Interesting intersection of privatization and religion in two different books
I’m reading “The Privatization of Everything” by Donald Cohen & Allen Mikaelian and “We of Little Faith” by Kate Cohen (WAPO columnist who lives in Albany). The first book is about private corporations taking over public goods (transportation, education, pharma, etc.) and redirecting taxpayer dollars to CEOs and investors, limiting innovation and competition, making society worse for everyday citizens. Kate’s book is about being brought up Jewish, then after having children, realizing she’s an atheist. You wouldn’t think such apparently disparate topics would intersect, but they just did.
Kate Cohen writes that sociologist Phil Zuckerman found a correlation between secular v religious countries. In countries such as Sweden, the more secular fare better when it comes to homicide, violent crime rates, poverty, obesity and diabetes rates, child abuse, educational attainment levels, income levels, unemployment rates, etc.
In “Little Faith”, Cohen relates a story of a man who fell overboard in the ocean and praised God for his rescue. But truly, the glory goes to a Coast Guard oceanographer, Art Allen, who developed SAROPS as a way of finding people lost at sea. He was able to develop this technology because he had Coast Guard funding and resources. No private company would fund such painstaking and unprofitable research (they only come in after the fact to steal and monetize it). “People working on problems the free market would never ever solve on its own.” Cohen writes “If we don’t recognize that, if we don’t give government the credit for its role in our lives, then we risk undervaluing and thus underfunding the means of our own rescue.”
Exactly the sentiments expressed in the Privatization book.