{"id":76,"date":"2005-09-23T02:17:08","date_gmt":"2005-09-23T06:17:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/globalfund\/2005\/09\/23\/katrina-dont-shade-your-eyes-priva"},"modified":"2005-09-23T02:17:08","modified_gmt":"2005-09-23T06:17:08","slug":"katrina-dont-shade-your-eyes-privatize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/globalfund\/2005\/09\/23\/katrina-dont-shade-your-eyes-privatize\/","title":{"rendered":"Katrina: Don’t Shade Your Eyes–Privatize!"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

To continue the thought
\non public goods, the following is from a Wall Street<\/span> Journal staff
\ncolumnist.<\/span><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

But we ought to at least recognize that our increasingly
\ntough First World problems — terrorism,
\nviruses, the rising incidence of powerful natural disasters — are being
\naddressed by a public sector that too often is coming to resemble a Third World
\nthat can’t execute.<\/span><\/font>

\nI’ll go further. We should consider outsourcing some of these
\nfunctions, for profit, to the private sector. In recent days, offers of
\nhelp have come from such companies as Anheuser-Busch and Culligan
\n(water), Lilly, Merck and Wyeth (pharmaceuticals), Nissan and GM (cars
\nand trucks), Sprint, Nextel and Qwest (communications gear and phone
\ncards), Johnson & Johnson (toiletries and first aid), Home Depot
\nand Lowe’s (manpower). Give contract authority to organize these
\nresources to a project-management firm like Bechtel. Use the
\nbureaucracies as infantry.<\/span><\/font>

\nA public role is unavoidable and political leadership is
\nnecessary. But if we’re going to live with First World threats, such as the
\ndestruction of a major port city, let’s deploy the most imaginative First World brains — in the private sector and academia
\n— to mitigate those threats. Laughably implausible? Look at your TV screen. The
\nstatus quo isn’t funny.<\/span><\/font>

\nWrite to henninger@wsj.com<\/a><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To continue the thought on public goods, the following is from a Wall Street Journal staff columnist. But we ought to at least recognize that our increasingly tough First World problems — terrorism, viruses, the rising incidence of powerful natural disasters — are being addressed by a public sector that too often is coming to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":384,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[785],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-katrina-and-america"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/globalfund\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/globalfund\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/globalfund\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/globalfund\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/384"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/globalfund\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/globalfund\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/globalfund\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/globalfund\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/globalfund\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}