21–30 of 609 posts
State owned enterprises are fine if something needs massive capital investment to start off and nobody has the resources but there must be a plan for the state to disinvest.
Then again I prefer subsidies like the US does for semiconductor plants.
The Economist, publishing an article (even just an opinion piece by a guest author) about privatisation being a failure? Wow...
When profit becomes the main motivator, quality of services always seem to drop. I get that the government can be annoying, but I feel like there are many services that we should aim to provide as a society where profit isn’t the goal. For example, you don’t need to price gouge people for electricity, but charging enough to cover expenses and future infrastructure upgrades is fine and to be expected. No costly CEO or…
Add education to that too. It should be pretty obvious to everyone that quality education is a matter of national security but here we are, with people proudly uneducated, who - in their wilful ignorance - harm others. Thank you to everyone who flagged me and now I can't respond or comment in this thread <3
When profit becomes the main motivator, quality of services always seem to drop. I get that the government can be annoying, but I feel like there are many services that we should aim to provide as a society where profit isn’t the goal. For example, you don’t need to price gouge people for electricity, but charging enough to cover expenses and future infrastructure upgrades is fine and to be expected. No costly CEO or…
When the government is ideologically opposed to ensuring sufficient public oversight, quality of services drops.
The problem in the UK is not merely privatisation, but privatisation in a way that privatises profits, often socialises losses, and that substitutes dealing with crises after the fact over strong oversight during, because of a string of governments that have not just been opposed to government ownership, but that has been opposed to regulation.
You could strip away the profit motive by making these all non-profit stakeholder led organisations of some sort, and you'd still have a massive problem because of the lack of proper oversight.
Fix the oversight issue and maybe some degree of privatisation would work (though I agree many of these services should still not be operated with a profit motive), but the double whammy of weak oversight and privatisation is disastrous.
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…
When profit becomes the main motivator, quality of services always seem to drop. I get that the government can be annoying, but I feel like there are many services that we should aim to provide as a society where profit isn’t the goal. For example, you don’t need to price gouge people for electricity, but charging enough to cover expenses and future infrastructure upgrades is fine and to be expected. No costly CEO or…
Exactly. Fake competition in utilities and services makes no sense. The "privatisation" of the UK railways is a prime example. I use quotation marks because it's just privatising the profits and socialising the losses. "from March 2020 to February this year, the Government paid out more than £7.3 billion in operational support to private train operators" - https://bylinetimes.com/2021/05/18/7-billion-covid-bailout-f.…
> Since then the sector has accumulated £53bn in debt while distributing £72bn to shareholders, the majority of whom are international investors someone who is good at the economy please help me budget this. my family is dying
It's been a while, but iirc you increase leverage of a company (by putting the company in debt) to be able to deduct taxes using tax shields on the interest. Infamous example are leveraged buyouts, i.e. finance the takeover of a company by putting the company in debt. I think Twitter was an LBO.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Add education to that too. It should be pretty obvious to everyone that quality education is a matter of national security but here we are, with people proudly uneducated, who - in their wilful ignorance - harm others. Thank you to everyone who flagged me and now I can't respond or comment in this thread <3
I think education is actually case where the free market would solve a lot of issues. Making schools compete for students would incentivise schools to provide a more valuable education.
The intention of privatization in the UK was never to improve service. It was to transfer wealth from the public to the private sector. From this perspective it's been successful. From the perspective of the British public it's been a complete disaster.
Especially when it comes to our healthcare system.
Should the government run coal mines at a loss which have no strategic value just to keep jobs? No.
Should the government run natural monopolies in strategic or socially important areas (like railways, water utilities, etc)? Yes.
But instead what started at privatising the former turned into an ideological push to privatise the later.
There is also the question of HOW these services should be run...