Personalize This!

All the lovely worker-friendly rhetoric being tossed around Washington (and several red states with blue senators) to sell the hijacking of Social Security makes you wonder how far they'll go - the private interests who have invested heavily in the current quasi-public regime - in privatizing the public sector. Why have a public sector at all in an "ownership society" if corporations can pull a friendly takeover of government functions and make a tidy profit? Move over, Jonathan Swift, I have a Modest Proposal.

Because we're so darn compassionate, let's "personalize" the Departments of Education, Labor, Interior, Energy, and Agriculture. Everybody knows the holy trinity of Capital, Competition, and Market Forces automatically create better schools for those who can afford them, a grovelling and obedient workforce, more efficient exploitation of wilderness wasteland, and corporate dominion over the flora and fauna. No more excessive regulation, no more bureaucratic red tape. Let the industry experts turn those backward institutions into lean, mean profit machines. That way, the people who have earned the right to enjoy schools, employment benefits, parks, natural resource extraction, and farm production can buy them free of government interference. Oh. They already did? Sorry.

Moving right along, a bold strategy for the twenty-first century would include "personalizing" the EPA, FDA, Health and Human Services, Medicare, Medicaid, Treasury, and best of all, the Justice Department. Rather than just using the old revolving door trick where corporate executives trade places with regulatory officials, just eliminate the guvmint middleman and let manufacturers of food, drugs, cars, apparel, electronics, and widgets self-regulate, thus freeing up resources for making, selling, and consuming more stuff. The costly products and services - like legal and medical expertise - would be readily available to those who deserve and can afford it, without the inherent inefficiency of providing it free to those who can't pay. What? You want a hand-out? Buy your own hospital.

But the crown jewel of this new, improved, profitable government would be the personalized State and Defense Departments. Foreign policy and the military have been in the hands of the Washington elite for too long! Citizens will have the option of investing part of their earnings in the next War to Spread Democracy (WSD), or peace talks for you low-stakes investors, or arms deals with paying customers in cash-rich countries - now there's a sure-fire investment. Personalized foreign policy means your dollars buy shares in the New American Century, and as a stakeholder in freedom, you can help send some other poor schmuck out there in whatever equipment is handy to do the dirty work for you.