Politics Thread!

[KlaxonCow]

In order to sell us all on privatisation in the '80s and onwards, Maggie and her ilk told us all about what's wrong with nationalised industries.

Indeed, that's where the dreaded word "efficiency" comes from. Because the problem with nationalised industries is that they just get guaranteed taxpayer cash, whether they're any good or not. There's no competition, there's no incentive to innovate or improve. Nothing implicitly pushing a nationalised industry to give "value for money" - except maybe a social / community pride (but, in fairness to the witch, when Maggie said "there is no society", that's kind of the angle she was coming from - not so much that it literally doesn't exist, but just that if you're depending on some kind of social / community sense of pride to get value for money, clean streets, etc. then you're going to be a long time waiting).

And there's that image of the public servant sitting in a local council van, lazily getting things done at a leisurely pace. Because, as long as they don't do anything so catastrophically bad that demands being fired, they've got a guaranteed "job for life" and wage that'll always be paid, as it's backed up by taxpayer cash and, as paying taxes is the law, taxpayer cash is always there.

That was the conservative sales pitch for privatisation and it's not entirely wrong. It won the day for decades to come and even the centre left accepted its logic - for example, Blair kept the privatisations going - because there is a grain of truth to it.

But, of course, what's been missing - and now we've had decades of privatised industry to see what works and what doesn't - is the counterpoint of "what's wrong with privatisation" to match the "what's wrong with nationalised industry" propaganda we had sold to us to accept increasing privatisation since the '80s.

And, simply, the grand problem with privatised industries is that they spend fuck all on infrastructure. When your objective is maximising short-term profits, then the long-term investment in infrastructure is the first thing that dies.

Yes, when you hand over something like this to private companies, the first thing that dies - for "efficiency" and cutting corners for bigger profits - is the infrastructure budget. The maintenance bill.

And this ultimately creates a "moral hazard" - just as with the banks that were "too big to fail" - because public services and infrastructure is also, indeed, "too important to fail" that there's even an implicit incentive for private companies to shirk the infrastructure costs. As when shit starts falling apart and people actually start dying or the lights start going out, no government can resist the calls to use taxpayer cash to bail them out.

Just as how, in the banking crisis, to ensure that they felt the consequences of their risky and greedy behaviour, "free market" logic would say that you just let them fail. The banks that behaved badly would just be allowed to die, leaving behind only the banks that behaved correctly. The "free market" advocate would, indeed, say this is a form of natural selection. Survival of the fittest.

Except, of course, that never happens. Because if you just let that bank die, then the life savings of all that bank's customers would vanish with them - and because of that, if you knew that your bank was about to go bankrupt, then it's only logical for you to rush to that bank, pull out all of your life savings and try to put them somewhere safer. Because if you don't, then they could vanish completely. And this is why there's a panic amongst governments to avoid a "run on the banks". Because the last thing a bank on the verge of collapse needs is to have all its customers - every last one - all rush to pull their money out, as this will basically guarantee their instant collapse.

This was the "moral hazard". That the banks were "too big to fail" - they serve too important a function in how our society works - for governments to just sit idly by and let everything collapse. Therefore, the worldwide response was to just throw large sums of taxpayer cash at them to keep them alive, and have guarantees in place on people's savings, so that we avoid a run on the banks and the entire thing just falling apart in an instant.

And this "moral hazard" is the fundamental problem with privatising public services.

In the UK, the railways were privatised. Initially, even the infrastructure was privatised under "Railtrack" - responsible for the rail network itself - but the infrastructure started to decay, with little to no investment. Because if your motivation is profit, then infrastructure investment is really bloody expensive - an awful lot of the big public infrastructure we see could only have been originally afforded by governments, because it's big and complex and really fucking expensive to create things like a nation-wide rail network in the first place - and your "return on investment" is not immediate, it's just the more-nebulous long-term notion that your industry can keep going in the decades and centuries to come. But private companies and investors on the stock markets don't think in terms of "planting a seed today, knowing that you'll never see the trees yourself, but are creating a better world for the next generations to come".

There were derailments, train crashes and it was all going to shit... that government stepped in, closed down "Railtrack", and set up "Network Rail" instead. And the thing is, though it might be an "arm's reach" thing to maintain the pretence that it's not really nationalisation by the back door, to quote Wikipedia, "Network Rail is a non-departmental public body of the Department for Transport with no shareholders".

And we end up with that "worst of both worlds" moral hazard. The private companies profit from running the trains, but the taxpayer's saddled with the expensive infrastructure costs. That "privatise the profits, nationalise the costs" thing, which is clearly not actually an efficient use of taxpayer cash. If the taxpayer is saddled with all the expensive infrastructure costs, it's ridiculous that we're also giving away the profits to private companies. Because at least when fully nationalised, the profits of selling tickets can offset those infrastructure costs.

