Public ownership

[Judäischen Volksfront]

Which of these, if any, should be owned by governments?

major industries (coal, steel, oil etc)
agriculture (graineries, farms, warehouses)
transport infrastructure (roads, rails, airports, etc)
utilities (power, water, sewage)

Some of us are hardcore socialists, but I think major utilities and some transport infrastructure (but not all) should be owned by the lowest level of government.

Because, if they were privatised, we would be forced to pay a corporation against our will. Second, ever heard of California 2000? Areas were the grid was government owned had no brownouts. Hmm...

[Gabu]

I would say that utilities and most of transport infrastructure should be run by municipal governments.  The others should most certainly not be owned by any government.

[frenger]

Electricity in portugal is owned by private company. Telephone services are too. The only all public utility is water.

[Sibboleth]

major industries (coal, steel, oil etc)
agriculture (graineries, farms, warehouses)
transport infrastructure (roads, rails, airports, etc)
utilities (power, water, sewage)

Coal: Yes. But the Miners should run each pit. Call it Co-operatisation :-)
Steel: Probably
Oil: Maybe
Agriculture: NO, NO, NO
Roads: Yes (letting private companies run the roads is a truely disturbing concept. Hell, even Major didn't go that far...)
Railways: Yes
Trains: Yes (seperating these 'cos at the moment in the U.K the railways are owned by the Government after being de facto re-nationalised following the collapse of Railtrack, but trains are still run by private companies. Confusing, eh?)
Airports: Most of them
Power: Yes (the post-privatised power network is a sick joke IMO...)
Water: Yes (Ditto)
Sewage: Yes

[dazzleman]

Which of these, if any, should be owned by governments?

major industries (coal, steel, oil etc)
agriculture (graineries, farms, warehouses)
transport infrastructure (roads, rails, airports, etc)
utilities (power, water, sewage)

Some of us are hardcore socialists, but I think major utilities and some transport infrastructure (but not all) should be owned by the lowest level of government.

Because, if they were privatised, we would be forced to pay a corporation against our will. Second, ever heard of California 2000? Areas were the grid was government owned had no brownouts. Hmm...

Major industries (coal, steel, oil):  No, definitely no public ownership.

Agriculture:  No.  We'd have starvation in a few years if government controlled agriculture.

Transport Infrastructure:  Yes.  There is nobody else to own these things, because they can't produce a profit.  That's generally the only time I favor public ownership.

Utilities:  Generally no, although sewer systems are often owned by government.  I see no particular reason for power and water utilities to be owned by government, but they can be without catastrophic results, usually.

[Platypus]

transport and utilities, start at a yes basis and then examine case-by-case.

[IDS Judicial Overlord John Dibble]

major industries (coal, steel, oil etc)

Definitely not.

agriculture (graineries, farms, warehouses)

Definitely not.

transport infrastructure (roads, rails, airports, etc)

Roads yes, perhaps rails, airports I'm not sure. Agree with hughento - go case-by-case.

utilities (power, water, sewage)

Depends on the area. I would only support it at lower levels of government. Power probably not. Water maybe. Sewage probably, since that has a lot to do with going under roads and various other things. Other utilities, like sanitation, can be handled by by private interests, though I know in some places government handles it(though they should use private companies rather than trying to build new infrastructure in these cases).

[muon2]

One right of property is the ability to have access to it. Without a complicated set of easements that would be subject to endless litigation there needs to be a local network of access services. Typically these take the form of municipal, county and state rights of way. I include all these level, because different function have different levels of regional impact as well as different levels of regional efficiency. Highways are rarely worth the cost to any but the largest cities, but are worth the cost to improve access on a regional or state level.

The ownership of the rights of way should be public. How a unit of goverment utilizes the rights of way may be public or private based on the case in question. Roads are almost always maintained by the public, but there are cases where their operation has been contracted to a private entity. For example, last year the City of Chicago leased it's toll Skyway to a private firm.

Water distribution and sewer collection are most typically municipal since these involve access through the public rights of way, though public easements are frequently used here to provide more economical connections. water and sewer plants can be public or private, local or regional. Their form of operation should be judged on cost-effectiveness.

Electric, phone, and cable services also use the public rights of way. Some municipalities do maintain their own distribution network and contract with private providers, but most contract all that to private entities. Since the public right of way is used and impacted by the service, the public has a right to tax that use to maintain the rights of way.

You didn't include service industries on the list of public versus private. There are some such as police, fire, and building inspection that protect the life and property in a locality and are more economical by creating a public service. That's not to say that private versions of the same don't also play arole. They do, especially to augment the basic services covered by the public services.

