The Problem with Privatization

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Samarami's picture

It's interesting that state media types came up with terms a few years ago in their endless "subliminal" quest to defuse grumbling about the thievery by predators of state: "sectors". We're often treated with deep discussions pertaining to the "private sector" vs the "public sector", etc etc. Ever so often I think they talk about other "sectors", but I couldn't tell you what they are.

But if you take just a cursory look, there are two sectors: a producing sector and a parasitical sector. Franz Oppenheimer would say a "work sector" and a "robbery sector":

There are two fundamentally opposed means whereby man, requiring sustenance, is impelled to obtain the necessary means for satisfying his desires. These are work and robbery, one's own labor and the forcible appropriation of the labor of others. . . . I propose in the following discussion to call one's own labor and the equivalent exchange of one's own labor for the labor of others, the "economic means" for the satisfaction of need while the unrequited appropriation of the labor of others will be called the "political means". . . . The State is an organization of the political means. No State, therefore, can come into being until the economic means has created a definite number of objects for the satisfaction of needs, which objects may be taken away or appropriated by warlike robbery.

Franz Oppenheimer, The State (New York: Vanguard Press, 1926) pp. 24-27

http://www.franz-oppenheimer.de/state0.htm

Sam