Privatisation

Hi, I'm Joel and I decided to start posting some of my rants. They'll cover a wide variety of topics including - politics, video games, Macs (just to rile things up!) and anything else that comes to mind. Hope you enjoy -

Peter and I were at Pajenka's (a cafe here at uni) and discussing privatisation. We do that a lot. I recalled a lecturer I once had that said the uni should privatise the lights. Yes thats right! Lights! The way it works is simple - a 'light' provider would install and fix all lights in the university. The contractor would have an SLA (Service Level Agreement) that detailed how long a light could stay broken until replaced or how many failures were accetable in a certain number of lights. The university would pay this contractor a flat fee for this service.

The beauty of this system is that the contractor would want to reduce the cost of each light but at the same time balance the cost with quality. As low quality lights would break more often and put the contractor in danger of breaking his SLA. Breaking his SLA could involve fines and even termination of a contract. A 'light' provider would also be knowledgable in all the different lights which means the university would not have to waste its valuable time. A university should only be concerned with research and teaching students. They should not have to waste their precious time on working out which light to install.

This light contract would also be provided under tender thus reducing the cost to the university. Competition would drive down prices as other contractors vied for the light contract each year. Capatalism has been shown to work so why is this idea considered ridiculous?

On example anti-privatisation people (read: lefties) bering up time and time again is an old story of Rome who had a privatised Fire Brigade. When Rome began to burn the Fire Brigade only protected those houses whose occupants had paid for Fire Protection. The fire got out of control because of the large number of houses that were left to burn and soon the Fire Brigade couldn't even protect the houses it was paid for.

The flaw in the argument that this proves privatisation is a bad idea is simple - if the Fire Brigade had put out the fire in the houses that had not paid for it, it would still be protecting it's members. As they would not have to worry about the fire reaching them. And the people who hadn't paid for Fire protection could simply be charged a fee for having their house saved. This would encourage people to pay for Fire Protection.

We must remember that today we do pay a fee for Fire Protection. A part of our taxes goes to pay for the Fire Brigade.

Privatisation is something that people are hesitant to embrace but has time and again provided society with greater choice, lower prices and better quality.

It's time to embrace the revolution! The Liberal revolution.