| 1. | Who do you hate more – teachers or nurses? Don’t hesitate to tell us – there’s no wrong answer here. Just be honest about your feelings. Teachers? Or nurses? | |
| TEACHERS NURSES |
2. | The great thing about being in power is that you don’t have to choose! The following course of action can be used to destroy the institutions that employ both professions at the same time! God bless democracy! |
| 3. | Are you actually in power? | |
| NO | 4. | Attack public schools and public hospitals every chance you get. They are obviously staffed by overpaid, underqualified hacks who need a healthy dose of market discipline to perform better for their clients. Is it true? Who cares! If you say it often enough, voters will believe it’s true. GO TO 3. |
| YES | 5. | Announce that you are planning on cutting funding for the obviously dysfunctional institution. |
| 6. | Is there a public backlash against the announcement that you are planning on cutting funding for the obviously dysfunctional institution? | |
| NO | 7. | Cut funding for the obviously dysfunctional institution. |
| YES | 8. | Are your wealthy donors putting enough pressure on the party to cut taxes to motivate you to ignore the backlash? |
| YES | GO TO 7. | |
| NO | 9. | Freeze wages at the institution. This will be seen by many as a relatively cost-free way to slow government spending, although in reality as inflation eats away at the value of the dollar, the incomes of the targeted groups will decline relative to the cost of living. |
| 10. | Are the conditions of the workers miserable enough that they will strike for improvements? | |
| NO | 11. | Cut the number of students allowed to study to enter the targeted profession, causing shortages over time as people retire and are not replaced. This will increase the workload for those who remain. BONUS: The resulting burnout will further decrease the number of people working in the institution. In conservative think tank circles, this is known as a virtuous vicious circle. GO TO 10 |
| YES | 12. | Is the public sympathetic to the striking workers? |
| NO | 13. | Legislate those suckers back to work! |
| YES | 14. | Emphasize the inconvenience to the people who use the institutions (those gall bladders won’t operate on themselves!) and legislate those suckers back to work! |
| 15. | Is the public fed up with the chaos in the system? | |
| NO | GO TO 9 | |
| YES | 16. | Is the public so fed up with the chaos in the system that it is willing to accept drastic measures to deal with the crisis? |
| NO | 17. | Privatize as much of the system as you think is politically palatable. Then, GO TO 9 |
| YES | 18. | Tell your wealthy donors to party, baby, because they’re about to receive an early Christmas present! |
Notes
There is an old saying in Conservatives circles: no good crisis should go to waste. The problem is that, despite the public perception of the poor economic stewardship of liberals (a perception you and your media allies have been successfully cultivating for decades), the record is that they have a good track record of creating and maintaining public institutions. Bastards. So, sometimes, the crisis that should be arriving any second now…any second now…really, any second…needs a bit of a…goosing.
The Conservative Privatization Game Plan Algorithm is just the sort of goosing the body politic needs to get it moving in the right direction.
You might ask how democratic it is that a party’s wealthy donors call the shots. About as democratic as cancer. And nobody gives a second thought to the fact that cancer could attack anybody at any time. Or that some people can afford access to the best medical care the world has to offer when they are diagnosed with cancer while others have to settle for wooden splints and herbal teas to deal with it.
Okay, not the best example, although appropriate to the algorithm. The point is…money is speech and speech is democracy, so money is democracy and, really, when the health care or education systems are in crisis mode, don’t you have better things to worry about than the men behind the curtain?
As always, the Conservative Privatization Game Plan Algorithm is descriptive rather than prescriptive: it describes reality as it is, not as you might think it should be. If you’re unhappy with what you see, you can always vote the rascals out…