Deckard wrote:why didnt they improve the whole service - we should have a fuck off public transport service at low cost as effectively we are a 100 miles across by 400 top to bottom....
Another case for NOT nationalising industry.
The Labour government in 1948 nationalised the railways.
Then, in 1963, the Tories commissioned Dr.Beeching to compile a report, which recommended the closure of 2363 stations and 5000 miles of track.
Yes, 2363 train stations. The UK used to have trains absolutely everywhere. Because, you know, we invented the Industrial Revolution and trains in the first place, and we absolutely were #1 in the world, with a significant "head start" advantage over everywhere else on the planet.
And this is, unfortunately, the pattern. Labour nationalises, then the Tories get in, run it into the ground to justify privatising it all off.
If you're a socialist / communist then you actually shouldn't support nationalisation. Not under our current political system. Because all it really does is eventually deliver it into the hands of the Tories, who run it down - in order to have the excuse - and then they sell it off.
You can see that this is exactly what the Tories have been attempting to do with the NHS for decades.
Even if Labour get back in power, then they're just trying to undo the damage of previous Tory rule. Then the Tories get back in and ruin it some more. So it's never more than "damage limitation", rather than, you know, expansion and improvement and so forth.
This is why I prefer the "Miners' hospital" model - where the NHS came from - where these things are community-owned not-for-profit businesses. Then the local community can own and run their own public services, having nothing whatsoever to do with central government.
Sure, when Cameron was talking about "Big Society", it was just a slogan - nothing actually happened - and it was from a Tory perspective of just selling off the State. But the real "Big Society" concept is this idea of strengthening communities to run their own transport, their own energy provision, their own water provision, etc. in a not-for-profit way (because, like, you'd only be charging yourself more money, so the inherent motivation is not profit, but getting the most bang for your buck - so the natural motivation in such a system isn't to raise prices for profit, but to reduce costs to get as best a system as you can reasonably afford).
The video nicely illustrates the essence of the problem:
Like, Labour / the leftists nationalise the industries, as it imagines running it like the first model - everyone pays taxes and taxes run the industries - but then the Conservatives take that and set it up to work like the second model, to "double dip" on those profits.
So, I'm saying that if you're a socialist or communist - at least under the current political system - you should NOT argue for nationalisation, like the first model, because the Tories will eventually win power and then set it up like the second model.
Yes, the insane thing with the American healthcare system is that they absolutely are paying for it in their taxes AND then paying for it to a for-profit organisation as well. The cost of Medicaid and Medicare, to the American tax payer, is, in fact, roughly about the same that the entire NHS (I mean, it is a bigger country, with a lot more people, but you still get the gist of the point).
Like, with the rail privatisation in the UK, Network Rail is actually owned - in an "arm's reach" kind of way - by the government and paid for through taxes. The infrastructure bit. The bit that's most expensive. That's essentially nationalised. And then the bit that actually makes the profits, selling tickets, is what's privatised.
If the system wasn't set up in such a broken fucked up way, so that our money actually went to providing the public service, not profits, we could totally have much better services for a much cheaper cost. Because, as that video illustrates, the way it's set up right now (or, where it isn't, like the NHS, the Tories are desperately trying to convert it over to work that way), they're double dipping and we're paying over-the-odds twice over. For a system where the motivation is profit, so the provided service is shit as well.
But if our money went directly to a community-owned not-for-profit, their motivation would be to deliver the most they could for the cash they get (because though I use the pronoun "their" - the point is that "they" are actually "us", when it's the community running its own services - and that's why there'd be zero point raising prices to make more profits, as the money you're taking is the money you're paying. You'd be squeezing yourself. You wouldn't do that, it makes no sense. And because "they" is "us", then you'd always have jobs available in the local community, providing for that community's own services).
And, in light of the other issues I've talked about, with increasing AI and automation, and a move to an "age of abundance", then this, basically, is the only way you can make that transition comfortably. The other systems will fall apart and collapse. So it's not just a good idea unto itself, it's arguably the only system that's not going to derail itself, as the world around us increasingly changes and renders a lot of the old thinking and old systems dead and buried. Systems that rely on profit are going to collapse, when the concept of money itself gradually dies out. Which is ultimately where this is all headed.
"Words ought to be a little wild - for they are assaults of thought on the unthinking."
- John Maynard Keynes
