5 Ways Privatization Is Poisoning America

Greetings friends,

I read this article at Global Possiblities (www.globalpossibilities.org...) that speaks to five different ways that Privatization of Public Resources (wealth) is eroding our freedom. Those five ways are:

1) The taking of Public Lands for Private Profit
2) Water rights and access for Sale
3) Owning Human Life - GMO and patents
4) Owning the Air - a new one for me
5) Children as Products - another new one

The First one has been on the radar for decades, water just as long; the owning life thing affects food and medicine, owning the air is new in the sense of actual air but older with regard to freedom of speech and number 5 is the most frightening.

The article is consise and well written and presents the issues clearly and without being overly biased. Please take a look at it and share your thoughts.

A short quote from the 'Owning Human Life":

The results have also been otherworldly. In 1996 the U.S. National Institutes of Health attempted to patent the blood cells of the primitive Hagahai tribesman of New Guinea. U.S. companies AgriDyne and W.R. Grace tried to gain ownership of the neem plant, used for centuries in India for the making of medicines and natural pesticides. Other examples of ‘biopiracy’: The University of Cincinnati holds a patent on Brazil’s guarana seed; the University of Mississippi holds a patent on the Asian spice turmeric.

www.globalpossibilities.org...

reply to post by FyreByrd


Everything you described is all part of Agenda 21 OP!

All part of the UN and the NWO plan to control everything we eat and do.........

It's ridiculous that anyone can own genes. How can you own something you didn't create and which isn't for sale?

Privatization is bad for most things.

reply to post by WaterBottle


Ah, but you can sell a service to modify those genes! You want a kid to have green eyes? No big deal, just pay us $27,802 per eye.

This reminds me about a speech given by Tecumseh, a Shawnee leader in 1810.

The only way to stop this evil is for all the red men to unite in claiming an equal right in the land. That is how it was at first, and should be still, for the land never was divided, but was for the use of everyone. Any tribe could go to an empty land and make a home there. No groups among us have a right to sell, even to one another, and surely not to outsiders who want all, and will not do with less.

Sell a country! Why not sell the air, the clouds, and the Great Sea, as well as the earth? Did not the Great Spirit make them all for the use of his children?

www.oocities.org...

Hell there are people buying and selling parts of the moon! The attempts of a few to screw over the many for greed and gluttony never ceases to amaze me.

Just think, they can stop you from collecting rainwater in some places now!

When someone can take the land under your feet which you supposedly "own" and have a deed for just because you did not pay your mafia fees...aka...property taxes...then no one actually owns anything. Fiefdom and the feudal system is alive and well, they just call it new things and you get less happiness.

I'm not sure i see your OP as all necessarily related to the same thing in points. Private Property, as you note on #1, is the very bed rock and foundation of a free nation. Some people get together and buy land as a company or even Corp. How is this a negative thing when Public Lands has come to refer to land under the strict "management" and use of the Federal Government?



If privatizing land means the Federal Government isn't directly owner to over 50% of some entire states, then here here and I'm all for it. I'd think large scale corporate buying and use of land really is case by case on what they do with it and whether it's damaging or not for the long term?

Things like patents of genetics ought to be outlawed, globally and outright. Bad bad things lay down the path of genetic manipulation for pure profit of protected patents. Those can be gold x's 100 if it hits right ...so I can only imagine the horrors that may occur in the Error side of trial and error.

One note I'd add on water rights though. The Federal Government should have NO place in it beyond mitigation in disputes through the COURT...not political wings. This is what we get:



These signs are not hard to find up and down the Central Valley of California. (Interstate 5 and Highway 99).or they weren't when I was last out there on a weekly basis. Some of those lands were among the most productive farmlands on Earth....just years ago. The water rights of the California agriculture (a fair % of world agriculture output) has been severely curtailed to save bottom feeding fish like the Sacramento Delta Smelt )

Before and After pics of California using Google Earth time placed imagery tells a scary tale of food sources deliberately cut back by Government policy and intent...of water control.