(And, with the trains, it also demonstrated something else. Some infrastructure is simply too big and complex for anyone but governments to have any expertise in. When the UK privatised its rail network, then you need to follow the money trail to find that, actually, what's branded "Arriva" is really Deutsche Bahn. It's the German national railway. And you can go through all these to discover that the British railways are being run by companies owned and run by the national rail and governments of other countries. Deutsche Bahn (German), SNCF (French), Trenitalia (Italy), Abellia (Dutch), MTR (mostly owned by the government of Hong Kong), etc.. That when these railways were sold, it didn't "unleash the private sector" but really just sold it to the nationalised rail of other countries. It's still all ultimately owned and run by national governments - just, weirdly, foreign governments and not our own! So it's not really the "privatisation" that was promised anyway. Just a "side hustle" for foreign governments to supplement their incomes on the back of the British.)

But let's turn our attention to energy companies. These were also privatised and we see the exact same pattern. Where figures like George Osborne came on our TV screens and promised us that he'd "keep the lights on" by investing taxpayer cash in new nuclear power stations.

But, wait, it's privatised. It shouldn't be the government's job to heavily invest taxpayer cash into the energy infrastructure. These private companies should be using their big profits to build their own power stations.

But, again, the "moral hazard" rears its ugly head. Osborne was so proud of his "white knight in shining armour" declarations of "keeping the lights on" because the lights starting to go off is another one of these intolerable "moral hazards". Governments can't sit idly by, while the energy network crashes and burns, and pensioners start freezing to death as they can't turn on the heating, patients die in hospitals as the life support machines can't be powered, businesses go bankrupt because they can't operate, etc. - the lights have to remain "on", come hell or high water.

So there's the cold logic that if you're a private energy company then you really shouldn't invest in infrastructure improvement at all. Let it decay and fall apart. Hold your nerve - "stay on target, stay on target" - because, once it threatens that intolerable situation that the lights might genuinely not come on, the national government will come rushing to give you billions of free taxpayer cash to build nuclear power stations, desperate to "keep the lights on".

Telecommunications has proved a bit more competitive and is the best of the bunch - mainly because it is possible for small players to enter the market with new tech and succeed, where that basically never happens with, say, trains which are all run by national governments, who are the only people with the money and expertise to even know how to run large and expensive public infrastructure - but we still see this happening.

Governments pledging taxpayer cash to bring "broadband" to rural areas. Trying to twist the arms of private telecommunications to reach minimum broadband speeds and sufficient coverage of the population. But, ah, if you leave them to their own devices, then they give no fucks and would never do it off their own backs - they don't care if there's "black spots" in the country, where telecommunications are from the stone age, so long as they're not paying to fix the problem.

Again and again, we see the flaw of privatisation. The first thing to go and the last thing they invest in, is expensive infrastructure. Too often, there's a "moral hazard" - that you can't let these things decay over time, as people start dying and public services stop functioning - that governments can't sit idly by and leave private companies to naturally just fail, go bankrupt and be replaced by better private companies.

And we end up with that "worst of all worlds" solution, where we privatise the profits, but nationalise the costs. Which is fucking stupid, of course, because we haven't actually saved the taxpayer any cash - as they're still paying for the most expensive bit of infrastructure costs and maintenance - yet have privatised away the profits to private companies. At least when fully nationalised, the profits could be reinvested back into the infrastructure costs.

But, no, I'm not calling for these industries to be re-nationalised. Because the basic complaints of the right about the "efficiency" of that weren't entirely wrong. There is a lack of motivation to improve efficiency, improve productivity, innovate new tech and techniques, and all the rest of it. That complaint is not illegitimate.

And the biggest reason not to nationalise things is really that, you know, the Tories (or Reform) sometimes win power. Thus, the nationalised NHS is under constant attack whenever the right-wing gain power, as they deliberately run it into the ground and try to make it collapse and bankrupt itself.

If you re-nationalised the trains then, once the Tories or Reform or whoever gets in power, they'll just deliberately de-fund it - under the guise of "austerity" - and reform it to "take advantage of the private sector", then maybe Blair will come along with his "public private partnerships" to have taxpayers owe massive sums of money to private companies to put the taxpayer in debt to them for decades to come.

Nope, neither nationalising nor privatising works. Thus, inspired by the historical origins of the NHS, I propose a third option.

In the early Industrial Revolution, there were no labour laws, no health and safety laws, or anything like that. Yet all that steam-powered tech needed coal to fuel this Revolution around the country and the world.

