181–190 of 609 posts
Choice is a necessary condition for free markets. There is little to no choice in water, roads, phone lines, rail transport, etc. I still don't understand why the UK went down this path.
> I still don't understand... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thatcherism Or talk to a few older folks about Britain in the 1970's and 1980's.
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It's even simpler than that. All of these privatized entities are incredibly efficient... at extracting profits from the public. Of course their goal is to extract profits. And you don't extract profits from a rail line by offering the best service. Bonus points if you can convince the government to bail you out and provide some extra cash.
"And you don't extract profits from a rail line by offering the best service." So how do you extract profits then?
So the example of rail doesn’t really apply to this branch of the discussion.
However, once you’ve bought a house, it is very difficult to to but in new pipes from a different water works.
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But what is the definition of a public good? Is it only to be limited to things that are natural monopolies/network systems (as you suggest) or should it also include practically non-excludable and non-rival goods (information)? I would argue we should go further. Some goods should be considered to be morally non-excludable goods. We should have the moral courage to assert that we cannot exclude health care to all pe…
> In the hands of such practitioners I would call them cultists at this point.
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The USA's rail lines are privatized and they're anything but "shitty" and "expensive" considering they're lower cost than trucking.
US rail has been in the news lately, with apocalyptic skies and chemical rain. Safety issues abound. What are you seeing that I don’t?
One thing I don't understand here is: who's on point for that debt? Who's willing to lend that money, and why - are they just betting that there will be a bailout at some point?
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The USA's rail lines are privatized and they're anything but "shitty" and "expensive" considering they're lower cost than trucking.
My experience of American railways as a tourist is having to show my passport to book a ticket from Davis to Sacramento (I assume I also did that on other trips like to SFO but don't remember), and it being expensive. My experience in the UK and Germany is show up, pay, go, and it being cheaper.
Choice is a necessary condition for free markets. There is little to no choice in water, roads, phone lines, rail transport, etc. I still don't understand why the UK went down this path.
The regulatory structure of the privatized industry says the water companies can only make profits if they make capital investments, and so the amount invested in water infrastructure in the UK (particularly England) has duly gone up a lot since privatization and has been comparable or higher to other nations since.
From this point of view, it's less about choice and markets as a way to structure the regulation and ownership so that capital investment actually happens.
I am a deep believer in free markets as the most efficient mechanism for distributing goods and services, creating better offerings and lower prices through competition and encapsulating risk in innovation. Unfortunately, none of these apply to the privatization of inherently public commodities that run on top of an underlying network infrastructure. This can be streets, railway tracks or water pipes - whenever there…
I believe it's not done like that, because there is little opportunity to make huge profit on such privatisation. Would you rather own the entire rail network, or buy some trains and have to pay rent for rail access? No one will invest in the latter without financial history of operations in such environment.
To do privatisation properly the state should breaker up the infrastructure from the services. Split the services into separate companies (then do we want them to compete or each will have it's niche? Usually it's the latter). Restructure and run those service companies until they're profitable. Finally sell them, or better yet over the span of the years get the employees to get a sizable ownership share, give local go another sizable share, sell the rest on the stock market.
That IMO is roughly a good way privatisation could work, but it takes more than one electoral cycle to do it right, and which government wants to create gifts for their opponents? So we usually don't see anything like it.
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ISPs are not mandatory for human life.
In the UK a lot of NHS trusts now require you book doctors appointments via the internet. The majority of UK government services now push you to self service via the internet. At this point life in the UK without an internet connection would be very difficult and in some cases fatal.
I love the free market. But when it comes to education, health care, public transport, utilities, law enforcement + associated services I've yet to see even a single example of where the free market made things better for the public. As a rule after privatization prices go up, the service level drops and people suffer as a consequence whilst being given a fake increase in choice. This is one of the big failures of th…
Would love to see that happen but no government can stop that train now. Too much money is required and they can't just seize the assets.
But they can. That's why they are the government.