It's long been rather obvious that there's a considerable population in the United States that's opposed to public anything:
public education
public transportation
public officials
public housing
public health care
public service
public information
public utilities
public television
In some instances, Public Service of New Hampshire is an example, the word has to be arrogated by a private corporation to give it a gloss of acceptability. Which may actually explain why, despite various bankruptcies and acquisitions, PSNH has held on to its name.
In the event, PSNH is a private corporation, a reality that's not highlighted overly much about our "private sector" even as "privatization" has now been touted for several decades as "superior." "Superior to what?" is also not a question that's often asked.
If it were asked, the answer would be "why to public corporations, of course. That's what private corporations are superior to." And that might well lead to puzzlement about what is meant and a follow up question: "Aren't public corporations simply those whose shares are sold to the public in the stock market?" To which the answer would have to be "No, those are private corporations in which members of the public can participate by buying a share -- i.e. it takes money to get in. Public corporations are the various political jurisdictions, large and small, into which Americans are either born or "naturalized" as citizens, a status that actually involves a bundle of obligations, rather than a property right or ownership.
Most of us have probably not given much thought to political jurisdictions (towns, cities, counties, states, nation) as public corporations. Much less have we given any thought to the fact that the public and the private corporation inhabit a common category -- i.e. they are artificial creations, figments of the human imagination. And that's probably not an accident of nature.
Although it seems never to have been officially decided, private corporations have long been permitted and have long enjoyed behaving as if they were, unlike the public corporations, whose powers and duties are strictly defined in their charters (constitutions), natural persons entitled to and possessed of the same rights as an individual human. Indeed, in the recent SCOTUS "Citizens United" decision the traditional claim to human rights on the part of private corporations remained unchallenged, probably because it wasn't argued.
While I made reference, above, to citizenship involving a bundle of obligations, not preferences as some people like to think, it is true that, as evidence of our liberty, these obligations of citizenship (to vote, hold office, serve on juries, draft legislation, provide material support, etc.) do not have to be carried out -- i.e. our participation in governing is not coerced. Natural persons are not forced to do anything, as long as their behavior results in no injury to anyone else. And even then, the injury has to be proved and society's response is after the fact -- a logical sequence, considering that the individual person is unlikely to cause much irreparable damage before she's stopped.
Indeed, that's the major difference between a natural person and an artificial body, made up of many people, whose establishment is actually motivated by an interest in effecting major projects and programs without the individual participants incurring any personal liability. Corporations, both public and private, are designed and set up to relieve individuals of responsibility for the consequences of their acts. The corporate charter is a recipe for irresponsibility. Which is why the charters of public corporations specify precisely what the agents of the corporation may and must do.
One of the things public corporations (states and nation) may do is charter private corporations to carry out non-governmental functions. Which is why, when you come to think of it, the notion that private corporations are somehow superior to the ones that brought them into existence seems a bit peculiar. Even stranger is the apparent conviction on the part of private corporations that the public corporations are bound and determined to kill them off -- the clear meaning of the oft repeated:
the power to tax is the power to destroy
Just the mention of the word taxes is enough to turn even our largest private corporations into nervous Nellies. Why that should be is a puzzlement, unless our private corporations actually realize deep down in the recesses of their boardrooms that their existence is based on a lie -- the lie that their behavior is guided by and consistent with their state-issued charters, a lie because the states are lacking in any enforcement powers. So, private corporations have been getting away with being totally irresponsible and now guilt is rendering them impotent. At least, that's how I interpret the etiology of their hoarding behavior, as reported in today's Washington Post.
The executive class in the Chicago region is none too pleased with many of the policies of President Obama, their former hometown senator. They criticize his willingness to let Bush-era tax cuts expire at year's end for households that make over $250,000 and allow the capital gains tax rate to increase. They dislike aspects of his landmark health-care law, and some fear that the financial overhaul legislation enacted this summer will make it harder for them to get loans.
"Congress has been very tough on businesses," said Jason Speer, chief executive of Quality Float Works of Schaumburg, Ill., which makes the industrial equivalent of toilet ball floats, items that sell for up to $1,200 and are used to measure water levels in farm and industrial equipment. The company also makes the metal balls that go on the top of flagpoles.
To which I'd say, "if you think it's been tough, you ain't seen nothin' yet." 'Cause the public is fed up with these off-spring, whose guru talks about drowning the public corporations in the bath-tub and whose behavior has been downright patricidal. The superiority of the private corporation has turned out to be a total illusion, wishful thinking that, to be honest, has been facilitated by a public which, like a father who pays the note and buys the gas to indulge a teenage driver, has bought into the pretense that private corporations are not only autonomous, but have no social obligations whatever. And it's killing us.
Drowning the public was always a fantastic, unrealistic image. The real implement of our demise, much easier to handle and harder to trace, is money, the "almighty dollar." It's only paper, or a few electronic digits, but, in the hands of the moneybaggers on Wall Street and Main Street, it's an unyielding leash that's about to strangle us. No matter how much money Washington pours into our public corporations, our private corporations can keep on downsizing until our economy is dead and buried. Then, like the patricide, they can whine about being orphaned.
What we need is an intervention. It's clear that our fifty public corporations are not equipped to enforce the charter obligations on private corporations engaged in interstate and international operations. So, that should be the purview of the Congress. What Congress creates, Congress can dissolve. Having that power over the Federal Reserve Bank is not enough. But, the Fed does provide an example that can be followed.
Perhaps that's a task Joe Biden, the erstwhile Senator of Delaware, the preeminent state of private corporations, could take on. Sort of like sending Nixon to China.