A Boring Dystopia

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My utility is now owned by a hedge fund (lemmy.world)

submitted 7 months ago by Terrapinjoe@lemmy.world to c/aboringdystopia@lemmy.world

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[–] SGG@lemmy.world 12 points 7 months ago (3 children)

I think a better way to go about it is what Australia used to do. There was a government run service for most things, phones: Telstra, banking: Commonwealth bank, etc. Unfortunately they get sold off for peanuts/privatised, and what do you know, service suffered, but profits for the board and investors jumped.

This leaves the ability for private companies to operate in the space if they can compete on price or on service/features.

Private companies hate that though, it means they can't boil the frog/capture the industry as easily.

[–] herrcaptain@lemmy.ca 9 points 7 months ago

I fully agree with you, but the problem is that inevitably conservative governments will find a way to privatize these sorts of state-owned corporations. Our provincial governments here in Canada have been doing this for decades now - always resulting in worse outcomes for consumers

I'm starting to think the best model going forward would be collectively-owned non-profits (roughly like credit unions) but I'm not optimistic that most people would buy into this idea - certainly not enough to enable it's use for services that constitute utilities. I know in the US a lot of attempts at municipal broadband have been curtailed by the big corps and their owned politicians, and those attempts had a local government behind them. The uphill battle that concerned citizens would face seems almost insurmountable if this were attempted in any way that would challenge a big corp's profits.

Basically, everything is garbage and the world is getting objectively worse.

[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 4 points 7 months ago

How is that better?

[–] Deceptichum@sh.itjust.works 4 points 7 months ago

Mate, that’s literally what they’re saying. Make it government run as a public utility.

Privatisation is a neolib cancer on the world.