Do you support Municipalization or Nationalization of certain industries?

[ICRS]

Posted this in Off Topic, but decided it was more of a P&N topic so decided to post it here too.

I prefer municipalization of things such as housing, energy ,food and water and nationalization for things such as banking and healthcare. I think the current banking crisis shows we can't trust private industry any more.

 

[bamacre]

Do you really want the people managing Social Security and Medicare to manage more?

 

[Capitalizt]

No. The current crisis had it's roots in government intervention. Artificially low rates set by the fed and numerous mandates and government incentives to make irresponsible loans.

Government needs to get out of the way and let stupid people (and companies) fail once in a while. It will be very painful...like cutting out a cancer growth..but our economy will be much healthier in the long run.

 

[IronWing]

Municipal water systems
State/county/local roads
National health insurance
Local healthcare where private vendors not available
Union owned: mining, heavy industry, auto industry, airlines, textiles, most labor intensive industries
Private: banks, energy, food, most services
Corporate owned: nothing, dissolve all private limited liability entities

See JD80, I'm not a communist. I'm a mixed economy socialist.

 

[Throckmorton]

Originally posted by: Capitalizt
No. The current crisis had it's roots in government intervention. Artificially low rates set by the fed and numerous mandates and government incentives to make irresponsible loans.

Government needs to get out of the way and let stupid people (and companies) fail once in a while. It will be very painful...like cutting out a cancer growth..but our economy will be much healthier in the long run.

http://www.slate.com/id/2201641

 

[Throckmorton]

The government should take on any task that the free market has failed.

 

[bamacre]

Originally posted by: Throckmorton
The government should take on any task that the free market has failed.

LOL, so which "free market" industries, in your opinion, have failed, or are doomed to? And can you provide maybe a few examples of some industries that work fine?

 

[IronWing]

Originally posted by: Throckmorton
The government should take on any task that the free market has failed.

I somewhat agree with this sentiment. However, I think we have to look at the reason for market failure before saying government should intervene. In the case of health insurance I think we have decades of data to demonstrate that the free market simply can not provide adequate service at a reasonable price.

We want to make sure that we aren't asking government to intervene in failed markets where the failure arose because the market never should have existed in the first place. The current credit crisis is, in part, the result of the market for CDS that were in essence a game of musical chairs. The government has no real role to play there other than to kill the market by limiting the involvement of regulated banks.

 

[ICRS]

Originally posted by: ironwing
Municipal water systems
State/county/local roads
National health insurance
Local healthcare where private vendors not available
Union owned: mining, heavy industry, auto industry, airlines, textiles, most labor intensive industries
Private: banks, energy, food, most services
Corporate owned: nothing, dissolve all private limited liability entities

See JD80, I'm not a communist. I'm a mixed economy socialist.

I notice you put energy as private. Having lived in an area with government (Municipal) energy, I can say it is much better than private. Though I never lived in an area with private energy.

 

[brencat]

I think many people believe that 'progress' and advances in technology automatically mean this should lead to less suffering. "This can't be happening, this is 2008!" People losing money? Quick, get a bailout! Those companies are too big to fail!

Maybe if we started to let being stupid hurt more, there would be less of it. I'll take the free market and take my chances, thank you very much.