Public Private Partnership - Op Ed
Prompt: Internet for All? At what cost?
The question of association as opposed to causation is an important issue in many scientific fields. While planning may be more art than science, perhaps the empirical research method can be applied here in planning; similar to the paradox of what came first: the chicken or the egg. In this case being proposed differently, what came first, retrenchment or neoliberalism?
Neoliberalism can be defined vastly differently among scholarly bodies. Some would argue it to be an ethos, some may redefine it as libertarianism, others label may label it a school of thought within utilitarianism. The Guardian describes neoliberalism as the root of all societies problems, “playing a major role in the financial meltdown of 2008; the offshoring of wealth and power; the slow collapse of public health and education; child poverty and obesity; the collapse of ecosystems, the epidemic of loneliness; and the rise of Donald Trump.” No matter which direction a definition takes, what these explanations all have in common is the concept of neoliberalism being a tool for the evaluation and explication on a system of ideals, and policies for governing society.
In its inception, neo-liberalism was a doctrine that touted choice freedom with free markets and enterprise, deregulation and minimal government intervention, and the transfer of economic control from public to private. Enter capitalism. The original school of thought was intended to be progressive thinking through a network of academics, business men, journalists, and activists who coined the term and sparked the assembly of our present day “think tank” institutions; the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Centre for Policy Studies and the Adam Smith Institute. The concept was supposed to be a counter to the well criticized “New Deal” efforts of former president Roosevelt and his administration to save the economy. However, neoliberalism has also taken a somewhat burdensome effect on society, being associated with austerity policies and retrenchment.
During the Roosevelt era (1933- 1939), the U.S. suffered greatly, and the administration tried to creatively save the economy by providing economic relief from the Great Depression by reforming in agriculture, finance, water, labor, housing and infrastructure. The belief was that the power of the federal government was needed to uplift the American economy. In the same period, the economist John Maynard Keynes was consulted for his ‘Keynesian economics’ policies that dominated economic theory and strategies with the goal of safety nets for the American people, new public services, full-employment and efficient tax rates from the 30s-70s. Soon after, however, criticism followed that many of the created programs burdened the middle and lower class people with taxes to pay with already low to no wages.
The post-war and political events of the 70s quickly deterred the greater good of the public as the goal of government, and with the Reagan administration came massive tax cuts for the rich, the crushing of trade unions, deregulation, privatization, outsourcing and competition in public services.
In this era, and to this present day, economic growth has decreased, inflation has increased, and the privatization of public services and goods has allowed corporations to control major assets, in turn, making the rich richer and the poor poorer. Never clearer that today is it evident of this economic shift than in our current rumored recession. Where Roosevelt aimed to provide safety nets and force the government to take action for uplifting the economy, the opposite has occurred with the neo-liberalism ideology, holding the government with little accountability for the well-being of its citizens and leaving the utmost basic needs, public services, and goods up to the private sector.
Currently, public services and goods are largely handled through public-private partnerships. These have, hands down, provided a formidable list of public benefits: collaborative advantage, resourcefulness, fiscal pragmatism, risk sharing, market-based efficiency, productivity enhancement, and innovation in the design and management of public services. Nonetheless, in contrast, many of the critiques of these public-private partnerships created through the neoliberalism school of thought include, globalization, increased financial instability, monopolies, and a misguided free market approach with inequality and underfunding,
The telecommunications infrastructure is a great example of a misguided free market approach. The challenge of getting the internet to all Americans has been compared to earlier transformational initiatives, such as bringing electricity to every U.S. household or the interstate highway system which changed the country. It has, however, been stalled for a decade at minimum, for various issues, but especially for the financial burden and the lack of incentives for private companies to take on such a large and expensive project without the governments help. Bloomberg reported recently that Comcast has once again pleaded for more government assistance to help cover the leg work of providing their services in rural areas of the U.S. where it is uneconomical to establish.
The Biden administration launched the Internet for All Initiative with its stated goal of ‘getting every American access to technologies that allow them to attend class, start a small business, visit with their doctor, and participate in the modern economy’. Unfortunately, the flawed program design as it stands, doesn’t equip enough funding to assist both unserved demographics and underserved demographics needing broadband access. Even with private companies making themselves available to a project of this magnitude, the brunt of the work would require not only a significant amount of planning from the government, but also a specialized public-private partnership or the program is likely to be a fail.
Sagalyn makes these arguments toward PPPs stating that with their complexity is the possibility of a misallocation of resources, inefficient gaps in coordination and strategic implementation. Sagalyn also believes “to ensure political success, rules of engagement are needed to provide a best practices road map for strategies in PPPs…moreover, governance protocols, capacity building, and comparative research on performance form the basics needs for building PP policy performance to create better public- private partnerships. Public private partnerships have been successful on a number of occasions with standout projects as examples of the many models formats that can be designed. The Alameda Corridor project being a favorite from my research, a project of national significance, and established through a special purpose vehicle (SPV). SPV’s have become almost synonymous with successful PPPs for its ability to greatly overview financial obligation, participation, and legal protections. So, it isn’t a question as to how to, but how come. How come the government is establishing better ways to ensure fair market, efficient strategies, and best practices?
Public Private partnerships should be used as a tool to drive democracy, but instead, they are being used a vehicle to drive more competiveness in the market, leaving everyone to fend for themselves and get what they ‘deserve’ while the government sit backs and observes, free of any accountability on the welfare of its most vulnerable citizens. Where the New Deal was flagged by the U.S Supreme Court for unauthorized social and economic reform, where is neoliberalism flagged? Could it be flagged for retrenchment? Better yet, is there a healthy balance between neoliberalism, socialism, and communism?
