Newsgroups: alt.politics.marrou,alt.politics.elections
Subject: Re: privitization (was Re: Andre Marrou/Nancy Lord in
From: koumis@husc4.harvard.edu (Anthony Koumis)
Date: 24 Jul 92 12:26:03 EDT
Distribution: world
Organization: Harvard University Science Center

In article <TSF.92Jul23162609@U.ERGO.CS.CMU.EDU> tsf@CS.CMU.EDU (Timothy Freeman) writes:
>koumis@husc4.harvard.edu (Anthony Koumis) writes:
>   THis selling off of gov't industry was the key plank of Margaret
>   Thatcher's cure for the UK.  We all can see how well it has worked
>   there.......NOT.    People just made alot of profit on the
>   privatizing of industry but can't say it has helped the UK
>   become a stronger, industrial country.  
>
>Do you have a model for what went wrong?
>

I think the problem is that people think that private business
is automatically well run, competent and will make a profit.
That is a myth.  Just look at GM, what were they doing when
Japanese cars were making inroads.  GM was developing
dud cars, that no one bought.  As a result, they lost alot of
money.  They kept on paying the managemtn that cuased this in
the first place lots and lots of money but fired the workers.
THis is not efficient planning.  Private business or state run
business are no guarantee for efficiency.

But lots of people think that private business equals efficeincy.
How many of you have heard people say but I have business
experience as if this is supposed to mean they are efficeint,
and clever.  Fiddle-dee.






>One story I've heard is that when the buses stopped being subsidized,
>it took a few months for the market to sort itself out, and then there
>was a bus system with fewer routes and higher rates.  This seems
>reasonable from a libertarian point of view if the routes that were
>dropped were losing money before the privitization, and if the new bus
>rate was less than the sum of the old bus rate and the subsidy.
>

Buses are a service ....... not very useful if people cant use them.
If the people who relied on them cant get places, then they cant
shop and spend money.  The UK is not such of car-based society 
as ours, you should see how many ladies in York rode the buses with their 
shopping.  Also how do you determine how you are losing money.
YOu could be making money overall -- but some routes dont give you 
that much return.  The very profitable routes could be subsidizing
the marginal routes but you still could be making a profit.

York privatized its buses and their service was terrible.



>For things to get better after privatization, taxes have to go down
>instead of having the government simply find different useless
>projects to use the tax money on.  Did that happen?
>
I think Maggie lowered the tax rate.


>One big problem with the UK is that it is too unionized.  With too
>much legally entrenched groups who oppose changes to the status quo,
>you can't have progress.  Did Thatcher change the legal status of the
>unions?


Since you seem to think unions caused this problems (I gueess
overpaid, incompetent managers and planners like at GM dont have any
affect on mismanaged businesses) you will be happy to know that Maggie 
gutted the unions.


Newsgroups: alt.politics.marrou,alt.individualism