> If private enterprise was really this efficient, and government was really that inefficient, we should have seen ample evidence for that by now.

Food. Consumer goods. Telecommunications services. Transportation. Clothes. All things that have gone down in absolute prices and relative amount of family income to be provided.

Education / Housing / Healthcare: all deemed "up to the State" and that takes increasingly more from people at ever diminishing returns.

We can have a long and serious conversation about how hard the Government should be involved in regulating these things, and how we could set up systems that ensure that these become universally available and not just for middle/upper class. We can even have a conversation about things that should be controlled by the Government even if it means a high cost to society. But to deny that things managed by the State are more expensive overall is a clear sign of ideological blindness.

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tgv 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> But to deny that things managed by the State are more expensive overall is a clear sign of ideological blindness.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50208837

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rglullis 3 hours ago | parent [-]

The way to solve this is not by giving the monopoly back to the state, but by the state enacting regulations thay allows smaller players to join the grid.

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runarberg 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Europe has been doing this for 20 years now. I have yet to see successful results. And realizing each failure of Neo-liberal policy Europe keeps doubling or quadrupling down. I believe they are on their 4th energy package at the moment. I am sure the fate if this 4th attempt will be identical to the other efforts of making capitalism fix the problem, and identical to any other neo-liberal policy. Europe will have more billionaires and peoples energy bills will be higher.

As the saying in Europe goes: Neo-liberalism will continue until the economy improves.

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rglullis 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Really?

Do we have 20 years already since people are allowed to set up a solar panel in their backyard and sell excess capacity to the grid?

Do we have 20 years where farmers can grow their own biodiesel to (at least) power their own machinery, or does the state giving them subsidies to let them keep growing vegetables, wine and beef without having to compete in the global market?

	▲	runarberg 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		We have had 20 years of energy distribution and infrastructure going from government ownership and into private hands, where different private distributors are allowed to compete for customers on the same grid. These were energy packages 1-2 (if I remember correctly). The results have been higher energy prices for European households. Energy package 3 was supposed to fix this with some additional regulation and standardization. It did not. Energy package 4 is supposed to fix this with more standardization and regulations (including distributed generation; which I am in favor of btw.) however, it will not. The problem is the privatizations of the 2000s, not in the regulations surrounding small scale solar. The problem is neo-liberalism. Get rid of corporations rent-seeking on our infrastructure. Our energy bills will not become lower until then.

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djeastm 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I'm a bit confused why you have housing and healthcare "up to the state". Are we talking about the United States or somewhere else?

	▲	runarberg 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I am guessing Germany or Europe more broadly. Germany is in a pretty bad neo-liberal wave right now, and have been getting worse for the past 10-15 years. And given Germany‘s influence in the EU the effects of this neo-liberal wave are felt across Europe, even in non-EU countries like Iceland (which is currently being fined by the EU for not privatizing garbage disposal fast enough). However, if you look at the popular movements on the streets of Europe at the moment, you can see that the people are in fact not happy about this. There are very few political means of getting rid of neo-liberalism (see e.g. Spain for a clear example of what I mean) so people are turning to the streets as the only viable alternative.