Friday, April 27, 2007

Your daily "Whaaaaa?"


Blogging Tory "Responsible Government League" asks the burning question: "What's so wrong with privatization?"

Yeah, that's kind of where I stopped reading, too.

5 comments:

Jennifer Smith said...

Aw, crap, now I've done it.

I left a comment.

Sigh. See what you make me do? Now I'm going to have to endure these wankers throwing spitballs at my blog for the next few months.

You guys are a bad influence.

Liam O'Brien said...

Apparently that's where you stopped thinking too. My blog post was asking why the Manitoba Tories were railing so hard against the possibility of hydro privatization -- to the point of taking the very same sort of automatic-dismissal attitude you show in your post right here . . . just "stop reading" and avoid the nasty business of an actual discussion.

Privatization, Contracting-out, and other such things can be done and have been successful when done with care. There are examples all over he world.

Jennifer went only a slight step further. . . she didn't stop reading . . . she just stopped writing - right after she threw out the typical one-liner about the US-bogeyman. . . ignoring successful examples of various sorts of privatizations from Canada to California to Canberra in the process. . .

Yes, I guess it is easier to just stop reading, stop writing, and stop thinking . . . since you're clearly too lazy to do these things yourself, maybe we can get a special and expensive government department or crown corporation to do those tasks for you . . .

Adam C said...

Yeah, California, that was a brilliant one...

Liam O'Brien said...

If you're talking power - Problem with infrastructure and implementation.

Try looking at the facts instead of having an automatic no-thinking-involved dogmatic hatred for privatization.

Or do you believe Air Canada should be a crown corp again? What about Petro Canada?



Ask Albertans how that was workin' out . . .

Adam C said...

...problem with infrastructure and implementation.

Yeah, that's always the way, isn't it. You know, public power would also work perfectly if there weren't problems in infrastructure and implementation... California's electricity crisis was a pretty good example of a privatized system fucking things up on a scale that a public system (for all its warts) never would.

Try looking at the facts instead of having an automatic no-thinking-involved dogmatic hatred for privatization.

Admittedly my comment was pretty terse but that's a bit much in response, isn't it? I've looked at a lot of facts and I don't have a dogmatic hatred of privatization. However, there are some sectors where privatization is not appropriate - particularly essential services, since a scarcity in these sectors is never desired. Water and education are two examples.

There is some question as to whether electricity generation falls into this category. At least in the case of coal and hydro generation, privatization could be positive as long as there were regulatory measures taken to ensure the supply. Nuclear is a different question, as it is only financially viable due to legislation that sharply restricts liability in case of disaster.

There are no compelling arguments for privatizing distribution, which is a natural monopoly. The California example is perhaps the most stark in this regard.