331–340 of 609 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Privatise the profits, Nationalise the losses!"
What about losses from federally funded corporations like USPS and Amtrak that are bailed out every year? Amtrak loses over $1 billion/yr and they are still "nationalized." USPS loses multi billions per year.
USPS delivers to remote addresses no one else’s will on route that will never make money.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"borrowed £53bn in debt while distributing £72bn to shareholders" There is the difference
No lender is going to lend a business money just so it can pay the owners. They must have used the debt to finance operations, as opposed to cutting the dividend or even putting more money in. This allowed them to continue to have profits in the short term, at the expense of higher interest costs in the long term (which probably cause higher prices for customers in the long term).
Of course they will! There's an entire industry (leveraged buy outs) built around it. And more generally, lenders will let you do dumb things with the money they lend you. As long as they expect to get paid back.
So, could a small business borrow money to pay it's owners? Probably not, it's not likely to get paid back. Could a multinational corporation borrow money to pay dividends? Yes, it's happened.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What about losses from federally funded corporations like USPS and Amtrak that are bailed out every year? Amtrak loses over $1 billion/yr and they are still "nationalized." USPS loses multi billions per year.
Amtrak is the least subsidies mode of Transportation. It has to compete with road transport and the subsidies given to highways, roads and parking is orders of magnitude larger then what Amtrak gets. Amtrak gets surprisingly small amount of money.
Many comments here say the key to maintaining a fair free market economy is regulation. I’m curious how that works for other countries. From a US perspective, regulation is next to useless. The FDA and USDA are captured by Monsanto et. al. The FDA is captured by pharmaceutical companies. The FCC is run by telecom companies. The FTC is a toothless shell of itself which cannot stop any but the most blatant of anticompe…
It would make sense that policy has to constantly be evolving in a free market.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't get it. The USPS has lost billions due to government policies and can't enforce prices due to government policies. They are forced to deliver to unprofitable routes and have prices set to inflation due to government policies. Private delivery services like Amazon and Fedex are generally profitable and don't have these issues. Why is a government alternative better?
None of the competitors offer a similar service to USPS. Among other core competencies, USPS has nationwide daily coverage of the entire United States and centuries(?) of experience interoperating the the respective mail services of every country in the world and then some. Amazon wont even take MY package one town over.
That said, the service provided by the USPS nowadays is primarily delivery of paper waste into a receptacle I am obligated to empty because very occasionally they also use the same box for packages.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
There are 3 million rail cars moved per day that haven't produced apocalyptic skies and chemical rain. You misrepresent the overall safety of private rail lines.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> But what is the definition of a public good? Whatever the populus via government decides that to be.
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 the best way to make this work is by keeping the network itself in public hands and then having a competition of contributors to the network Even then it doesn't always work out - UK rail services have that system - the infrastructure is maintained by a public body [1], but the operators are private. UK rail is quite expensive, and mediocre in quality compared to our EU counterparts. One of the issues is…
Evidence from the new post-fourth rail package landscape seems to contradict this. Multiple places in Spain, Italy, France are connected with at least two competing high speed rail operators, to massive success (Paris-Lyon SNCF and Trenitalia, Madrid-Barcelona and Madrid-Seville by Ouigo, AVE, AVLO, Iryo; many routes in Italy by Italo and Trenitalia).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
The UK was going into the dumps before Thatcher even came along. That's why she was elected. I couldn't imagine how bad it would be if Labour hadn't been kicked out and the far-left economic approach hadn't been abandoned.
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…
This goes for basic food, housing, healthcare, transportation, education and so on and so forth.
So much life hardships would disappear if this was our reality and all it needs is political will.