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The ultimate argument against privatization.

It’s not the clear and simple proof that Social Security isn’t in anything remotely approaching a crisis; it isn’t the accounting shenanigans that will make us all look back fondly on Enron’s best practices; it isn’t even Daniel Davies’ immortal question, just as important to ask now as it was then:

Can anyone give me one single example of something with the following three characteristics:
  1. It is a policy initiative of the current Bush administration
  2. It was significant enough in scale that I’d have heard of it (at a pinch, that I should have heard of it)
  3. It wasn’t in some important way completely fucked up during the execution.

These are all important arguments to make, and we should go on making them, as often and forcefully as we can, but much as with the war on Iraq, we’re rapidly approaching a world in which there are two kinds of people: those who know this to be true, and those who know, but choose to believe otherwise.

No, the ultimate argument against mandatory private retirement accounts is this: do you have any idea how much more junk mail you’ll be getting? From multinational financial corporations and fly-by-night penny-stock–pimping quasi-firms? Lurid brochures and badly written come-ons, envelopes tricked up to look like overnight deliveries with that stupid handwriting font misspelling your name in the corner, Kipp, I thought you would appreciate a look at this, Mr. J.K. Manly, you could be making thirteen percent, Ms. Beezel Lee, have you thought about your retirement account? Dire red-inked envelopes with bold block letters RE: YOUR RETIREMENT ACCOUNTS IMPORTANT OPEN IMMEDIATELY, anonymous cheap white envelopes hoping to sneak past your first brute-force Bayesian filter, your own goddamn bank shoving ten-page slick-papered prospectuses financed by your ATM fees through your mail slot every week or so, just because they can.

My back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest a best-case scenario would merely be an increase by an order of magnitude or so in pieces of mail delivered. Do we really want this brave new world?

—Filed 1468 days ago to ; .

  1. Obviously it's a scheme to keep the post office in funds.
    — Ginger Stampley    Dec 30, 07:16 AM    #
  2. The flat-taxers are always soberly selling the fact that the form will be so much easier to fill out. You know, two boxes, check one: STANDARD FLAT TAX or STANDARD FLAT TAX PLUS I WANT TO PAY THE GUVMINT THIS MUCH MORE $_______. And sign your name. And people say, wow, that would be easier. Don't underestimate how many, either, cause we'll live to see a flat tax sold on just those yeeha terms.

    In other words: dude, you're being all snarkylaughy about this junkmail rejoinder but if you just had a good astroturf machine going you could kill the whole privatization scheme with this alone, stake through the yeeha heart! Stand up and testify!
    — T. V.    Jan 4, 04:44 PM    #
  3. Oh, not nearly so snarkylaughy as you might imagine. One of the main reasons I want to keep my utilities (say) as public as possible (aside from the highfalutin' principle involved, let's find some brass tacks and get down to 'em) is thinking back on the hassle of research and point-comparing and spin-unscrambling and hype-decoding and junkmail-sorting and finally coin-flipping involved in deciding cable modem or DSL and which provider and when and where and how. Imagine going through such gyrations for every utility that plugs into your house! —Choice, you see, is hard; I'd much rather reserve it for the important things. The power and the water and the garbage and the net access and the Social Security I'd just as soon not think about, so long as it's there.

    And I realize it's a measure of how much hope we have left that I can still whine about such things. Libertarians, I think, are made of sterner stuff.

    But T.V.'s got a mighty point. I've done what I can so far. Anybody got a spare six or seven digits in a checking account somewhere for an anti-junkmail junkmail offensive?

    — --k.    Jan 4, 05:41 PM    #

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