Banks are thirsty, insurance companies are thundering, and supervisors are just shrugging - they have no powers, everything is market
23.08.2018
Do not be indifferent, share the news with your friends:
For nearly 30 years, the talking heads have been convincing us that the state should withdraw from everywhere and leave everything in the "invisible hand on the market."
In Bulgaria this call is absolutely realized. Banks are thirsty, insurance companies are thundering, and supervisors only shrug - they have no powers, it's all a market. Yes, the hell of the market prayers that have come true ...
It is a well-known fact that we Bulgarians very much like to criticize the state. We are extremely dissatisfied with the work of the institutions, the qualities of the people who lead them.
It is less well known that criticism of state structures is far from being a Bulgarian patent. There are them all over the world.
Negativism towards the state has intensified especially since the 1970s. I am talking about the time when it became fashionable for everything to be revived in the state, and for everything private and market to be exalted. This typically liberal attitude, preached by thinkers such as Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, by politicians like Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, has gradually become prevalent in the Western world. And after the fall of the Iron Curtain, this type of thinking became, say, the only thing allowed in the countries of Eastern Europe. Everyone who wanted to go fashionable and cool was supposed to repeat how bad a country is, how it should withdraw from everywhere, and how it is imperative for market players to regulate their relations themselves without any state supervision. Everything should be privatized or at least given to concession - for many decades to come, liberal fundamentalists did not stop calling. Only then would we live in the most just of all worlds.
Well, these calls were made. Not only in Bulgaria and not only in the countries of the former Eastern Bloc. Everywhere in the developed world, the state was constantly relieved of its responsibilities.
Its assets were privatized and concessioned. Schools, hospitals, roads, highways, water, military and security activities were transferred to honest privates and left to the "invisible hand on the market." Does life become better after this transfer? I very much doubt. A bridge has collapsed in Italy a week ago, killing more than 40 people. The safety of the bridge in question took care of a private company as well as a large part of the Italian infrastructure. With the well-known explanation that the state is a bad owner and therefore the management must be given to the private sector. This thinking leads to the loss of human lives, as we have seen in the case of Italy.
There is something terribly wrong in reasoning that corporations manage wonderful, and the state terrible. Why? Well because the main goal of corporations is to generate as high a profit as possible.
And in the name of this goal, it is permissible to ignore everything else, including security. The state can not and should not be governed as a company. Because, besides profits, she must also think about the lives and health of her citizens.
The main concern of the state is not the profit, but the opportunity for citizens to have a secure access to quality healthcare and medical care, to have normal working conditions and decent pay. That is why liberals who want everything to be guided by market principles, by the purchasing mechanism can not manage well. What they do best is to outsource state functions to private companies. Their dream is no country at all. And, here, in Bulgaria, this dream is almost accomplished. Banks are bankrupt, insurance companies are thundering, and state supervisors are shrugging and say they have no power to intervene.
That's what the liberal analysts have been calling for over the last three decades - government authorities not to interfere. This call is already a reality. So we only have to enjoy the market prayers that have come true.
.jpg)