Fishing gear accounts for an alarming amount of plastic in oceans (2021)

Re:Fishing gear accounts for an alarming amount of plastic i... by eru on Wednesday August 10, 2022 @05:55AM (#32409683)

Well, the whole system (or systems) used to be various private hands when they were first built. The government takeover came later.

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Re:Fishing gear accounts for an alarming amount of plastic i... by Macha on Wednesday August 10, 2022 @07:04AM (#32410088)

And it was taken over by the government because those private companies were going bankrupt, so it's still not a good promotion for the private market

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Re:Fishing gear accounts for an alarming amount of plastic i... by eru on Wednesday August 10, 2022 @07:30AM (#32410243)

https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/SurfaceFreightTransporta... and https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/u-s-government-t... suggest there's more to the story:

> The U.S. entry into the war in April 1917 coincided with a downturn in the fortunes of the nation’s railroads: rising taxes and operations costs, combined with prices that were fixed by law, had pushed many railroad companies into receivership as early as late 1915. A year later, in a last-minute bill passed through Congress, Wilson had forced the railroad management to accept union demands for an eight-hour work day.

Government fixed prices, and made one of their factors of production (labour) more expensive.

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