ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the evidence establishing that privatization quantitatively enhances the commonweal. It argues that qualitatively, privatization enhances the power of representative government and, as important, that nationalization reduces it, endangering the rights and liberties of the people. The chapter focuses on that why private ownership is preferred and the operational issues of how to increase private ownership and to maintain it. The effective expansion of private initiative is the direct effect of the expansion of private ownership. Privatization expands the middle class and strengthens its support for and dependence on the rule of law which is the essential core of the liberal nation-state. The middle class has the most to lose from a deterioration of the rule of law or of a collectivization of property or simply the reduction in the security of property rights, and it has the most to gain from their strengthening.
