06-01-2024, 08:35 PM
Mises.org
Power & Market
Oscar Grau
05/31/2024
Milei and the Chances of Privatization
Though privatizations have not yet arrived, the state-owned airline is on the agenda. The company was renationalized in 2008, forcing taxpayers to prop up an airline that has been directly bailed out by the government since 2021. For true privatization, all regulation prohibiting competition and all taxation in the industry should be abolished—falling short of this, it should come with deregulation and less taxation. Milei has proposed to give the company’s shares to its employees and thereby transfer ownership to them. They would either bear responsibility for the company or sell their shares. While this may be the most expedient method toward privatization in a country where unions have so much influence and power to negotiate, it is not a just course of action.
According to the homestead principle, assets belong to those who have worked on them, but the airline would not have been possible without the initial aggression against taxpayer property. The government legally owns the airline, but it does not justly own it. As for the workers, their only possible claim concerns their salaries, and even these, and all other costs involved in the operation of the airline, are primarily financed by taxpayers. As a matter of fact, to do what Milei proposes would constitute a moral outrage. Rothbard would state that the principle of privatization that should take priority wherever it applies would require the government “to return all stolen, confiscated property to its original owners, or to their heirs,” because property rights imply above all restoring stolen property to the original owners. Only those who have been aggressed into financing the airline have a justifiable claim to restitution.
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