Why government outsourcing of public powers is making us less free
Many governmental functions today-from the management of prisons and welfare offices to warfare and financial regulation-are outsourced to private entities. Education and health care are funded in part through private philanthropy rather than taxation. Can a privatized government rule legitimately? The Privatized State argues that it cannot.
In this boldly provocative book, Chiara Cordelli argues that privatization constitutes a regression to a precivil condition-what philosophers centuries ago called "a state of nature." Developing a compelling case for the dematic state and its administrative apparatus, she shows how privatization reproduces the very same defects that Enlightenment thinkers attributed to the precivil condition, and which only properly constituted political institutions can overcome-defects such as provisional justice, undue dependence, and...