Let’s talk privatization.

I know this is not a thrilling topic. I recently wrote a book in which I tried to juice up the subject by suggesting that readers might want to imagine a privatizer as a cross between a pirate and a sanitizer — a guy with an eyepatch and a carpet steamer. This was a desperate attempt at, um, humorization. I am so ashamed.

In the dreary world of the real, privatization means turning over a government function to the private sector. It has such a long history that it’s a wonder we still have any public sector left. The Ancient Greeks did it. The Han dynasty did it. Birds do it. Bees do it. Even Harvard Ph.D.’s do it.

Let’s do it. Let’s privatize.

I have been thinking about this a lot, mainly because of a recent series of Times articles by Sam Dolnick, which examine the wondrous outcome of a pioneering effort by the State of New Jersey to privatize some of its prison functions, particularly a halfway house program for people on the way in or out of the criminal justice system. The program costs about half as much per inmate as a regular jail. This may be in part because the prisoners keep escaping. More than 5,000 have run, walked or wandered off since 2005. That placed a sometimes tragic burden on the victims of the crimes the escapees later committed, but it must have definitely reduced upkeep. Perhaps you could call it inmate self-privatization.

Politicians of both parties are privatization fans, although the Republicans are more so. Mitt Romney has flirted with the idea of privatizing veterans’ health care. He goes steady with the Medicare privatization forces and is believed to be secretly married to the folks who want to privatize public education through the use of vouchers.