swansonj
Regular
This has been touched on in other threads and I thought it deserved a thread of its own.
Some of us start with a deep-seated principle that the means of managing collective life should be run for the collective benefit.
Some of us start with a deep-seated principle that private enterprise is the best way to deliver anything.
Then there are arguments on grounds of pragmatic success and failure rather than principle. With privatised utilities, money goes out of the system to shareholders as dividends, money that wouldn't have to be raised from us the users if they were nationalised. Privatised companies are incentivised in a direct financial way, which nationalised companies aren't, to be more efficient and to cut costs, which is both good and bad - good to be more efficient (although if that is achieved by employing fewer people, and them on poorer terms, it's not a simple good thing), but bad when investment in maintenance, safety, innovation etc is reduced. Nationalised companies can, in principle, act in the national good and with a long-term perspective - privatised companies will only do that if their regulator is clever enough to incentivise them to do that. And nationalised companies stay part of this nation, privatised companies can and do end up in foreign hands.
What sayest thou?
Some of us start with a deep-seated principle that the means of managing collective life should be run for the collective benefit.
Some of us start with a deep-seated principle that private enterprise is the best way to deliver anything.
Then there are arguments on grounds of pragmatic success and failure rather than principle. With privatised utilities, money goes out of the system to shareholders as dividends, money that wouldn't have to be raised from us the users if they were nationalised. Privatised companies are incentivised in a direct financial way, which nationalised companies aren't, to be more efficient and to cut costs, which is both good and bad - good to be more efficient (although if that is achieved by employing fewer people, and them on poorer terms, it's not a simple good thing), but bad when investment in maintenance, safety, innovation etc is reduced. Nationalised companies can, in principle, act in the national good and with a long-term perspective - privatised companies will only do that if their regulator is clever enough to incentivise them to do that. And nationalised companies stay part of this nation, privatised companies can and do end up in foreign hands.
What sayest thou?