Public Sector and Private Sector

Both public sector and private sector are there to serve the demand of the public. The first, at the poll booth; the second, at the marketplace. Both are there because people want them there, and any attempt to extinguish either is violation of people's will.

The private sector and public sector have both had times in which either was the more powerful and the more popular. There are some ideologies that want everything to be public, and there are others that want everything to be private. The power struggle between the public and private sectors has been a source of much warring and much wrongdoing on both sides. And while there are many who see either as parasitical, in fact America owes much to both. And it is in their constructive interplay that benefit is found.

The public sector's science is at the root of every product that is sold by business. The public sector's Interstate and Internet have created infrastructures that made possible vast business prosperity, and without them American economy would be far smaller than it is now. The public sector's education has made possible for people to have the skills that they need to work and contribute to private sector prosperity. The public sector's military and policing protect life and property. And it is sheer ignorance, foolishness and irresponsibility for people in America to be anti-government when they benefit from the public sector as much as they do.

At the same time, it is the private sector that has taken the knowledge produced by public sector science and turned it into technology and products that have created prosperity. And it is the private sector whose earnings fund public sector works. Both private sector and public sector are legitimate parts of reality as pertains to fulfilling demands of the people; and as in all non-valued dualities these must operate in a benefit-maximizing manner.

At the bottom level, each has the right to defend itself from negative effects of the other. Public sector has right to protect itself from those who want to defund academia and education, deny it tax revenue, and starve it into extinction while benefiting from the science, education, infrastructure, policing and military that it provides. Private sector has right to protect itself from strangulating regulation, nationalization, protectionism, and other public sector practices that diminish its ability to produce wealth. Each is there by public demand, and each has its legitimate prerogatives as it relates to fulfilling this public demand.

In the middle tier, the public sector and private sector should leave each other alone to do what they have been put there to do: The private sector, to produce prosperity; the public sector, to provide the tasks that it has been voted to do. 

And at the top tier, the public sector and private sector should work together to create what either cannot do by itself:  The private sector using public sector science to implement technological prosperity, public sector using money created in public sector to provide public services; and public sector working with private sector to put into place high-technology solutions for an environmentally and economically sustainable long-term future; are only some of the potentials for positive collaboration between the public and private sectors.

At the same time, there must be means to prevent ever-present negative interaction potential between public and private sectors - a potential that results in kleptocracy or fascism, in many countries more obviously than in United States. Wars waged for corporate interest, Texas Oil bribing the government to deny global warming and keep the nation from developing effective clean energy solutions, and the pharmaceutical industry scamming the taxpayer to give people dangerous and expensive multi-drug combinations, are all clear and present cases of private sector and public sector colluding in ways that are against public benefit. This potential must be constantly watched for in order to avoid these and other destructive outcomes, with people whom both the public and private sector exist to serve taking both public and private action against the corruption that is an ever-present danger where money and politics mix.

Part of essay Integrative Cognition and Dualities at

http://sites.google.com/site/ilyashambatwritings/integrative