The private capture of common good

The private capture of common good

B. Herry-Priyono
Driyarkara
School of Philosophy
Jakarta

The year 2002 began with torrential floods battering Jakarta and
many other cities. Nature cares nothing for our logic; she has
her own, which we do not acknowledge until we are crushed under
her wheel. By the end of 2002, it is clear that the way we were
crushed has less to do with nature than with our disregard for
how nature needs nurture.

The attempt to conquer Mother Nature began long before 2002.
How many parks, swamps and lakes have been completely wiped out?!
In the past ten years, for example, 20,074 hectares of the great
water conservation area in Bopunjur (Bogor, Puncak and Cianjur)
have been turned into hotels, restaurants and villas. So are
other support systems for the ecology of Jakarta, like areas now
known as Sunter, Taman Anggrek Industrial Zone, Hotel Mulia in
South Jakarta and the 831.6 hectares of the Pantai Indah Kapuk
estate. Pantai Indah Kapuk used to be 1,144 hectares of virgin
mangrove forest serving as a nine million cubic meter water
reservoir.

No doubt, the list of the looted areas elsewhere is much
longer, like environmental disasters in Timika, Minahasa, North
Tapanuli, or Nusa Tenggara. The year 2002 has witnessed the
intensification of such pillaging. The ongoing financial crisis
that puts the government in a revenue quandary has pushed further
the selling-out of many public areas into private hands.
Documenting the disappearance of these ecological jewels, the
Jakarta Social Institute concludes that most cases involve
questionable transfers to business groups.

What concerns us is less about nature than about the way the
prerequisite for our shared life is being squeezed out by the
most unenlightened pursuits of short-term profit. This, in fact,
is what happens to the other "material bases" for our Republic.
The capture of the provision of public health, water or
electricity by private businesses poses a crisis in the survival
of public interest. The state of public transportation is a case
in point. Of the total 3,870,758 units of vehicles in Jakarta in
2002, for example, 97.5 percent are private and only 2.5 percent
for public transportation. There are 16 million daily trips
within Jakarta, 42.8 percent of which are by private cars and
57.2 percent from public transportation; a very high level of
consumerism of space.

Not so long ago there was an oft-repeated agreement that the
provision of our daily necessities such as water, electricity,
health, public transportation - as distinguished from perfume or
diamonds - has to be safeguarded by the utmost concern for the
general public. State-run enterprises, that dying economic
species, was the incarnate form of public ownership in the
ideological battle up until the second half of the 1970s. Gone
was that era. The ensuing neo-liberal revolution has shattered
the myth of the public-spirited state.

Enter the tidal wave of de-regulation and privatization.
Indeed, privatization has its virtues. It has pumped up the
moribund state enterprises with the ethos of productivity and
efficiency. The daring new world now belongs to the entrepreneurs
of private profit. Both efficiency and profit, however, are a
means begging an end. It is this question of 'end' that gradually
pushes the revolution to the other extreme.

In place of public goods, accumulation of private wealth is
heralded as the term of celebration. In place of the patrician
liberal virtue of Smith's The Wealth of Nations, we are advancing
the neo-liberal vice of Friedman's The Wealth of Individuals.
Indeed, we seem to have a penchant for the extreme, perhaps
because balance is a virtue that exists only in sermons; it is
the site of boredom.

In this ideological trap lies the banal argument about private
versus state ownership, market versus command political-economy.

This is a thoughtless binary for understanding the issue that,
alas, ultimately lies in neither one. The real issue is about
public interest. Is the common good better served by state-run
enterprises or by private ones?

Once the angle is shifted in this direction, the unfruitful
binary loses its force. "Public interest" and "common good"
should not be understood simply in terms of the availability of
public services, but also the extent to which the wider public -
as distinct from a coterie of shareholders - have a say over the
way public services are being distributed.

After the fall of the State-led economies led us to a belief
that the state is a nemesis to efficient economics, the derring-
do of the 1980s onward has been the pursuit of homo privatus, or
individual needs. Then, at the end of the 20th century, the rot
at the heart of the homo privatus economy began to surface.
Unfortunately, the ensuing battle remains couched in the binary
language of privatization versus state ownership. The problem is,
the neo-liberal apostles remain unenlightened. The year 2002 has
been a continuation of their scheme. In Joseph Stiglitz's mocking
phrase, it is the scheme of "privatization at all costs!"

Life in a Republic is a morass of competing interests and
visions for a better society. The year 2002 has given the
following testimony: as much as the predatory state is a menace
to public interests, so is the parasitic private sector a nemesis
to the common good.

2003 could and should be a time to conquer the predicament of
our shared life. How? Bring back the true meaning and nobility of
public policy. The bad news is, the neo-liberal cabals will
launch a fierce resistance. The good news is, more people have
been outraged by the neo-liberal credo which proclaims that a
tree only counts for something once it has been chopped down and
turned into pulp.