SadKangaroo wrote-Yesterday at 11:51am
[re privatization, in reply to freediver who asked on Apr 10th, 2022 at 8:28pm:
"
How do you know (private owners are only interested in .....ripping out as much money in as short a time as possible")]
SadKangaroo wrote:
Quote:Privatization transfers the model of the entity away from service to profit.
When you do this on an infrastructure level, especially when there are protections for the company when things go wrong and governments willing to bail them out because they simply can't fail, it's even worse.
But we're getting way ahead of ourselves.
The notion that the Government shouldn't run/own anything is incredibly short-sighted and is ideologically based. Even likening it to communism only strengthens that argument.
I know there are far more important examples of infrastructure, but take Broadband as an example.
The private ISPs put money into the most profitable areas and that was it. Regional let alone Rural Australia was left out. Even Telstra's billions they wanted to spend pre-NBN, it was only in profitable areas and they wanted exemptions to their minimum service obligations under legislation in return.
The private sector was never going to operate services at a loss, even if they can recoup those costs from the inner city customers, it's just not good business. If a Government has to legislate the servicing of those unprofitable areas, what's the point of privatising?
Power, Water, Health etc, it's all the same.
There is no doubt there can be bloat when the government-run these entities, but we can learn from overseas how to manage these sorts of issues, like say Singapore.
But instead, we get told from one side of politics that the private sector can do it better but time and time again, in terms of service, that's proven to be wrong.
We know what they mean by "do it better" is actually making money. Those services, and the people that use them (again, Power, Water, Health etc) become the commodity under these models.
Not only does the business model change from Service to Profit, but that profit comes by commoditising us and when things go wrong, because they're vital services and infrastructure, we have to pay a second time when our taxes are used to fix the problem/bail them out.
Gold Coast water was an example. The local council had to buy back the company because costs were skyrocketing and service levels, repairs, started falling. Water!
It should have never been privatized in the first place, but now we're left with a massive tax bill due to broken contacts that will be paid off for many many years to come.
I'm not flat out anti-privatization, there are some use cases for it, but the notion that the private sector do it better and more efficiently and Government shouldn't run/own these entities, as a blanket statement I do not support.
Excellent critique of privatization.
The sad fact of course is that ever since governments were forced to abandon post war
Keynesian deficit spending in the 1950's, 60's and 70's, governments have sought ways to balance their budgets, including selling-off public utilities to raise money without increasing taxes.
But that process adopted since the 80's, intended to overcome the so called 'stagflation of the mid 70's (see below) - aka neoliberalism (ie, the 'supply-side economics' favored by Thatcher and Reagan, designed to fight inflation first, rather than maintain Keynesian full employment) has left us with governments increasingly unable to meet the needs of the community, so that today after a series of disasters such as the GFC, the covid pandemic and now a war, governments all around the world are heavily indebted and increasingly unable to address soaring inequality.
Now for the first time in decades we again have inflation above 3% (above most central banks' "comfort level").
But the fact is this current
post-pandemic bout of inflation is caused by
supply side problems, just as was the case with the oil price shocks in the 70's leading to 'stagflation' - high inflation and high unemployment (the result of the Arab oil embargo related to the Palestine/Israel conflict).
How to solve the current global national (public and private) indebtedness disaster, with soaring inequality and increasing poverty?
(To be addressed in an upcoming post).