Episode 9: The public interest

Ken Scott Baron

A Podcast from Ken on Public Interest versus Free Enterprise:

While I am not against the free enterprise system, the primary goal of companies is to serve the shareholders. they may not to always serve the public interest.

I can remember how America had the largest and best public colleges and universities in the world and public schools, libraries and research.

The public works that I knew, starting in 1970, gave way to privatization of these for profit to gain efficiency and reduce taxes. However, this can often only boosts corporate bottom lines.

When proposals such as infrastructure depend on private developers, they can produce substandard, expensive effects and they maybe are not where they’re most needed.

We need services to bring us together and strengthen and connect us across class and race. Our NA mission statement is to fight against isolation or marginalization.

We have a public post office serving everyone and thats why we value public education and need to be careful of charter schools that can divide our children and our communities rather than pulling them together.

Another example is our health system that avoids sick people. In contrast, the administrative costs of Medicare are a fraction of the costs of for-profit medical insurance – and why Medicare for all is appealing for now.

In addition, the prison industrial complex can tread on the constitutional rights of prisoners, and build detention centers for refugee children at the border which pose such grave risks.

In summary, when the primary goal is to serve the public, rather than shareholders, we need to be careful not to sacrifice the public interest to private profits.

This work is inspired by Robert Reich, and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.