The Myth of private efficiency ; privatization in England and the Academy program in Education

The British government is preceding with plans to privatise British education. Despite evidence that the social background and wealth accounts more for the success of students at schools like Eton, ministers continue to believe that simply giving taxpayers money to untested firms is the best way to fix British education. As conservatives, basing policy on ideology rather than evidence is rather their forte, but this move slightly beggars belief even for them.

In the nineties the devastation to public services wrought by privatisation in the UK became glaringly apparent. Various businessmen were put in control of public services in order to demonstrate their 'efficiency'. A major rail disaster and a prison breakout were just two of many notable incidents involving businessmen who took  taxpayers money without accountability,  and then preceded to completely ballsup whatever they had been put in charge of. Business people may he good at making a profit, but no one in the Conservative party at the time seemed to consider that some (many,  all??? )  public services are invaluable by other metrics, even if in crude financial terms they make a loss. Even on economic grounds there is the phenomenon of an externality whereby positive side effects flow from a public service and can more than pay for something,  just not in easily quantifiable terms. Education, health and infrastructure are three classic pillars of productivity even in economics, a field that tends to be right wing. Yet the neo-liberals of the 80's seemed to overlook even this basic fact. Thatcher and Reagan's voodoo economics saw national debt balloon in order to finance tax cuts for the wealthy, who now tended to hide the money rather than invest it usefully. Our own time saw an infatuation with financial services at the expense of resource and productivity measures that saw the Great Recession of 2008.

Why then do apparently intelligent policymakers fall into such obvious traps?  One reason is simple corruption and the closeness between the business community and conservative politicians ; a lot of people can make a lot of money from taxpayers subsidizing their businesses.  But what about those who genuinely believe privatisation is better?  The fallacy of believing that if A is bad, then B is good is likely to blame. Public bad,  then private good. Of course the reason why a public service is underperforming can be complex, but history shows that people prefer clear cut reasons with a political bent rather than the truth.