Liberal Talking Points, and Other Amusements

Privatization can save money, but not how progressives do it...

Last week, the Marxist Merganser quacked:

If you were up on what Landesinspekteur Bloomberg is really up to you'd be debating Matt Taibbi's article on his thought's about privatizing the city's parking meters and how well that worked in Chicago.

This is a prime example of the intellectual flabbiness of the left. Ordinarily smart people like Ducky read something, partially digest it, and run off screaming whatever half-baked propaganda lesson they think they got from it. 

I went to Tabbi the Hissing Cat’s article expecting an anti-libertarian, anti-privatization diatribe. Instead, I read a thoughtful piece on how short-sighted and desperate progressive governments can be.

A New York parking meter deal, like the Chicago deal, would be a perfect example of the deeply cynical short-term thinking of many American politicians these days. These deals involve a sitting executive selling off a valuable piece of city property at a steep discount to private financial interests (often, to friends or campaign contributors), in order to solve a current cash flow problem that, surprise, surprise, will still be there the year after you finish spending the proceeds of your sale.

In Chicago’s case, Mayor Richard Daley sold 75 years of meter revenue – worth an estimated $5 billion – for $1.2 billion. So he gets 20 cents on the dollar for the city’s parking meters in 2008, and then in 2009 the city still has a budget problem that’s now worse, because there’s no parking meter revenue anymore, ever.

[...] In some Chicago neighborhoods, the meter rates went from .25 cents an hour to $1 an hour in the first year of the deal, and then to $1.20 after that. (Taibbi – Rolling Stone)

When cornered, the rats will eat their own children. We should learn a few lessons from that. First, do not put progressives in charge of anything larger than their own lives or their own voluntary collectives. The larger lesson we should learn is to never take at face value anything a lefty says.

The Progressive State is Eating Itself

See, the economic object of something like a parking meter, a gas tax, or a fishing license, is to collect money for an activity from the groups of people that do those activities, like parking, driving on our roads or fishing in government lakes and streams. It makes sense. But the progressive government model has eaten the seed corn, the inheritance is gone, and they’ve got to hock the family china and silver, as well as sell off some of the family businesses, just to maintain their outrageously generous lifestyle.

Privatization makes sense for, say, trash collection, reducing the payroll and getting the city out of the business of maintaining a fleet of trucks. The same could apply to outsourcing parking meter operations to increase efficiency and save taxpayers money. But that’s not why they did it in Chicago, and it’s not why New York is doing it. 

They’re doing it because they are junkies who need cash. Now.  Taibbi is right. They are foolishly forgoing a future revenue stream for cash today, and they are getting pennies on the dollar. This is a sign of desperation; the drunk selling the family car so he can buy more hooch. This is where pie-in-the-sky progressivism ends up. They always end up running out of other people’s money.