The Privatization of the Public Sector

I was not aware that libraries around the country were being privatized. The traditional thinking is that libraries that were not performing well financially would be privatized, but that is not necessarily the case. A lot of people are upset about the expanding role of government and would like to see the government get out of the business of rescuing failed businesses. But what if the government got of the business of doing what we normally assume that it would take care of?

What if the government left everything up to the free market and got out of the business of providing crucial services. It is one thing when the government is in the business of redeveloping a city space for the rich with high rise condominiums and expensive office space and aggressively attempting to bring people into the city with higher incomes. But when the government allows businesses to take over schools and libraries it looks as though the government has either failed to live up to the expectations of the society it serves or has given up the "good fight" of providing public services to residents at a minimal cost.

People may not realize that when a private company takes over a school, library, or any other public service or public space that their tax dollars are being given to that private entity to provide those services. The services are still "public" in the sense that they are funded in the same way. When we think of the relationship between the government and private industry, we often think about the military, or the construction business where it is clear that contractors will be used to provide services at a competitive cost. Most people seem to be okay with that level of involvement. But taking my tax dollars to provide funding for a private library, that just does not seem right.

You never know how passionate people are about a public library until the government talks about cutting back the hours that they are open, removing services, or closing on days that they used to stay open. But city governments are cutting back on the amount of hours that library staff can work and consolidating or eliminating redundant positions altogether. I guess the question that needs to be asked is just how cheap can the labor become, and how much money can governments save? It is easy to talk about positions that are redundant and cutting unnecessary expenditures that are wasting money, but if one more person is without a job and put out onto the street everyone else is going to end up having to use their tax dollars to support that person anyway. Where is the line being drawn?

Most people probably would not care about privatization if it were not for the fact that some employees working for municipal governments make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. No one cares if you are earning $200,000 or $300,000 dollars a year to oversee and bring in revenue for a city system when things are going well. But when school systems or city governments begin to fall apart, everyone hates you.

A company that specializes in running what were public libraries, Library Systems and Services, LLC, is already the fifth largest library system in the country. They run libraries in Tennessee, Kansas, Oregon, Texas and California. States that are seen as being Republican that have smaller governments also have public libraries that are ran by private companies. This is not to say that corruption is limited to the public sector, but it hits home when it is funded out of the taxpayers pocket.