So we had the humble coal miner, who did a rather horribly dangerous job to mine coal and be "the engine house" of the Industrial Revolution. And they had fuck all protections. Employment contracts guaranteeing them that they had a job the next day weren't yet a thing, so you could be dismissed at any second for any reason whatsoever (including "I don't like your face" or "I'm a racist and I hate black people") with no legal recourse whatsoever. If you were injured or sick then tough luck - your family just had no income and would starve to death, and someone else has been given your job. And in such a dangerous job, health was a major concern.

With neither their employer nor the government doing anything to help them, the coal miners helped themselves.

They contributed a little of their pay into a collective pot, and with this pot of money, they collectively bought a building and turned it into a hospital. Their contributions would go to paying the wages of doctors and nurses to staff this "Miners' hospital" and kit it out with medical equipment.

They didn't wait for government or their employer (or God or Superman or aliens) to come to their rescue, they simply saved themselves off their own backs by working together (and, yes, this does eventually become "the origin story" for trade unions, and campaigning for workers' rights and labour laws that we all can enjoy today).

Whilst you could see this "collective action" as left wing, you could also see the "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps" and the fact that the miners collectively owned their own business as actually very right wing ideals. Truth is, it's neither ideology - it's just pragmatism. It's a community looking out for its own - and if governments and private companies are never going to do it, then fuck them and let's do it ourselves.

Aneurin Bevan, who founded the NHS, was, of course, a Welshman. He'd grown up seeing these "Miners' hospitals" and how they worked, and that they worked incredibly well to deliver healthcare at affordable costs - because, like with the NHS, the whole thing was a not-for-profit social enterprise.

So, with Labour in government and as the Secretary for Health, he instituted "the Miners' hospital" system nationwide for everyone. And, as most Brits agree, it's a fucking brilliant system, isn't it? The only criticism, really, is that, yes, it's a tax and it's managed by incompetent government, who keep running it down and "reforming" it to be less efficient all the time - where the number of managers outweighs the number of doctors and nurses. Which, you know, is not even fucking logical - who are the managers managing, when there's numerically more of them than people to be managed?

Indeed, maybe the NHS would have been better off if it had remained under "the Miners' hospital" system and simply naturally expanded to the entire nation and every occupation of its own accord. Because then the Tories would never have gotten their hands on it to run it into the ground, as it would be "private property" of the workers themselves and no business of the government to interfere.

So, taking energy infrastructure as an example, let's imagine every home having solar panels and house batteries. That the people themselves "own the means of (energy) production". And then, collectively, they own their own community's energy network, which can add local solar and wind farms. The community owns and runs its own energy network. It can, indeed, employ its own local young people into jobs running it all, looking out for its own local employment.

But here's the true genius of it. It's implicitly a not-for-profit social enterprise. Because the local community owns and runs it, so why would they ever raise prices to increase profits? That doesn't make sense when you're both the customer and the owner at the same time. You're just charging yourself more money to get it all back again. There's no advantage to it.

Instead, such a system would be focused on value for money. It's motivated to move to the newest cheapest tech. To keep innovating and being genuinely more "efficient". Because when you're the customer, you want it to be the best it can be, for the cheapest possible price (but not "cutting corners" cheap that it risks people dying or the lights going out - now the "moral hazard" is working in our favour, as any such lack of investment bites you in the arse, as you're the customer, so it could be you who dies or has their lights go out, and that's intolerable).

We stop doing it "top down" with a rich few elites running it all, that we go to them with begging bowls that they treat us well (which they don't, as there's more profit not to do so). We do it "bottom up", as a grassroots thing, where the local community owns and runs its own local infrastructure - and it will implicitly be not-for-profit, as it makes no logical sense to profit from yourself. And it will implicitly be the best "value for money" and innovative, reaching for the best new technologies to do it cheaper and better, because you're the customer - your bills will go down and your service will be better.

We can see that the motivations of nationalising and privatising industries don't work, because they have weak points. And when the right criticise nationalisation, their complaints are not wrong. And when the left criticise privatisation, their complaints are not wrong.

The point is trying to find that "third way" where the motivations are actually 100% aligned with what people want and need. And so this - I don't know what to call it, but let's call it something like "communitarian" (which is not capitalism nor is it communism / socialism - but it's kind of trying to cherry pick the best bits of both at the same time) - is my proposal.

Flip the pyramid, and suddenly it all makes sense. When you are customer and owner at the same time, then all your motivations are aligned with what we all want - the best "value for money" but always providing the best service, and it's all implicitly not-for-profit and implicitly democratic so greed doesn't ruin it either.

Of the people, by the people, for the people. A proper "classic liberal" solution to the problem.

[F-ZeroOne]

Well, at least we're fairly safe from Nurgles minions here in the UK...

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... id-vaccine

...so, what are NBC suits going for these days? Asking for a friend.

