I’m just curious for the new or existing people? Lemmy.ml has taken a hard turn to the right since the reddit exodus. There’s been a lot of pro-imperialist propaganda being posted on world news, and a lot less diversity of opinion. It feels more neoliberal and neo-con to me.
Does anyone want to share what their political leanings are?
I’ll start; I’m anti-imperialist pro-state regulated capitalism. I believe we should have usage based taxes (toll roads, carbon tax) and luxury taxes, and I disagree with wealth taxes for people with less than $250 million. The state should spend more money on consumer protection in all industries (environment, health, finance, etc.) I believe in multipolarity vs. US hegemony.
Markets work best when there are a number of firms that must compete with one another. For some goods and services, that level of competition is impractical or impossible because of the high amount of infrastructure required. It wouldn’t make much sense for each company to build a completely separate set of water purification and distribution systems—it would be very expensive and take up a lot of space.
In many areas of the US we have a bizarre setup where there is a government enforced monopoly where a single company can reap all of the profits. This often leads to poor service because the company has very little incentive to provide value to its customers. Government owned services can be flawed as well but at least they are directly accountable to their citizens instead of a board or shareholders.
As I said in reply to other person, in my country there’s private businesses providing those services for cheaper price than the government alternative. Infrastructure for the most part is provided by 3rd party.
Also I keep hearing this talk about “government accountability”, but what mechanism of accountability does government have? Private firms at least can go out of business or sued. Government in worst case will just pay you some of its “tax money”
What specific services are you referring to? If there are multiple firms and the government competing then that really doesn’t sound like the situation I was describing.
Governments can also be sued though they sometimes grant themselves immunity. But utilities really can’t go out of business, can they? Generally they are providing what are considered essential services, so if they fail, the government will generally bail them out because they are the only provider and the loss of those services would be catastrophic. So there really is very little accountability. Just ask PG&E customers how much say they have in that company’s practices.
As far as government accountability, that’s what elections are for. Do you not have those in your country?
My point is they don’t lose hard earned money, they just pay you money they collect forcefully from people. Basically it’s not a deterrent, but simple restitution
It’s quite rare for any candidate to talk about utilities in their campaign at all.
People here tend to not associate govt owned corporations with the government itself. And when someone brings it up, they just make some kind of excuse about what terrible person you are for accusing such a benevolent government of incompetence when they don’t fix their stuff, and increase price 2
And besides, chances of reelection are so slim I doubt any politician actually going for it. It’s much more profitable to simply lie about your promises
They should declare bankruptcy and be sold to someone
Government failed to consistently provide power — no catastrophe. Government failed to provide any water at all — no catastrophe (some people just started to pump and sell underground water)
So why private buisness not providing just one of those services for the period before it’s bought, must result in catastrophe? (Just for time reference, the absence of water I described earlier already lasts longer than a year)
That sounds like a pretty insane situation that would not be tolerated in most developed countries. Generally lapse of service for essential utilities is considered a major problem that would absolutely be relevant to local elections in my area. It sounds like your government is very poorly run and needs dramatic changes—such changes could be implemented through elections. In the meantime it’s good that private entities are filling the gap but I doubt they are able to provide the same level of service as most people expect from utilities.