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Many successful governments subsidize food production and delivery in many, many ways. Your talking points are tired and debated to death; mostly by people who

Many successful governments subsidize food production and delivery in many, many ways. Your talking points are tired and debated to death; mostly by people who don't actually have much interest in learning anything and would rather invent straw-men to pwn. If you really want to challenge your view, I'm sure you can read a book that lays it out better than I could in a quick YC comment. For example, here's Chomsky's take: "Privatization does not mean you take a public institution and give it to some nice person. It means you take a public institution and give it to an unaccountable tyranny. Public institutions have many side benefits. For one thing they may purposely run at a loss. They're not out for profit. They may purposely run at a loss because of the side benefits. So, for example if a public steel industry runs at a loss it's providing cheap steel to other industries. Maybe that's a good thing. Public institutions can have a counter cyclic property. So that means that they can maintain employment in periods of recession, which increases demand, which helps you to get out of recession. Private companies can't do that in a recession. Throw out the work force because that's the way you make money."

KptMarchewa 4y ago
You talk of OP's tired points - which I agree with - then cite Chomsky... can both "stupid extreme capitalism" and "stupid surrender leftism" be put to rest finally.
- mandmandam 4y ago
  I have no idea what "surrender leftism" is supposed to mean, in relation to Noam or otherwise. However, if we'd paid a little more attention to Noam's points about war (clandestine and overt, economic and military) and the media a few decades ago, we the people would be tens of trillions of dollars better off. Millions of brown skinned folk would still be alive, tens of millions wouldn't have had to become refugees, and South America would be immeasurably better off. If you have some kind of beef with Chomsky I suggest you take it up with him; I hear he's quite good at responding to people.
merely-unlikely 4y ago
You missed the step where the public institution gets broken up into many smaller private competitors who are then incentivized to provide better/cheaper service to gain marketshare. The Soviet Union missed that step too when it collapsed. Monopolies are trouble whether private or public. Unfortunately, energy markets have a tendency to be dominated by local monopolies of both the public and private variety.

KptMarchewa 4y ago

You talk of OP's tired points - which I agree with - then cite Chomsky... can both "stupid extreme capitalism" and "stupid surrender leftism" be put to rest finally.

mandmandam 4y ago
I have no idea what "surrender leftism" is supposed to mean, in relation to Noam or otherwise. However, if we'd paid a little more attention to Noam's points about war (clandestine and overt, economic and military) and the media a few decades ago, we the people would be tens of trillions of dollars better off. Millions of brown skinned folk would still be alive, tens of millions wouldn't have had to become refugees, and South America would be immeasurably better off. If you have some kind of beef with Chomsky I suggest you take it up with him; I hear he's quite good at responding to people.

merely-unlikely 4y ago

You missed the step where the public institution gets broken up into many smaller private competitors who are then incentivized to provide better/cheaper service to gain marketshare. The Soviet Union missed that step too when it collapsed. Monopolies are trouble whether private or public. Unfortunately, energy markets have a tendency to be dominated by local monopolies of both the public and private variety.