Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimjam
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That's an interesting post.
I do have some questions.
It's easy to get people to sign up for plumbed water when you are the only gig in town, but if a second company starts up... I struggle to see how they would be able to take a significant share of the market and the amount of infrastructure involved in a water company means the outlay for a new company to open up would be astronomical. I mean they could come to arrangement to share infrastructure with the existing company (seems unlikely), but then that has it's own problems.
Honestly, it doesn't look like services which involve massive one time infrastructure investments (with large upkeep costs) really fit the free market model. Each area will have its own monopoly. Some kind of socialism seems to make sense for these cases where there can be no meaningful free market competition, even if it is just a mechanism or vehicle to introduce free market competition.
I don't believe socialism only leads to communism, there seems to be many instances of where it has lead to capitalism (I know in the UK lots of national services got privatised). In fact socialism seems to have helped a lot of countries industrialise and create infrastructure quickly in a standardised, scalable fashion, and use it as a stepping stone into capitalism. A problem with the development of infrastructure in a freemarket system is there is very little standardisation and this is not efficient or scalable.
I'm surprised to hear the Republicans believe in the local community supporting those who are unable to provide themselves food and shelter. That is literal socialism (or indeed communism if the vulnerable person pools their labour or other resources in exchange for the food). Seems at odds with what they are about. Perhaps they envision some kind of capitalist commune (oxymoron I know) work house where those in poverty can fulfil their physical, safety, and physiological needs as a stepping stone out of poverty?
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While I am in agreement about monopolies and some laws being in place, you'd be surprised how fast another business can get started and how quick wealth changes. I think the statistic is that over a 20 year span, its always flipped. The poor people aren't always staying poor. The number is always rolling in and out. Some people who are poor become rich. Some people who were rich go poor. The top corporations in the US have rarely lasted over 100 years. Every large corporation right now (social media) is new to the world's richest list. This is always changing. You get one company doing all the water and they have an outage, you are pretty screwed. You want diversity. The PG&E fires in CA are a good example of government contracts.
Obviously there will need to be some laws in place to limit some of these things but overall the Republicans want less. This is why they don't want socialized healthcare. The option to choose what doctor you want is massive and where you want to go.
On the Republicans going to their community. This isn't socialism. Socialism means that is regulated. Regulated means forced by the community or government. The less you must force someone to give up something they rightfully earned, the better. The more you have involvement that is willingly from your community, the better. I think I already cited the statistic but Republicans donate more money to charity and more blood than Democrats. We just believe in giving freely.
Also you just need to look at history. The common oppressor in every war is one government against another, not one corporation against another. Government has the means to operate by force.
11-22-2019, 09:10 PM
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