I’m all for privatizing anything, as long as the top, say, 6 levels of executives understand that if they fuck up (1) they’ll get the guillotine, and (2) the state can renationalize it on equivalent terms — basically, take all the assets and saddle privatizing investors with all the debt. And, sorry, that applies to past execs too, so no asset-stripping, quitting, and swapping in other heads. So, you want to nationalize USPS? Let’s talk.
Theoretical arguments for privatization always omit one key detail: why now? That’s how we know they’re arbitrary ideological hand-waving that serves to obscure large-scale theft: if you said “Fine, we’ll privatize in two generations, the advocates would be a lot less interested. So the question is: how can we either (a) deter large-scale theft, or (b) ensure that large-scale transformations aren’t really theft. Answer: adjust the individual and collective risks.