People wonder where the laid off people will go. Some suggest this is the beginning of guaranteed minimum income.

Imagine how wild US cities would be if the US Gov’t didn’t directly or indirectly employ most of the working age population and pay them with debt.

There’s no greater motivator for random violence than an empty stomach.

I agree, one cannot underemploy more than 10% of your population and hope for social stability. In fairness, Spain has had youth unemployment of 30% for decades and has not blown up yet, but the restlessness and dissatisfaction is palpable. Young people live with their parents, who have some kind of security and share the wealth. But it makes for a weird society. Strange as Spain seems like it should be prosperous. The people are intelligent enough, the underlying infrastructure is excellent (buildings, roads).

What’s weird is the fetishistic worship of private enterprise in the United States. When it’s clear that private enterprise in mid-twenty-first-century capitalism mistreats its employees and betrays its customers. Just look at Enron, Uber, Bolt, the big banks. All of them are scamming everyone most of the time. A few executives at the top pillage public companies before parachuting out with their gold.

Still Yanks continue to post blind private enterprise and libertarian nonsense. E5 answer the post above with this tirade against the state:

Massive innovation, increase to standard of living, and wealth is what happens. That hungry stomach gets cut open by 7 other hungry stomachs who are protecting the property rights of the successful. 1 million government shovels and donkeys building hovels are replaced by mechanization allowing for your internet, computers, satellites, cars, air conditioning… government has never produced anything. Even the manhattan project was invented by the private sector as are all weapons.

A surprising take. History has shown that energy, transportation and medical infrastructure are better managed by state monopolies.^* In first-world high trust societies. The reason that the government gets such a bad rap today is that the West are no longer high trust or first world societies. If you have a bunch of corrupt and venal civil servants who think nothing of betraying their country and flouting the law, of course state ownership doesn’t work.

The fish rots from the head. Since we have self-interested, unpatriotic, corrupt and venal career politicians everywhere, few others think they should work like the country’s, their neighbour’s and their own well-being depended on them.  Which it does.

Civilisation is in a devolutionary phase now, like the dark ages. A reminder about roaming armed bands, every man for himself, rape and pillage, brigands on every road, sanitation issues with attendant plagues. Of late, civilisation doesn’t look like it will stop sinking until it hits rock bottom unfortunately.

^* Medical costs per capita in the United States are three to five times higher than the rest of the Western world, with no better outcomes. The hospitals work on the profit principle and most of the psychological energy is expended between the insurance companies and hospitals on how high the astronomical bills should be and how to bankrupt the patient. Medical outcomes are secondary. This is just a simple clear example of how the private sphere does not always outperform the state. Here’s a couple more. Privatisation of energy utilities lead to disrupted service, failed infrastructure, higher costs to the state to repair the damage. The privatisation of the railroads in England has resulted in colossal neglect of the lines, cut backs of service, extortionate pricing for casual travellers. This is not to say there are not counter-examples. Produce markets and distributed farming perform far better in private hands. Clothes making which again does not require massive infrastructure and top engineering specialists is better in private hands.

Train operators have estimated that passenger numbers will only return to 90% of pre-Covid levels in five years’ time, rendering previous franchise agreements economically unviable. So why on earth are ministers still wasting £100billion on HS2? https://telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/09/12/franchises-scrapped-lockdown-rail-costs-rise/

The UK Conservative government who privatised the railroads at great cost to the public purse in the first place is effectively renationalising the railroads, except with an out to funnel some profits in flat fees to the existing operators. I’m far from certain that those operators are necessary as well.

There’s a reason the government runs the post and usually the trains the world over. Certain high infrastructure sectors like gas lines, electricity networks, highways, train lines, hospitals and space exploration are simply better run by government. Of course, sometimes government administrators, pardon the pun, go off the rails. Fix the administration, don’t trust private enterprise to do the job right. Almost all of the sectors I named have very high safety requirements. Private enterprise weighs safety against profit. Private enterprise puts profit above all. Private enterprise will take money to stand down from their mandate (legal bribes: Amtrack deliberately sabotages rail travel as they are incentivised and encouraged to do so).

I’m glad to see at least that the UK operators are not being openly subsidised for lower travel, due to the Covid-19 lockdown. Those rail operators are businesses who took a business risk by bidding on and taking on these franchises. There’s no excuse for them to come back to government hat in hand, Covid_19 or not. They don’t profit share with us.