They socialise the risks and privatise the gains.
this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2025
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Why doesn't the country see this? Why do people continue to vote for this dangerous memelord?
Not all that many do, and of those most are either true libertarian believers (aka, they think magic is real), racists, or real estate speculators.
Get ready for private … roads
Yes, because Australia has proven that privately owned toll roads are sooooo profitable without the government guaranteeing returns. /s
Facts don't matter to ideologues.
This is exactly the sort of privatisation that Seymour's Atlas network buddies prefer. They want to take something that is a necessary public service, insert themselves in the middle, extract as much money out of it as possible without doing any further necessary investment, and then in time it'll fall over, they'll walk away with billions and then because its a public necessity governments will be forced to come back in to fix it.
A classic example of this is the absolute state of water services in the UK, but you can see similar in NZ as well. I think I read a stat the other day that since the Key governments partial privatisation of the electricity SOEs their investors have extracted $10b from them, while only $2b has been reinvested into the infrastructure. And what has happened this year is that generation hasn't kept up with demand, and so the coal plants have had to run more which has meant all the power companies can charge much higher prices for electricity and they've made even more money.
Seymour could make an argument that publicly owned services could be run better if he wanted, fine, everything could be done better. But it is an absolute myth that private sector is just intrinsically better at delivering services. They're just better at extracting profit, but that's not the point of keeping a society healthy, or educated, or watered etc.
Hopefully the National Party is aware that private roading, health, education companies will never bother with their rural voters, even if they're not all that remote and they'll just abandon them to focus on urban centers instead. Of course, Luxon doesn't appear to be a deep thinker, and Willis, like Seymour, is on the either fully bought, or true believer side of neo-liberal magic so who knows.
The UK water example is spot on. £50 billion debt put in and coincidentally virtually the same amount distributed as dividends.
Leaks and water wastage everywhere, prices rising dramatically and sewage in the rivers and on the beaches.
Yeah, its not just that the extracted all the profits is it, they also loaded them all up on debt & then took that money out too yeah?
"We need to get past squeamishness about erecting guillotines for politicians working against the people", me says.
Hell yeah! Let's have a politician pureé to go with our billionaire bbq
This!
Counterpoint: The more revenue the government earns from state owned enterprises, the less of a burden there will be on taxpayers.
What makes you think the state is going to get revenue from privatised health care or roads or whatever?
???
State owned enterprises are run like corporations but pay dividends to the government as shareholder. Eg, Kiwibank, NZ Post, Kiwirail, what’s left of the power companies etc.
I don't understand the relevance in this conversation.
Seymour is saying the government is useless at owning things.
I’m saying the government owning state owned enterprises provides an additional revenue stream for the government coffers that doesn’t rely on taxes.
The fact that SOEs are run like any other corporation, just with the government as the shareholder, means they’re just as effective as any other corporate entity.
So Seymour is wrong.
I’m saying the government owning state owned enterprises provides an additional revenue stream for the government coffers that doesn’t rely on taxes.
That money comes from consumers and unless those consumers are tourists or buyers from overseas it's actually another form of taxation.
The fact that SOEs are run like any other corporation, just with the government as the shareholder, means they’re just as effective as any other corporate entity.
I am not against SOEs but I am against them running as a for profit entity. They should be run as a non profit entity to provide competition for the monopolies that run this country.
We should have kiwibank but we should also have a state owned supermarket chain, petrol stations, power providers etc. They should be run as a non profit or at a minimum have their profits capped somehow.
I've been thinking about this a lot, cos while I understand the privatisation in the 80s of rail (and electricity generation?) was largely understood to be an unmitigated disaster it also happened in context with the stock market crash and whatever else - I just don't know much about that time, being a kid back then, and all...
Does anyone have a good story to simplify it? Someone pointed me to a great podcast (the spinoffs juggernaut) about it, but it's about 8 hours long, so I haven't had a chance to dip my toes in...
I think Seymour's being a fuckin Looney, but that's because it's not ownership that matters - it's the service that's important, not the profits. Once profit steps in, it takes over the other priorities, plain and simple. The govt might be a clunky tool for running things, but it's sure better than private enterprise (or worse, state-sanctioned monopoly!)
If you have 1h47 to spare, the old documentary Someone Else's Country is quite good.
Was coming to recommend the same.
They never seen to connect the thought that "the government is useless at everything" with "oh shit, WE ARE the government!"
Govt departments would be no worse than private business if they:
- Were given the budget/resources to do their jobs properly
- Didn't have to 180 their strategic direction every 3 years because of changing ideologies
- Didn't have to rebuild staff morale, skills, experience and office culture every 6-10 years after a clean out.
- Were able to keep competent managers/staff. Good ones don't seem to last very long due to the above and more.