So I must disagree about privatization being a bad thing in most cases. Some? yes.. Government does better. (Prisons...Cops...Military, for instance) but most things? I can sue a bad company out of business. I can't do much but silently scream at a bad Government program that doesn't care what any of us think.

Thanks for the thread OP. I have some questions.

If something isn't privately owned, what are the alternatives? Gov owned, public domain (ie no ownership), are there any others I have forgotten?

What should be privately owned and what should be in the public domain, what should be Gov owned? Who should decide the 3? These are the questions I had when I read the post.

One last thought, I do not believe there is truly private property in the US due to property tax.

reply to post by FyreByrd


You guys are talking about privatization, and we are worried about nationalization

Originally posted by Wrabbit2000
I'm not sure i see your OP as all necessarily related to the same thing in points. Private Property, as you note on #1, is the very bed rock and foundation of a free nation. Some people get together and buy land as a company or even Corp. How is this a negative thing when Public Lands has come to refer to land under the strict "management" and use of the Federal Government?

This is more then about private property (though, personally, I'm beginning to doubt the wisdom of any private property) and the examples you site are fine and truly part of our heritage. What is being talked about in the article is lands held in trust for the entire people of the USA specifically and the selling off of those lands and the mineral and water rights held in trust for the entire people of the USA. These sales (and leases) are being made without any public discussion or assent.

Taken to the extreme (as in happening today) we have the TPP, Trans Pacific Partnership. This 'treaty' economic and political/social to the teeth that will affect the sovergienty of nations and individuals is being negoitated in PRIVATE not even congress people have access to the details or any say in whether or no it goes forward. The only things we the people know about it are drafts that have been leaked. These 'economic' treaties NAFTA and the like ratify and expand this trend to privatization.

I'm a freeking liberal for goodness sake and prefer, in theory, nationalizing more basic resources and industries and this privatization push, under the radar, by our Corporate Masters is truly frightening me (almost as much as my poor spelling).

How can you say this article isn't overly biased?

There is not one opposing view listed anywhere.

That's an automatic dismissal for me as far as credibility goes.

Originally posted by Hopechest
How can you say this article isn't overly biased?

There is not one opposing view listed anywhere.

That's an automatic dismissal for me as far as credibility goes.

Well are their any falsehoods in the article? Seems to be that everything stated in the article is verifiable fact.

And what would be the opposing view to said facts - that they aren't true?

You may think all those things are a good idea, which is your perorgotive; I believe that most people think they are not.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


So . . . if a water source that runs through your land is dammed-up or polluted, up stream, by a corp . . . because they "own" the rights . . . you are okay with that?

How about if you are told to move off the land because they bought from the gov, yet they don't have to compensate you because you are now on their property?

I'm not saying things of this nature don't happen with the government, but privatized means managed by corps. At least with the government, you have some legal recourse when they pull "imminent domain" or decide to turn it into National Park/Forrest, etc. The gov also pays to recoup those rights if you have "own" property or a home (albeit, not actual value).

Corps don't have to do a g-d thing . . . and you have no legal recourse. Federal land is also usually able to be used (camping/fishing/hunting) . . . Corps can just put up "No Tresspass" signs and arrest you.

At least, that is my experience in a state with lots of Fed Land (AZ).

Privatization . . . not good.

ETA - unless we are talking owned by private citizens, but that is not what this practice is about.

Originally posted by Hopechest
How can you say this article isn't overly biased?

There is not one opposing view listed anywhere.

That's an automatic dismissal for me as far as credibility goes.

Well . . . Other than they attribute any of these policies to the philosophies of Ayn Rand, which has nothing to do with this issue . . . but, I see they have quite a few articles referencing her (not sure what their hang up with Individualism is). This article is not overflowing with any untruths. They are right about the issues with privatization of public land.

