Privatize What???

In case you haven't seen the story yet...

Talks on Private Air-Traffic Control Turn Serious in U.S.

“We should have this discussion,” Paul Rinaldi, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, the union representing more than 15,000 FAA-employed controllers, said at a June 27 conference on NextGen. “I don’t have the answers, but I do know the current system is broken.”

You can imagine my chagrin/surprise/dismay.

Let me repeat myself (repeating Ted Koppel.
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"And we are privatizing ourselves into one disaster after another. We've privatized a lot of what our military is doing. We've privatized a lot of what our intelligence agencies are doing. We've privatized our very prison system in many parts of the country. We're privatizing the health system within those prisons. And it's not working well."

As someone who has opposed privatization for about 20 years, I can't help but feel some vindication in Ted Koppel's words. I realize that privatization is not necessarily evil in all cases but I also know that that is exactly what makes it so dangerous. It's a bad policy that occasionally works out. The exception does not invalidate the rule.
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I'll have more to say (I'm sure) but I'm headed out of town and out of touch.  You can't sling a dead cat on this blog without hitting a post panning privatization.  Take a look around.  It's all still relevant even if I'm not.

Privatization is bad policy in general.  Privatization of air traffic control is wrong.  Dead wrong. If you're in aviation, you need to talk to your representatives -- union, associations and governmental.  Get loud.

Don Brown
September 23, 2013

P.S. I still hate you Blogger