Re:Groups funded by the Koch brothers are campaigning agains...
by pjc50 on Monday December 18, 2017 @05:31AM
(#15950704)
This guy gets it. Privatisation on its own does not magically improve services and cut costs. Competition can do so. But privatisation without competition is just a monopoly license to print money.
Re:Groups funded by the Koch brothers are campaigning agains...
by crdoconnor on Monday December 18, 2017 @08:33AM
(#15951460)
There's rarely any political push to privatize things that aren't natural monopolies though, precisely because nobody is going to make bank on that.
In practice almost every privatization is simply an exchange where the new owner pays the government $x to help solve its "debt problem" (because the government may one day be rendered insolvent by running out of the cash it it prints).
Then, the public gets soaked for $nx where n is usually at least > 2 and the government officials behind the privatization get some really lucrative jobs and speaking engagements after they leave office.
Privatising the power cables going to people's homes is a dumb move - you won't get the benefits of the free market, as there's no competition between suppliers.
But once the cables are in the ground, competition between multiple power suppliers might be possible - so long as customers can compare prices and switch suppliers easily; and the power plants aren't incentivised to cut long-term investments and imperil the country's energy security.