Dear Editor,
Step right up. The sale is on. Get all your corporations, beaches, land, electricity, water, boys, girls, cays and rocks that you need to make you happy.
Perhaps the new tourism brochure from The Bahamas should read to this effect as the country sells off every corner, every crack, every soul that it can to pay the government's ever-increasing debt. Does this make good economic sense? When we look back over the state-sanctioned and pushed for privatizations of the commons we can see that, while in power, government officials may have benefited from the sale of everything and everyone, but the country suffered in the long run. Sadly, these are only limited resources; we do not have three or four or even five electricity corporations that can be sold off and then resold. Once the one and only, not to be confused with the Ocean Club, is sold it is sold forever. The money is spent before the sale is finalized and then nothing can be done to recreate that kind of sale again. What is more, the sale is often written so that the seller loses and the buyer gains and the former totally surrenders all say in the future of many parts of the nation. Many of the countries that have privatized national corporations have done so more intelligently but with terrible social and economic results. However, this country seems to be ignoring the lessons of history and moving ahead towards more damaging national development.
The same is true for land. Even those cays that seem to be selling like brightly-colored cakes in a bakery window are endangered. Once they are sold, they are gone forever. The baker will never be able to replicate the recipe to make new cays. People come into the bakery and woo the baker's pride and joy away form him; suddenly he realizes that he has nothing, and is left sleeping in his car because his planning was such that he did not think about what the future would hold if he sold everything that he used to make those fabulous cakes along with the cakes.
Economic history has spoken louder than anything and has shown people the folly of their ways. The American Economist Joseph Stiglitz talks about the perils of privatization and selling the commons as does the Indian economist Amartya Sen, both of whom are Nobel laureates. Meanwhile, the country, or the government, with the backing of the population, runs headlong down the path and sells everything in the dash to pay down debt. They apparently have created policies, regulations and plans, please don't forget plans, to prevent what happened in other countries from happening in this country. Do they not see that the debt they are paying will only resurface next year and then they will have nothing left with which to pay it off? Shall they sell the people? Swift has already argued that all babies should be sold to pay for their parents' food and housing.
We have privatized water so that it is now a quasi-public corporation. When this was done in Puerto Rico, Bolivia, India and other countries, the water prices increased by 100 percent within months. People could no longer afford to buy or use water. Many people started stealing water. Is that where we want the country to get to? Apparently it is.
Sure, government is encouraged to divest itself of many services by the all-powerful trade liberalization racket, but it does this kind of drastic reorganizing with a plan. This government apparently has no plan, nor did the government before it. But they are happy to sell. The U.S. is the biggest proponent for selling of its commons that are not legally protected from sale. They are also a country with some of the biggest disparities between the rich and poor. However, they do it more intelligently than The Bahamas does. While this may all sound fine and good, it is not. When things are sold off like this in a purported rich country, not a country where people have lived always in poverty but where poverty is increasing and people are being forced into desperation, like The Bahamas, it has been found that crime and violence increase. As we lose open spaces, the areas that people use to release the tensions built up from work, poverty and unemployment, the tensions rise and explosions occur. The more we see development close in on the coast, the worse this situation will become. We, however, continue down this road of well-known result. All the while, those taking the decisions build their walls higher and stronger.
The land that was once owned by the great-grandmothers and the grandmothers and then the mothers and fathers has been sold off because it can be, because we have let it. Where do we plan to live? Why not think about it, sleep on it? Five hundred thousand dollars today will only be worth $200,000 next week. And so on until a few weeks from now, it will be worth $1, while land only increases in value. Corporations are similar, unless left to decay.
The country has, however, decided that it will ignore sound economic lessons from others, and is choosing to run headlong into the hangman's noose. It will sell everything to whomever wants it and then sit back and wait for the crime, violence, poverty and hardship to worsen. As the banks announce that jobs are fleeing to less expensive destinations, what do you think will happen next? Privatizing corporations will have a similar impact on the employment figures. Jobs will flee the country in search of cheaper or more skilled labor beyond Bahamian shores. Much like when local companies invested in producing juices or poultry and the government changed policies, and devastated the local industry. Of course, these are all the pitfalls of development. To simply destroy every avenue for locals to develop by effectively outsourcing jobs to cheaper destinations and selling away the land at the same time seems odd economic policy. So, like the experience with free zones in Jamaica, the jobs are meant to be for locals but the transnational companies said they wanted cheaper labor and imported said workers. After that was done and the Jamaicans protested, the companies closed up shop and left. Government is controlled by corporations, not the inverse.
Apparently, people say to sit back and pray for a miracle. Ironically, God helps those who help themselves, at least that is what the Saint James Bible offers. Apparently, though, there's another bible out there that says, sit back and a god will come and help you. While we sit back, the sale continues and the jobs leave in dozens.
- Ian Bethell-Bennett

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