Privatisation is the result of capitalists looking at everything and asking themselves “how could someone profit from this”? It’s not about running services more cost-effectively or making things easier on clients - it’s about filtering taxpayer money into private pockets.
Private companies aren’t naturally more efficient or less wasteful than government-owned entities - the streams of taxpayer money going to big banks, resource companies and others as subsidies should disabuse anyone of that notion. And arguably a large part of perceived government ‘inefficient’ is due to the fact that they contract government projects out to private companies which then keep extracting money via “cost blowouts” and delays.
trk@aussie.zone 11 months ago
Literally no government service has ever run better once privatised. It’s always ended up more expensive and less effective. I have no idea why the idea that privatising services is a solution to anything except unsatisfied greed.
Prove me wrong with just one example.
usernamesaredifficul@hexbear.net 11 months ago
privatising a public service is basically just adding a middle man skimming off the top
Nonameuser678@aussie.zone 11 months ago
Capitalist governments be like look how good we are at spending money efficiently. Meanwhile, burns cash on useless middle men.
Nath@aussie.zone 11 months ago
Commonwealth Bank isn’t really any different. Not better, not worse.
There was a good period there where Qantas was consistently getting better and cheaper than it was under public ownership. It’s gone downhill in the last decade, though.
Privatising the Post Offices has led to wildly variable experiences, some post offices are far worse, but if you have a good franchisee, some of them are much better.
I’m still dirty about privatising Medibank, and it cost the Libs 15 years in opposition. But today’s Medibank competes well in the private health sector.
Telstra … nah, just kidding. But it is getting better than it has been.
Maybe that’s the secret - it takes 20+ years for something privatised to get better? These examples have all been private since last century.
WendyMsGator@aus.social 11 months ago
@Nath @trk
The privatised Commonwealth Employment Service will never get better. The services offered by the private sector for job placement are utterly dismal. Personal experience via my then 55 yo partner being laid off from the mines up in Muswellbrook.
Every job he got after that, casual or permanent, were positions that I hunted down. They interviewed him once, right at the start, and not a single offer came his way from them in the ensuing 4 years that he worked or looked for work.
#BringBackTheCES
Ilandar@aussie.zone 11 months ago
Really…?
trk@aussie.zone 11 months ago
So basically I’m still right.
fine_sandy_bottom@aussie.zone 11 months ago
Privatised employment services are a shining example of a privatised service that “runs better”.
It feathers the nest of capitalists with premium, predictable, inexhaustible government money.
It discourages legitimate claimants from seeking social security.
It perpetuates the notion that being unemployed and poor is the fault of the incurable laziness of the unemployed and poor.
Of course, it doesn’t actually reduce unemployment or lift people out of generational poverty, but the only way to do that is to create jobs.