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THE MYTH OF SHARING PUBLIC VS. PRIVATE

We are taught to share but in America what too often really happens when we share? Just look at everything from public restrooms to public lands, lakes, streams and the seas.

Private restrooms that cost you money to use are always kept cleaner than public toilets which we all know are usually disgustingly dirty. Privately owned forests have less fires than U.S. government publicly owned forests because the privately owned forests have caretakers who provide constant care and attention that publicly owned forests do not regularly receive. This is why the most devastating fires occur almost always on U.S. government controlled, publicly owned lands!

The fish in the sea are publicly owned by essentially everyone in the world, so what is happening? Countries worldwide are overfishing the seas without making sure they are leaving enough fish populations to reproduce. Consequently, certain areas of the world are "fished out"!

Public lakes, streams and parks are trashed and the trash does not always even get picked up regularly and sometimes not at all because it is on public land. Trash and pollutants are regularly dumped into public sewers by privately owned companies and citizens.

Even poaching wildlife has benefits if the poaching is controlled by private enterprise! For example, the wildlife being poached in Africa is out of control on government controlled public land because the land and wildlife responsibilities there are shared by everyone.

However, if you give the wildlife to the people living on the land, or privatize the wildlife, and allow the natives living there to sell hunting licenses, and so forth, the natives will protect the wildlife from poachers because the wildlife then becomes their livelihood! When the welfare of the wildlife is left up to the people living on the land in those areas poaching is not a problem, whereas poaching on government controlled, publicly owned lands the wildlife is becoming endangered and even on the way to extinction!

Social economists call the myth of sharing the "tragedy of the common". We, the people, are expected to share things fairly but because we feel others will take more than they need we, in turn, take more than we need and, consequently, as has also been shown in study after study, people living in a capitalist society demonstrate their inherent greed and that no one is really in control when things are not privatized. This means privatization results in more abundance and better quality because privateers will be delegated the responsibility to care more about it and they will be held accountable for it.

SUPPLEMENTAL SOURCE: ABC-TV 20/20 1/28/05

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