In Defense Of Asset Management The Privatization Component

The federal government owns one‐third of the nation's land, a small fraction of which is being selected and prepared for sale. Even this small amount, however, will comprise several million acres and will yield several billion dollars in revenue for the U.S. Treasury. But the President's Asset Management Program will do more than raise revenue: It will increase the efficiency with which the lands me used and will distribute those increased benefits more broadly among all citizens, resulting in net gains in efficiency and equity. As its title suggests, the program is aimed at improving the management of the nation's real property assets1 “Privatization” is the word most frequently used to describe the program, and a key component of the program does involve selling large amounts of land (a carefully selected proportion of the federal holdings) to the private sector. Several commentators have objected strongly to the very notion of privatization, and much of the criticism is based on caricatures of what private ownership means and its expected results. This paper will provide an explanation of the rationale of the Asset Management Program and a discussion of the most frequently heard criticisms