day a week meter feeding requirements, and installed thousands of brand new non - working meters citywide.

"thousands of newly installed (privatized) credit-card and coin-taking parking meters simply do not work." - NY Times

The situation has gotten so bad that the city had to stop issuing parking tickets, because so many of the the privately run meters were inoperable.

If you believe that government is inherently bad, and can't do anything well, then privatization may make some sense. We need to recognize that this is a belief, and not a matter of fact. Isn't it time we started to govern based on what actually works as opposed to articles of faith? Why do the media so often fail to confront this unsupported belief as a superstition when it is trotted out?

Having live through the horrors of the privatization of the energy markets in California, I am well aware that the Republican mantra of "private business can deliver public services better and cheaper" is often flat wrong. This is just one more of literally dozens of examples of the utter failure of the drive to privatization.





























Please note, this photo is not an actual Chicago parking meter...