Examples
Margaret Thatcher's program for the privatization of social housing in Britain was initially seen as beneficial for the lower classes which could now move from rental to ownership at a relatively low cost, gain control over assets and increase their wealth. However, housing speculation took over following the transfers (particularly in the prime central locations), and low income populations were forced out to the periphery. Contemporary examples include attempts to deprive people of land in places like Nandigram in India and eMacambini in South Africa.
Privatization is the process of transferring productive public assets from the state to the private companies. Productive assets include natural resources, such as earth, forest, water, air. These are assets that states have used to hold in trust for the people it represents. To privatize these away and sell them as stock to private companies is what Harvey calls accumulation by dispossession.
State redistributions can be in the form of contracts given to power groups: for large infrastructures, services paid by the State and carried by private enterprise, defense developments, research projects. One would have to find out if those contracts serve public good in a fair way or if they sustain a power structure. Also the granting of licenses for all sorts of State sanctioned activities can turn out as unfair wealth distribution. Another important redistribution channel is by State supported financing of private enterprise activities.
Read more about this topic: Accumulation By Dispossession
Famous quotes containing the word examples:
“There are many examples of women that have excelled in learning, and even in war, but this is no reason we should bring ‘em all up to Latin and Greek or else military discipline, instead of needle-work and housewifry.”
—Bernard Mandeville (1670–1733)
“In the examples that I here bring in of what I have [read], heard, done or said, I have refrained from daring to alter even the smallest and most indifferent circumstances. My conscience falsifies not an iota; for my knowledge I cannot answer.”
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“Histories are more full of examples of the fidelity of dogs than of friends.”
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