culture, politics, commentary, criticism

Thursday, October 16, 2003
War as year-end bonus. Privatizing our national defense may actually stimulate permanent war, because it provides financial incentives for chaos. A new book, Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry, reviewed in the
Christian Science Monitor spells it out:
[Author P.W.] Singer worries that the current rush to privatize runs the risk of cutting crucial corners. For-profit firms, he warns, may be cost-effective, but they are largely unaccountable, with plenty of incentives to pad their payrolls and hide their failures. Government can be notoriously inefficient, to be sure. Even so, its constitutional duty is to provide for the common defense. Those responsible for this fundamental public service, Singer says, should be fully accountable to the public. He's exactly right.
The cost-effectiveness of privatized military solutions is yet to be demonstrated.

But "unaccountable"? "Incentive to pad payrolls and hide failures"? Does that bring the monumentally incompetent Dick Cheney to mind?

Links via Cursor, October 16.
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