Destroying the Public Sphere?

James Wickham: The terms of reference for the ‘Review Group on State Assets...’ are about ‘asset disposal’ in the public sector. What do we know about the sale of state assets?

1. The impact on efficiency is debatable. If state enterprises provide services of general interest they have to be regulated, and the costs of regulation can be very high. Often the requirement of competition can produce duplication and/or lack of transparent information to customers. The privatisation of public transport provides plenty of examples. It’s also worth noting that when politicians believe that only privatisation can provide efficiency, they abdicate responsibility for enforcing improvement through other means. Thus we still have no publicly responsible authority for Dublin transport, because of course eventually there’s going to be privatisation...

2. What we do know is that privatisation increases inequality. Most obviously, because it leads to lower wages for the weaker employees and higher remuneration packages for senior managers. In the worst case, managers behave somewhat like the nomenklatura of Russia, appropriating to themselves a massive share of what was public property. Less obviously, what was public property becomes private property in the form of shares, and shares are the most unequally distributed forms of personal wealth. On all this see especially Florio (2004), The Great Divestiture (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press).

3. In some cases, privatisation destroys the public sphere, the non-market area where citizens meet as citizens not as consumers and not as members of a particularistic group, such as a family or an ethnic group. The obvious case is public broadcasting. One of the differences between most countries of Europe and the USA is that we have public broadcasting, they have Fox. We may not appreciate the impact of this on public life, others do. Read for example the American Steven Hill’s book Europe’s Promise on how European public discussion is broader than that of the USA, partly because of public broadcasting. Even the apparently mundane service of public transport also has this sort of public element.

4. Privatisation weakens trade unions. It’s probably the major reason for the collapse of British trade union membership between 1979 and the 1990s. Again see Florio’s study for starters. So privatisation reduces the most effective countervailing power to private wealth: it probably narrows the range of public debate and undermines effective democracy.

Of course, many people want more inequality, many people want weaker trade unions, many people want to live in a more privatised and individualistic world. There are even people who believe that the wealthy should have more political power. We could have a serious democratic discussion about these values. It would be rather more honest than a discussion about ‘asset disposal’.

Some Movement on Public Transport in Dublin

Nat O'Connor: Investment in infrastructure not only provides a useful stimulus to the economy, but it can also provide tangible assets that help boost economic activity. No better example than public transport.

It is reported that a Railway Order has been formally sought for Dart Underground. This underground line will connect up all of the city's different forms of transport, and Irish Rail claims it will treble rail passenger journeys in Dublin. They have a promotional leaflet (PDF) explaining the benefits.

Dublin Bus have announced their own Network Direct plans for revising their bus routes, which will involve more straight routes into the centre. However, a number of private bus operators are also serving Dublin and future integrated transport cannot ignore their existence.

Meanwhile, taxis are seeking to get cheaper access to the Port Tunnel. It has been claimed this would help reduce congestion.

The above are sectoral developments. And in some cases they miss the bigger picture. Dublin not only needs integrated ticketing, which the Railway Procurement Agency (RPA) has been working on for some time, but also an integrated plan for better public transport across all modes.

It makes sense for the National Transport Authority (NTA) to take a lead role in developing a masterplan. The integrated transport strategy for Dublin, A Platform for Change, is meant to run from 2000 to 2016, yet the creation of the NTA as a statury body in 2009 (taking over from the Dublin Transport Office) suggests that it is still only getting going.

Transport 21 provides some vision of the future of transport for Greater Dublin with its joined up rail map. However, one of the unanswered questions is about Metro. Are the massive proposed costs and debateable benefits of the Metro system (Metro North and Metro West) worth it?

One could argume that Metro constuction would be a useful channel for economic stimulus, but how much of the cost would involve importing external expertise and relatively small numbers of specialised labour? Would the cost go beyond the amount that can reasonably be available for stimulus? And other infrastructure is also required, such as schools; so would Metro take up too much of the limited capital budget for years to come? (And public transport is not just for Dublin either! Public transport is needed across the country, where it ranges greatly in its quality and is non-existent for many people.)

In addition, while on the face of it all public transport is 'green', it can be argued that both Metro schemes were partially planned to break ground in Dublin's green belts, in order to raise property value there and boost the further construction of housing, as part of Dublin's unsustainable, un-green sprawl. And that's not really the way public transport should be planned! Yet, the extent of the housing crisis has meant that Metro alone cannot revive the fortunes of the land-owners of Dublin to encourage them to build, so there might not be many people living near those outer Metro stations after all, which could undermine the viability of the whole project. Emigration isn't helping demand either.

But if not Metro, how can we provide good quality public transport to those who regard the Metro idea as sacred because they are poorly served now and commuting through heavy traffic?

Independently, a design firm has created a visionary map for changed public transport in Dublin relying largely on existing rail plus a radically changed bus system. This is an example of starting from stratch to identify the major road and rail axes, and population centres, and then putting in transport to most efficiently meet their needs. In terms of long-term economic efficiency, this is not something to be dismissed out of hand. The more modest (but much cheaper) option of buses might be a more realistic target for Dublin's economic development in the near future.