On the perpetual myth of private enterprise efficiency

Most of us grew up in an era of Neoliberalism.  Part and parcel of this hegemonic ideology is of course that private enterprise is better for society, that it's more efficient, and make people more productive and the economy more robust.

And all that is a load of bovine excrement.

What private enterprise excels in is to make their senior executives rich.  Period.  Everyone else can go fuck themselves.  And that includes so-called shareholders.  Let me elaborate.

Executive compensation.  I will not recite all the stats about the multiples that senior execs of large corporations make versus what an average worker makes.  What's the point?  Are we any more sanguine if the multiple were 200 instead of 500?  Hell no.  If I am selling shoes at minimum wage, and less than full time at that, it really matters not to me if some senior head honcho makes $10 million or $40 million.  I am fucked.  Basically.  With no benefits to boot.

And of course when senior execs get the can, as they sometimes do, they walk away with tens of million in severance.  If you and I get canned, we walk away with... Oh wait, nothing.  Such is life.  So very fucking Charles Dickens.  Which also tells us that nothing much has changed in the last 150 years, by the way.

As for efficiency, sure, Amazon gets you your Made in China shit crap gadget in a day.  Hurrah.  Hey, guess what?  They do that how?  Making sure workers need to work more and more just to buy bread.  Ever wonder why the Roman navy ships were fast?  Fucking slaves rowed them, no?  And if they slacked off, they got whipped to death.  Nothing has changed in two thousand years either.  Just recently an Amazon warehouse outside Toronto was ordered to shut down.  Why?  Because there were hundreds of cases of Covid detected.  And how did that happen, you think?  Because Amazon cares so much about the welfare of their workers?  Right.  And if you believe that, I have some swamp land in Florida that would be perfect for your dream vacation home.

Efficiency, eh?  Hospitals in the US are privatized.  How's that coming?  Once upon a time my wife had to go in for a surgery.  They actually marked the WRONG SIDE of her body for the operation.  Lucky she was awake and told them so.  Are you fucking kidding me?  Are you happy with airlines who somehow manage to lose your bags all the time despite all this tracking technology?  How about Ford's (another) recall of hundreds of thousands of vehicles of wait, what, LEAKY airbags and tires?  All made by private enterprise.  Are you quite happy with all the produce recalls because of this and that bacterial infection?  All private enterprise as well.  How about car rental companies?  We must love them, eh?

I won't bore you with all these examples.  Let's just say so-called efficiency isn't all that's efficient or effective.  What it's good at is to enrich the senior execs.  That's all.

But hey, what about shareholders?  The OWNERS of the corporation?  If you believe that as a shareholder you are a part owner, you should get your head examined.  Say you owned a share of Amazon.  Try going to their headoffice and take a brick from the building.  Tell them you are a owner and see how far that gets you.

The stock market is no more than a fucking casino.  You are placing a bet.  You get lucky, and you may win some.  You get unlucky and you are screwed.  You really think market fundamentals have anything to do with market performance?  You really believe EPS drives stock prices?  Seriously?  Read the news instead of your textbook.  Get real.  It's a setup, and you're a tosser if you think it's actually a free and efficient market.  The efficient market hypothesis?  Haha, right.

Folks, we have been brainwashed by the neoliberalism ideology, and sold down the river by this revolting propaganda about the efficiencies of private enterprise.  No, I am not against private enterprise, but I don't think it's the cure-all it's pretending to be.  Examine the facts and your beliefs.  Don't let ideology (of any persuasion) control your intelligence.  Don't be sold snake oil.