>I picked up a copy of Vanity Fair magazine yesterday. They have an excerpt from a new book, "Are We Rome? The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America".
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>I've just glanced at the article so far. But the main premise is that while there are many similarities between ancient Rome and present day USA, one that is overlooked is the privatization of previously public services. This leads to previously unseen levels of corruption for one. And a decrease in the level of service also, once the profit motive sets in.
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>Makes a lot of sense to me.

Though the parallelism means that the distance remains forever, if taken literally. I've deduced some similarity between pax romana and pax americana decades ago, but it's only the general mechanism that bears resemblance. The times are different, and the lack of competition makes them again different from the times when I noticed the similarity. For now, the noble barbarians are too silent... or the media are blind to their coming, or are looking in the wrong direction. Anyway, neither Rome was ruined in a day.

And I agree that privatization is a perfect solution for the problem of few rich people being not rich enough. The idea that everything will work better if privatized is ridiculous - as someone here said, plural of anecdote is not data, and quoting a few successful cases doesn't make it a general rule. If government run systems are so bad, and the market is so good, then why aren't the private and government run systems put on the market, on a level playground, and let's see which fares better. If anecdotal evidence is already used, the USPS vs UPS vs Fedex vs DHL would be a good example of such coexistence.

But no, the goal of privatization wasn't in providing the best service - that was the excuse, a mere pretext - the goal was stuffing the pockets of the select few from the endless supply of tax money and public debt. If it wasn't, then we'd have seen parallel systems freely competing. Instead, we've seen vast governmental systems being bought for mere pittances (in countries in so-called transition, maybe at better rates elsewhere) and left to short term concerns of shareholders. When an electric grid in a vast area goes haywire (pun intended) because its knowledge base was fired to increase the profits and look good for sale - you get the effect of short term interests running a long term infrastructure.

(at this point I'm making a personal bet against myself - will let you know who won)