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gghhzzgghhzz 14 days ago

Everything that provides any service or assistance to normal life has been sold off and rented back to us at enormous cost, often with many of extra financial scalping included in the systems we are forced to rely on. And a percentage of the extracted wealth is used to push political and public narrative to incentivise the selling off more.

Local authorities are forced to sell off assets and fire direct employees, then get charged a fortune to provide basic services and child and adult social care.

And for contracts and outsourcing, the ownership of the contract itself is the thing that gives value, not providing the actual service. Creating a whole set of perverse incentives.

A council should look at a pot hole in a road as a massive opportunity. Here is a chance to provide good quality work for local people and local resources, but the opposite happens.

We have a whole layer of service retailers e.g. for electricity and gas and communications, who are not more than a spreadsheet speculating on long term prices, a call centre and a web site. Their entire business model being based on a) not messing up the spreadsheet calculation b) enough people being lazy and not renewing or switching their contract every year.

Our financial services industry has massive positive PR, seen as a net good for the country. When in reality it is focused not on basic things like providing banking and direct insurance, but in attracting our best and brightest individuals from around the country and instead of having them put their talents to something productive. Instead reward them for creating and maintaining complex systems to move wealth around, asset strip regions, hide it from tax and create a layer of gambling and financial products on top of these systems.

I could go on.

fads_go 14 days ago | parent [-]

So you mean that Britian has pioneered the US's Project 2025 plan?

ceejayoz 14 days ago | parent [-]

Nah. The push for both plans originates at least in part from elsewhere.

Cthulhu_ 14 days ago | parent [-]

Capitalism, to oversimplify. The powers that be realised there was money to be extracted and they did it. Packaging it as beneficial for the people; the usual line is "healthy competition will lower the prices for consumers" but I have never seen this work in practice. We have a few areas with competition, like cell phones or health insurance, but the cost and service level differences between them is minimal and there is no competition. Or if there is, it's lower prices at worse service / quality - the race to the bottom.

Reprivatize shit and put it in the hands of someone competent. Also, increase wages so that government agencies don't depend so much on expensive consultants / contractors.

therealdrag0 14 days ago | parent | next [-]

If you’ve never seen competition lower prices you’re not paying attention.

robocat 13 days ago | parent [-]

I've you've never been on the pointy end of pricy service monopolies you're not paying attention.

Competition works best for commodities. How is your electricity bill looking? And electricity is a fabulously strong example of a commodity. Have you noticed petrol prices are not that competitive even though petrol is a commodity?

3/4 of my leccy bill is a distribution cost: I think it is a fixed cost that any electricity supplier I choose oncharges. I can choose different suppliers that will make a small difference to the other variable kWh by time charges but it's not real competition. I could buy solar and batteries - but the initial investment and payback period is so long that it would cost me far more than the distribution cost I currently pay.

therealdrag0 13 days ago | parent [-]

I agree. We don’t need to discuss the boundaries of competition. I was responding to GP saying they have NEVER seen competition work, which is simple ignorance.

typewithrhythm 14 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The problem is rarely "capitalism", since most of the most glaring issues are either in highly regulated systems, or cases where the person receiving a service is not the one paying for it.

I think the average english person fundamentally lacks the mindset for capitalism to work, there is little trust in an individual, and too great a desire to have daddy government come make it safe. It's the unquestioning faith in top down measures that has lead to the current system, and pulling things back to public ownership won't fix that.

ceejayoz 14 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Not just capitalism, though. Both involved foreign election interference and very tight electoral results.