It would be unusual for industrial or agricultual businesses  to be better served as public entities. There are examples, though. For instance, consider a city building a water well and filtration system. The city finds that an analysis of future growth shows that it is more cost effective to build extra capacity in the present system. The city could choose to market their extra water to private bottlers with the revenue from the bulk water sales used to lower the rates of municipal customers. The capacity would exist in any case, so the municipal customers should be able to use that capacity to their advantage.

[Lunar]

Some Utilities and the Roads.  Private companies would not be forbidden from building roads, but the government should handle building most of the road infrastructure.

[Dave from Michigan]

coal, steel, oil  no
Agriculture       no
Transport Infrastructure yes for roads, but airports and trains could also be not publicly owned.


utilities (power, water, sewage)  yes but private companies could own them too and in some cases it would be better.  like here in detroit area we get our water from detroit but they do a horrorible job and keep raising the water rates.

[J. J.]

There are such things as "natural monopolies."  Telephone infrasturcture, transportation infrastructure, power, natural and gas distribution services are some examples.  Some government services are as well.  These cannot be privatizes without substantial regulation.

Most everything else is not.  They shouldn't be.

[Harry]

some industries (but let private industry compete with the government), yes to all the transportation, and power, water, and sewer

[Wrecking Ball and Chain]

all of them

[ilikeverin]

What we have now seems fine to me.

Whatever it is

Just strengthen regulations, I guess, on most of the things, but don't control them.

[Carioca]

Utilities and transport infrastructure.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

transport and utilities, definitely.

[opebo]

It isn't such a big deal whether the roads, power, railroad and sewage services are public or private, given the sort of natural physical monopoly they may represent.  On the whole I would prefer private, though some regulation would optimize their effectiveness.  Any other industry should be private.

I actually knew a guy - one of my dad's buddies - who owned a private sewage company he had started himself.  He was a public utility regulated by the state, with his own physical territory.  He later sold out, I believe to a government entity, for about four million.  He was a crabby old man when I knew him, with a hot young wife.. rumour had it that he had pushed his old original wife into the sewage treatment facility - and in fact she had drowned in the sewage, though no foul play was ever proved.

[True Federalist]

Tightly regulated industries are essentially just a form of public ownership, so I'm not going to differentiate them.

Major Industries (coal, steel, oil etc)
No

Agriculture (graineries, farms, warehouses)
Might be cheaper than the current system of subsidies in the US and the EU, but no.

Transport Infrastructure (roads, rails, airports, etc)
Roads: Yes, but with contracting out of the operation of tollways.
Rails: Yes.
Trains: No.
Airports: Mix.  Airports used for public carrier service require such a large quantity of land, generally in built-up areas, that expansion or new airports require the use of the eminet domain to be used.  However, other types of airports should mostly be private.

Utilities (power, water, sewage)
Water & sewage: Yes
Sanitation: Yes.
Electric & gas grid: Yes.
Electric generation & supply of gas: No.

What went wrong in CA, was that a flawed system of deregulation was put in place, with the grid operators required to sell at a fixed price the power they bought at floating prices.  As such, it was like driving a car with only a gas pedal and no brakes, and it was no surprise that it crashed.

[Richard]

Only roads.  Nothing else.

[DanielX]

major industries (coal, steel, oil etc) - no way!!!!!
agriculture (graineries, farms, warehouses) - hell, no!!!
transport infrastructure (roads, rails, airports, etc) - Roads, yes. Else, mostly no.
utilities (power, water, sewage) - depends on utility and situation.

[David S]

Only roads.  Nothing else.

I agree, mainly because constructing new roads requires acquisition of land. It would probably be impossible to find enough willing sellers to build a road more than a mile long. So this is a case were the government's power of eminent domain could legitimately be used, with fair compensation of course.

[David S]

For those folks who advocate government ownership of industries;  when you take those business' away from the current owners, the stockholders, would you compensate them for it or would you just steal their property?

[Judäischen Volksfront]

For those folks who advocate government ownership of industries;  when you take those business' away from the current owners, the stockholders, would you compensate them for it or would you just steal their property?

Of course we would compensate. Before doing anything we have to make sure there's no red ink in the budgets.

[David S]

For those folks who advocate government ownership of industries;  when you take those business' away from the current owners, the stockholders, would you compensate them for it or would you just steal their property?

Of course we would compensate. Before doing anything we have to make sure there's no red ink in the budgets.

There is probably red ink in all of them as most have huge pension committments. But the fair compensation price would be the market capitalization, that is the current stock price times the number of shares outstanding. For Detroit Edison that's about $7 billion. I don't know what it would be for the entire electric utility industry, but I'd guess somewhere in the $200 to $400 billion range. Where would you get the money to buy it?

[Nym90]

Transportation infrastructure and utilities should be publically owned. Not the others.