4 ms·

Even DOE is partly privatized both Sandia National Laboratories and Savannah River National Laboratory are run by private defense contractors for the government

• munk-a 6y ago
  I don't know how much we should count defense contractors as "privatized" there's bidding[1] and the contractors are financially independent[2] but, due to the nepotism of the system defense contracts are quite flush with money and it seems like most contracts end up benefiting semi-retired military folks by giving them a cushy landing (though this is anecdotal). I think power utilities might be a better place to look at privatization - but most of those (like PG&E) end up frequently running afoul of a lack of oversight while also not really out-performing public power utilities[3]. 1. Often times with insanely high barriers to entry sometimes including being "non-public" 2. To my knowledge the only defense-ish contractor folks that have gotten bailed out are the more public facing ones like Boeing which do mixed public/private work. 3. Though this industry has a terrible track record across the board for being accountable, profitable and responsible. I might point at VT Yankee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermont_Yankee_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermont_Yankee_Nuclear_Power_P... as an example where the company just tried to dissolve itself before paying for cleanup out of its contingency fee.