[F-ZeroOne]

Someone loves the smell of... burning American citizens in the morning?

https://news.sky.com/story/chipocalypse ... n-13426413

What is it with MAGA and their near total inability to understand the context of a thing? (Trump used "Keep On Rocking In The Free World" as a campaign song once, presumably without ever having listened to the lyrics rather than the chorus... ).

[PFVA]

It seems to be getting more and more extreme:

A Senator Just Unapologetically Declared the U.S. a White Homeland

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/202 ... rence.html

[PFVA]

Finally a Prime Minister with courage to tell it.
Pedro Sánchez, PM of Spain.
(Quoted fm all over the news)

“This is not self-defense, it’s not even an attack – it’s the extermination of a defenseless people. It is a violation of all humanitarian laws, and despite that, the international community is failing to stop this tragedy,” Sánchez said.

[F-ZeroOne]

Meanwhile, in Nepal:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c741n80ndlxt

Meanwhile, in France:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/ ... sts-macron

Meanwhile, in Japan:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/ ... nt-go-away

[F-ZeroOne]

Foreign firms sure to invest in the US now!:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... says-seoul

[SuperMappy]

Charlie Kirk, a mobilizing force for young conservatives, shot dead at 31.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politi ... rcna230451

Let's pour gasoline on the fire! This will never stop, it's only going to get worse!

[tufty]

Let's pour gasoline on the fire! This will never stop, it's only going to get worse!

Sorry, but I can't find any empathy for the fucker. He thought empathy was a bad character trait, though, so it would be pissing on his legacy to waste any on him. He also said some gun deaths were a necessary consequence to protect the freedoms of the second amendment, so he's at least done something to forward his ideals. Or maybe someone just changed his mind on that.

I feel bad for his kids, you don't get to choose the sort of odious cumrag your parents are. Their life just got better. As for his wife, no sympathy either - anyone who could deliberately spend time with a sociopathic cunt like Kirk needs a kick in the tits.

The world is better without him. But you know what I'm really waiting for? The revelation that his shooter was white, christian, and a Trump voter.

[SuperMappy]

Sorry, but I can't find any empathy for the fucker. He thought empathy was a bad character trait, though, so it would be pissing on his legacy to waste any on him. He also said some gun deaths were a necessary consequence to protect the freedoms of the second amendment, so he's at least done something to forward his ideals. Or maybe someone just changed his mind on that.

I feel bad for his kids, you don't get to choose the sort of odious cumrag your parents are. Their life just got better. As for his wife, no sympathy either - anyone who could deliberately spend time with a sociopathic cunt like Kirk needs a kick in the tits.

The world is better without him. But you know what I'm really waiting for? The revelation that his shooter was white, christian, and a Trump voter.

So he should die then? So the hate only continues.

[tufty]

So he should die then? So the hate only continues.

Its not that he /should/ die, it's that it is not surprising that he did. He spent his entire career fomenting hate. He was an arsehole. Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind, and all that.

[zip accident]

So he should die then? So the hate only continues.

Its not that he /should/ die, it's that it is not surprising that he did. He spent his entire career fomenting hate. He was an arsehole. Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind, and all that.

He will become a martyr like Horst Wessel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horst_Wessel

... you know what I'm really waiting for? The revelation that his shooter was white, christian, and a Trump voter.

If it was a false flag operation, a scapegoat will have been located before the shot was fired.

I am sort of dreading the second USAian civil war, and it's probable outcome (I fear the greycoats/browncoats will win this one).

[PFVA]

I hope this is not going to be an excuse to start a witch hunt agains people on the left side of the politics specially in the universities.

And I noticed that whomever shot him must be very good with weapons, one single shot to do it.

[tufty]

... you know what I'm really waiting for? The revelation that his shooter was white, christian, and a Trump voter.

If it was a false flag operation, a scapegoat will have been located before the shot was fired.

Not suggesting it's a false flag. I'm suggesting it's at least 50/50 and probably better that the shooter was on the right of the US political spectrum. Not just because there is more of a maniac gun culture on the right, but because it's often deranged fans one way or another.

[zip accident]

... you know what I'm really waiting for? The revelation that his shooter was white, christian, and a Trump voter.

If it was a false flag operation, a scapegoat will have been located before the shot was fired.

Not suggesting it's a false flag. I'm suggesting it's at least 50/50 and probably better that the shooter was on the right of the US political spectrum. Not just because there is more of a maniac gun culture on the right, but because it's often deranged fans one way or another.

You weren't suggesting it, I'm sort of guessing it might have been, but the odds probably are that it wasn't.

It possibly is the start of the crack-down. If it turns out it was a nutter, which in some senses it must be, then that might sort of end up not too terrible. It's good that the photoed suspect isn't black. If they catch a rabid anti-Trump activist, that would probably be the worst outcome that's still possible.