(Edit for clarity: I don´t mean to compare the Trail of Tears to this situation in any respect but this: the conflict of interest that should have been undeniable to any but the most callous, transparently hateful lawmakers. Evans’ description of the consequences of shopping out to a company with no goal but the contract, and with a clear understanding of the inhumane priorities of its employer, is as eloquent as “nasty, brutish, and short.”)
“What, are sixty thousand human beings, the sick, the aged, the infirm, children, and infants, to be transported hundreds of miles, over mountains and rivers and forests, by contract! By those who will engage to perform the service for the smallest sum! Are you to hold out such inducements to long and fatiguing marches, to scanty and cheap provisions? Will you place these hapless, deceived, and abused people at the mercy of contractors, whose only object is gain?”
–Representative George Evans on the Indian Removal Act of 1830
Apparently, if you place the welfare of an extremely vulnerable population in the hands of a corporation whose only concern is profit, misery is pretty much inevitable. This is especially true if said corporation has oodles of practical experience with lawsuits. And it´s even more likely when legislative authorities look the other way! Who knew? I mean, it isn´t as though there´s any sort of history of privatization leading to horrendous abuse, or as though there´s any disparity between providing responsible care and wringing every cent out of your enterprise. Hey, does anyone know if this privatization scheme has caught on in other public institutions?
As an historical note, in France during the ancien régime, tax collection was outsourced by the treasury to private contractors, under a “tax farming” system. Investors in a tax farm leased tax collection from the government, which required them to pay the government a certain sum of money (essentially paying part of the total tax obligation of the citizenry), after which the tax farmers went out and collected taxes. The tax farmers received a fixed share of taxes collected as well as any surplus.
The idea was to make tax collection more efficient and more reliable as well as remove the treasury from the role of tax collection. The tax farms, however, came to be reviled, especially among French peasants because of abuses committed by various tax farmers. Resentment against the tax farm system played a role in the French Revolution, and many of the tax farmers were executed as a result.
That is interesting. I knew that taxation was a major grievance of the period; I had never heard about this.