6 ms·
Gee, its almost like a private company is a useless middleman in cases like this and the government should just do it themselves.
by AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
Gee, its almost like a private company is a useless middleman in cases like this and the government should just do it themselves.
- Clubber 4y agoWhy do you think the government would do a better job? Perhaps in other countries, but in the US, the government is largely seen as incompetent at best, corrupt and captured at worst. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1981/06/m-16-a-bureaucratic-horror-story/545153/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1981/06/m-16-a-... This was during a war where lives were at stake.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y agoThe government can be held accountable directly. A corporation with a monopoly can only be held accountable via the government.
- Clubber 4y ago>The government can be held accountable directly. By whom, itself?
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y agoBy the people who vote for it. Let me turn this around: who holds a monopoly corporation accountable? If your government is too corrupt to fix, what hope in hell does a corporation running a utility get you?
- Clubber 4y agoI don't think either is held accountable. Who was held accountable for Flynt? Who was held accountable for East Palestine? Usually, the only people held accountable are citizens when they make even the slightest mistake.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y agoOk, so my statement that a monopoly corporation is a useless middleman and the we're better off if the government does it because at least they're one fewer link in the chain is negated by neither being very good, so we do nothing. And we wonder why shit sucks in this country.
- Clubber 4y agoThe government and large corporations are parts of the same machine. The corporations fund the campaigns of the elected government officials and in turn, they pass legislation favorable to the corporations. The legislation is often written by the lawyers of those very corporations. Further, the bureaucrats who head the government agencies responsible for regulating the corporations are often hired by those very corporations after their tenure. The only way out is to vote out the incumbent every election until we get the government we want. If and when we actually start doing this, it will probably take at least a generation because so many people are largely ok with it, or too busy surviving to pay attention. Sorry to paint such an unpleasant picture, but it's what it is. I'm optimistic because people are starting to wake up to it quite a bit.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y agoNone of which invalidates my original statement that the situation in which a monopoly corporation controls a utility is strictly worse than the government controlling it directly because at least there is one less layer of indirection.
- Clubber 4y agoCan you give some examples where this is the case?
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago....it doesn't require examples, it is simple logic. I assert that: 1) A monopoly can only be held accountable by the government. 2) The government can only be held accountable by the people. Therefore, if the people wish to hold the operators of a utility accountable then having a monopoly control that utility is only introducing an extra, unnecessary, layer. As far as I can tell, you make no claim that contradicts 1 or 2. You are, at best, saying that in practice having a monopoly run things is no worse than having the government do it directly. Feel free to correct my assessment.