Those of us who have watched the movement to privatize public education over the past 30 years have witnessed a long list of broken promises. Privately-run schools, we were told, would be more effective, more accountable, more transparent, more responsive to students and parents, and would save money!

Now we know that none of those claims were true.

Privatization, in the case of charter schools and vouchers, does not produce better results, except when the privatizers exclude the students with the greatest needs. Privatization does not save money; in fact, it’s more expensive because the business has to turn a profit. Privatization means less accountability and less transparency; lobbyists for the charter chains and voucher entities fight both accountability and transparency. Accountability and testing, it turns out, is only for public schools, not for religious and private schools. Privatization opens the way to graft, corruption, fraud, waste, and abuse.

The Washington Post wrote that the highest goal of Elon Musk’s DOGE plan is privatization of government services.

Mail delivery. Real estate. Foreign aid grants. The Trump administration is moving to privatize a sweeping number of government functions and assets — a long-standing Republican goal that’s being catalyzed by billionaire Elon Musk.

The slash-and-burn approach of Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service is paving the way for a new shift to the private sector, reducing the size and power of the federal bureaucracy in a real-world test of the conservative theory — a version of which is also widely popular in Silicon Valley — that companies are better than government at saving money and responding to people’s needs.

Examples are popping up across Washington and in proposals from President Donald Trump’s allies, though the plans are at various stages of development and, in some cases, have already encountered resistance.

At the DOGE-allied General Services Administration, officials are quietly moving ahead with a push to sell hundreds of publicly owned buildings to private companies — which can then lease them back to the government, theoretically saving maintenance and upkeep costs for taxpayers, according to two people briefed on internal deliberations who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss them publicly.

At the Postal Service, whose leaders have tussled with DOGE representatives, a plan for full privatization appears to have lost steam after facing pushback and legal hurdles. But private firms are preparing for a piecemeal government effort to outsource mail and package handling and long-haul trucking routes, while off-loading leases for unprofitable post offices, according to six industry executives.

At the Interior Department, Secretary Doug Burgum has proposed allowing private developers to build on federal lands across the West. And in his first public address as treasury secretary, former hedge fund manager Scott Bessent vowed to “reprivatize the economy.”
Businesspeople and policymakers close to the administration are stepping up with additional proposals.

A Wall Street investor nominated to run the International Development Finance Corporation, a little-known foreign investment agency that works to align the private sector with U.S. foreign policy goals, has suggested redirecting a large portion of the $40 billion budget of the shuttered U.S. Agency for International Development to investors, start-ups and companies that work in developing countries.

The proposal, which was posted on X by the nominee, Ben Black, and tech investor Joe Lonsdale, is under consideration within the White House, according to a person familiar with it, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private deliberations. Bloomberg first reported that the initiative was under consideration.

The military contractor Erik Prince has pushed to turn over defense and immigration enforcement functions to private security firms, at one point pitching U.S. officials on a plan to execute operations in Africa, according to three people with knowledge of the idea, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reflect private conversations. CNN reported that Prince also has floated the use of private military contractors to carry out operations against Houthi rebels in Yemen…

Traditional Republicans have long argued that private companies can do a better job of managing government services than civil servants. But Musk and his Silicon Valley associates want to push the idea much further than the mainstream GOP. At a Morgan Stanley technology conference this month, Musk said the government should privatize “everything we possibly can.”