It does seem a little socialist leaning though . . .

reply to post by solomons path

So . . . if a water source that runs through your land is dammed-up or polluted, up stream, by a corp . . . because they "own" the rights . . . you are okay with that?

How about if you are told to move off the land because they bought from the gov, yet they don't have to compensate you because you are now on their property?

That's not what I said or my example was about at all. In California, it has been the extreme use and interpretation of the Endangered Species Act over the distribution agreements to the agriculture industry. I use that example because it's one I personally saw develop from when I first ran produce in 1995/1996 to when I left the industry in 2010.

The drying up of farmland was staggering and really just incredible to see. All that is off the market and it's no wonder the WORST unemployment are among the produce communities. Stockton, Fresno, Modesto and other areas were surrounded by fallow ground the last I saw it ...and had been productive ground employing many, not that many years ago.

All things being equal though I will ALWAYS side with State control over Federal and local over state. Private is the ultimate best but not always possible. Some things like the formal National Parks and true unique treasure areas of the Nation as a whole need Federal protection for that purpose and value ....but not at the extremes of assumption to Federal ownership unless otherwise listed. That is how it's assumed and taken to work now.

Originally posted by solomons path

Well . . . Other than they attribute any of these policies to the philosophies of Ayn Rand, which has nothing to do with this issue . . . but, I see they have quite a few articles referencing her (not sure what their hang up with Individualism is). This article is not overflowing with any untruths. They are right about the issues with privatization of public land.

It does seem a little socialist leaning though . . .

FYI, this is a Liberatarian dream, and Ayn Rand would love privitization because then the, what was his name, Hank Roark's of this world would rule everything with no PUBLIC lands or resrouces or vote......

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


The article . . . while conflating the issue of Privatization with a Free Market (not the same and that is one of the main issues I have with the article) is talking about Privitazation of Federal Land, as prescribed in the Agenda 21 Doctine of the UN. That is federal land and services being sold to their crony corporate buddies, for their conservatorship and then being made not available to the public or destroying the resource for a profit. Also touches on the gov allowing the "patenting" of the natural world (also an Agenda 21 concept) so people pay a fee/tax on that patent (like water, humans, food). Such in the way Monsanto is private farmers now, through the use of their GMO crops, which is something you were talking about (destroying independent farmers and their rights).

However . . . you then said you were in favor of Privatization . . . which was confusing. So, I asked a question based on the actual article in the OP and your comment . . . sorry you couldn't pick up on that. Or maybe you are confused, as the OP and author are . . . Privatization is not a free market practice.

Originally posted by FyreByrd

Originally posted by solomons path

Well . . . Other than they attribute any of these policies to the philosophies of Ayn Rand, which has nothing to do with this issue . . . but, I see they have quite a few articles referencing her (not sure what their hang up with Individualism is). This article is not overflowing with any untruths. They are right about the issues with privatization of public land.

It does seem a little socialist leaning though . . .

FYI, this is a Liberatarian dream, and Ayn Rand would love privitization because then the, what was his name, Hank Roark's of this world would rule everything with no PUBLIC lands or resrouces or vote......

You seem to be confused about Libertarianism, Objectivism (Rand), and Privatization. Just like the author of the article . . . or maybe you are looking to push the same agenda?

Privatization is the practice of turning over Federal (Public) land to "corporate benefactors" for conservatorship. The Corps then use this ownership to degradade and strip the land for profit by disallowing public use or right to use, while also collecting fees and subsidies to maintain. It is a Collectivist practice and the very antithesis of the Free Market, Libertarianism, and Objectivism, which stem from Liberalism and Individualism. As I stated above, Monsanto using their patents on living things (corn, soy, etc) to destroy the independent farmer, with the backing of all gov agencies and the court system is a perfect example. Another example of this practice is for the tax payer to pay for a highway, then have the state sell it to a corp . . . the corp then starts to charge a "toll" on the highway, even though they did pay to build it. The corp is supposed to use the "toll" for upkeep, signage, paying local municipalites (police, EMT, fire) to monitor but they keep all tolls as profit because it's not profitable to shareholders to maintain. Road falls into disrepair . . . unsafe . . . people die . . . highway goes away, etc, corp rakes in the dough.


