"This agency would run better if it were run like a business."
How often have you heard that claim? It is put out there fairly often, and there are plenty of public goods and functions that have been converted to private operation or ownership over time. Even the U.S. Postal Service stopped being a direct government entity decades ago.
Donald Cohen, who founded and runs the organization In the Public Interest, has plenty of examples of where privatization went wrong.
He makes a full argument in his book The Privatization of Everything: How the Plunder of Public Goods Transformed America and How We Can Fight Back.
Allen Mikaelian co-wrote the book; Donald Cohen is our guest for the discussion.