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Afaik, every example of so-called privatization posted to the list over the last ten years or so has demonstrated the validity of the legal realists and cls' dismantling of the public/private distinction/construction. Why do leftists accede to the very terms of the debate by simply casting such terms with a pejorative sense when there are other terms that would tie the sycophants of mainstream econ. in gordian knots by collapsing the distinctions between rent-seeking, asset stripping and protection rackets? If there's one 'thing' that ties all the episodes I've read about together, it's good ol' fashioned political patronage, aka graft. As Warren Samuels and Hyman Minsky and a host of others have pointed out, this displaces the ridiculous arguments from big/little government to whose interests the government gives effect. Then we might get the debate about capitalism as the enemy of democracy off the ground.
I leave aside the issue of whether democracy is the enemy of actually existing democracies :-)
Ian