I realize each side of the spectrum likes to subvert words, movements, and meanings today, in order to keep people on their side and to make them seem like they are the good guys, but just as the author doesn't seem (or more likely intentionally) know the difference or the real ideas behind this practice . . . either do you obviously.

Maybe study the meanings of what all those terms (labels and isms) are and read up on Agenda 21 . . . then if you want to discuss your OP again, after you know what you are talking about, we can.

I was going to give the author of the article a pass and assume he was misinformed, but maybe it is just cleaverly crafted for a target base who doesn't know what they are reading.

ETA : All from their wiki pages -
Libertarianism

Libertarianism is a set of related political philosophies that emphasize the primacy of individual liberty, political freedom, and voluntary association. Libertarians advocate a society with a greatly reduced state or no state at all.

In the United States, where the meaning of liberalism has parted significantly from classical liberalism, classical liberalism has largely been renamed libertarianism and is associated with "economically conservative" and "socially liberal" political views (going by the common meanings of "conservative" and "liberal" in the United States), as well a foreign policy of non-interventionism

Objectivism

Objectivism's central tenets are that reality exists independent of consciousness, that human beings have direct contact with reality through sense perception, that one can attain objective knowledge from perception through the process of concept formation and inductive logic, that the proper moral purpose of one's life is the pursuit of one's own happiness (or rational self-interest), that the only social system consistent with this morality is full respect for individual rights embodied in laissez-faire capitalism, and that the role of art in human life is to transform humans' metaphysical ideas by selective reproduction of reality into a physical form—a work of art—that one can comprehend and to which one can respond emotionally.

Corporatism

During the post-World War II reconstruction period in Europe, corporatism was favoured by Christian democrats, national conservatives, and social democrats in opposition to liberal capitalism. This type of corporatism became unfashionable but revived again in the 1960s and 1970s as "neo-corporatism" in response to the new economic threat of recession-inflation. Neo-corporatism favoured economic tripartism which involved strong labour unions, employers' unions, and governments that cooperated as "social partners" to negotiate and manage a national economy

Attempts in the United States to create neo-corporatist capital-labour arrangements were unsuccessfully advocated by Gary Hart and Michael Dukakis in the 1980s. Robert Reich as U.S. Secretary of Labor during the Clinton administration promoted neo-corporatist reforms

Liberal corporatism was an influential component of the Progressivism in the United States that has been referred to as "interest group liberalism". The support by U.S. labor representatives of liberal corporatism of the U.S. progressives is believed to have been influenced by the syndicalism and particularly the anarcho-syndicalism at the time in Europe. In the United States, economic corporatism involving capital-labour cooperation was influential in the New Deal economic program of the United States in the 1930s as well as in Keynesianism and even Fordism

reply to post by FyreByrd

Private companies should manage "public" land. As always, private companies are much more cost efficient and effective when compared to wasteful spendthrift government bureaucracies.

If you own some land and discover that theres oil on that land, you should be able to profit from it and legally youre allowed to.

IMHO, the bigger issue are these carbon taxes and credits. Carbon is an essential element in all living things. Limiting or controlling carbon is essentially the ability to limit or control all life.

Originally posted by FyreByrd



FYI, this is a Liberatarian dream, and Ayn Rand would love privitization because then the, what was his name, Hank Roark's of this world would rule everything with no PUBLIC lands or resrouces or vote......

Ummm.....His name is Howard...Howard Roark...and he's an architect from Ayn Rand's book "Fountainhead". Your thinking of her book, "Atlas Shrugged"...

YouSir