You Don’t Always Get What You Pay for

You Don’t Always Get What You Pay for

  • Submitted By: rafalo
  • Date Submitted: 11/27/2008 3:17 PM
  • Category: Business
  • Words: 901
  • Page: 4
  • Views: 551

Elliott D. Sclar, You Don’t Always Get What You Pay for: The Economics of Privatization, educates the reader on privatization within the United States while trying to paint a picture in the readers mind that privatization is not as effective in the public sector as it may seem to be. The author does an excellent job of providing the reader with case after case about the various conflicts that occur when government attempts to privatize parts of the public sector. Sclar’s analysis of the cases he provides the reader throughout the book all have common ideas that in a sense have influenced the outcome of public contracting and the efficiency effects of privatization. The author demonstrates in great detail the difficulties that arise when attempting to determine whether in fact privatization was an effective tool in lowering cots and improving efficiency levels. In my opinion all of the cases presented by Sclar are anti-privatization and his view on privatizing public service is biased, in the sense that he does not tell the whole story. The author in my opinion deliberately focuses his attention only on the negative qualities that are associated with privatization and chooses to present cases that have shown little or no improvement in terms of lowering costs when privatized. I feel that the author could have provided the reader’s with a balanced view of privatization and anti-privatization, where he allows the reader to decide for themselves whether privatization is something the government should consider for certain public services or not. Sclar could have accomplished this by incorporating cases where privatization of public services has proven itself to positively benefit the society and generate lower costs and achieve higher productivity levels due to the competition that it creates.
The author shares many of his own ideas on the sudden urge society has adopted to privatize and introduce competition into the public sector in the twentieth century. I...

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