Here is a story about what the government considers to be privatization, but really it will just be a corrupt boondoggle. Privatization does not entail having a government enforced monopoly on any service, that is why these days I consider privatization something the government does that generally creates problems and may even be worse than the all government controlled service it replaces. I prefer marketization which means introducing competition by opening a field up to market based competition in a formerly monopolistic-governmental environment.
Privatizing the parking meters sounds like something Libertarians should be all over, but I don’t think I could support this proposal. This is just selling off the revenue stream to a single private company and doesn’t really benefit anyone, except the friends of some city council members who managed to grease enough palms to get the contract.
I believe that parking meters and the parking spaces they represent should be controlled by the companies that own the stores that the meters are in front of, and it should be up to the individual store owners to determine parking rules and costs for the spots in front of their businesses. It seems very odd to me that businesses continue to put up with the government making the rules and harassing their customers who happen to park on the street in front of the business, regardless if it is bureaucrats or pseudo-bureaucrats writing the tickets and emptying the parking meters. The best policy is to let businesses control the parking for their customers. This works fine for most business parking, so it seems reasonable that it would continue to work even if these additional parking spaces were brought into the equation.
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