> It doesn't seem like "free-market" anything ... First, "free market" itself is a myth. Second, that's a tenet of libertarianism or neoliberalism. In reality,

> It doesn't seem like "free-market" anything ... First, "free market" itself is a myth. Second, that's a tenet of libertarianism or neoliberalism. In reality, "free markets" is a stalking horse for deregulation and privatization, which is wealth extraction from the government to the wealthy. Like I said, capitalism has nothing to do with markets. It's merely how capital is created and accumulated. You talk about cronyism and the process and have skipped right passed the most important question: why is this even being outsourced in the first place? Why is public transit privatized (eg the UK)? It's needless wealth transfer under the guise of "efficiency". European democracies are starting to discover they're on the same path of the USA: starving national healthcare and then using those "failures" are reasons to privatize it. Reportedly, with Brexit, the US administration wanted the NHS to be privatized as part of any favorable trade deal with the UK. Think about that. Now we see a cost-of-living crisis because of restricted supply and institutional buyers buying up the supply. Mortgages are massively bigger than even a generation ago. The cost of college education is out-of-control, as is healthcare. Debt is being built into every facet of your existence to extract as much wealth as possible from you and to keep you a compliant worker.