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merrylander
06-23-2009, 08:15 AM
Thinking about this topic I can only conclude that it depends on the enterprise, some work well as private some as public.

Case in point; sitting here reading the posts and the lights go out for 10 seconds - no problem as I have an APC battery backup. Of course I have to go round and re-load all the set top boxes, but power failures are so common here I have that down to a science.

Then I thought of the 14 years I lived in Ottawa where I did not have battery backup, simply could not justify the expense. We only had one power failure in those 14 years and that was when a transfoirmer the size of a two car garage blew out. It was replace by a trailer mounted transformer in 16 hours.

The difference? Here we have Constipation Energy a private enterprise preparing to sell its nuclear plant to the French (BTW the French do not allow foreigners to buy up French companies). Run by a former investment banker who could not find his arse with both hands and is absolutely clueless with regard to power generation. Its subscribers are overcharged to the hilt and some 100,000 are about to be cut off because they were unable to pay these outrageous charges.

In Ottawa we were served by Ontario Hydro, a public enterprise run efficiently and at low cost to its subscribers.

I am sure there are many examples of well run private enterprises and badly run public enterprises.

Unfortunately the private ones have all the lobbyists and propoganda machines. So we are now getting the Wall Street Weeping and Hand Wringing about "gummint interference" over the proposal that they need to be supervised. This from the same slimy bastards that nearly took down the whole economy with their greed.

MikeCh
06-23-2009, 11:41 AM
I think it's very difficult to assign the good vs. bad label on any business without knowing the details of it's operation. For example, perhaps the outstanding power service you received in Canada was due to "newer" plant in the ground/aerial or at the distribution points vs. the crappy power service in the U.S. that might contain "aged" plant in the ground/aerial or at the distribution points.

The bottom line is that monetary decisions to budget, build out or replace plant is probably easier to accomplish with tax money than with private.

Of course, all it takes from a concerned citizen is a phone call/complaint to your local PUC and THAT private company will get plenty of motivation to get things corrected.....but then I'm guessing you know that. :)

Mike

merrylander
06-23-2009, 01:16 PM
The Maryland PUC has heard from me and so has Constellation Energy and they have not changed one iota, nor am I holding my breath expecting change anytime soon.

FYI Otario Hydro does not receive taxpayer money, they run as a profit making enterprise except that they use the profits to improve and upgrade existing plant and build new.

Constellation on the otherhand was investing profits into non-related businesses and managed to lose their shirt.

Why is it always assumed that a public corporation is always funded by taxpayers? I realize that the Right would love to make everyone believe that is the case but when it comes to taking government handoouts private enterprise is well known to have both front feet in the trough.

Charles
06-30-2009, 07:01 PM
I was under the assumption that the giant multinationals had bought the government, and use it as their tool to extract the wealth from us serfs.

And they go to great trouble to keep us stupid enough to let them do it.

Any news on Michael Jackson?

Chas

Twodogs
06-30-2009, 07:42 PM
The main steam and chilled water plant for Kansas City has been bought by a French outfit too. They can still make electricity there with coal, but only do on extremely hot days when the price is right from KCPL (Kansas City Power and Light).


Oh, and MJ didn't make it. He be dead mang.

merrylander
07-01-2009, 08:02 AM
Geez, why don't we just stick a big "For Sale" sign smack dab in the middle of the country and be done with it.

Charles
07-02-2009, 08:52 PM
Geez, why don't we just stick a big "For Sale" sign smack dab in the middle of the country and be done with it.

Don't need to, the boys inside of the Beltway have it listed, along with themselves, in the classified ads worldwide, 24-7.

Chas

Kamakiri
07-05-2009, 07:58 AM
The only things that people will buy in a depressed economy no matter how hard the times get, are food, gas, utilities, alcohol, and crystal meth.

Unless you make a good bathtub gin or run a drug lab, every other business is a roll of the dice.

The best way to start a business is to capitalize on an emergent technology and create a demand for it. Back in the depression, it was radio. The first radio sets that weren't clunky, messy (read battery acid), and difficult to operate debuted in 1928 with the RCA Radiola 60 (if memory serves). Philco made it very big by condensing all of the componentry into a small space that could fit on a table using cheaper woods, and calling it a "cathedral radio". That was 1931.

Nothing like that on our horizon. Oh, but there was the prospect of war.....

Charles
07-05-2009, 02:19 PM
War'll work. That's the whole problem anyway, there's too many people.

Settin' off a few of them BIG firecrackers will fix everything, even climate change. 'Cause what few people are left will be livin' in caves for the next 1,000 years.

And since human nature hasn't evolved for the last 3,000 years, I can see it happening.

Chas


BTW, I reckon there's meth freaks in your neck of the woods too. Makes heroin look like ice cream.

Kamakiri
07-05-2009, 03:11 PM
War works, but not instantaneously.

The government signs out big contracts to pay for war stuff, and starts printing money. There's enough money being printed as it is to start issuing it in 1000 sheets per roll.

Prosperity didn't come to America until a few years after the war, and it came to the US only because since we had to destroy the rest of the world's crude factories which were supplying our enemies, ours were the best to do the job. That gave people a place to work to buy the stuff. A war here would never get the cogwheels of industry turning again on our shores.

Bethlehem Steel foundries that have been dormant for 30 or more years ain't coming back.

Charles
07-05-2009, 04:27 PM
Well, I suppose the United States is no longer the "Arsenal of Democracy".

But when it comes to cranking out fiat currency, we have no peer. And I'm afraid that it has become our turn to be the "sucker" in the next war.

So long as our elected officials retire wealthy, I suppose it doesn't really matter.

Please don't ask me what I really think,

Chas

Kamakiri
07-05-2009, 09:00 PM
Well, I suppose the United States is no longer the "Arsenal of Democracy".

Kind of ironic to look back on what George Carlin had to say about US policy back in Vietnam. Paraphrasing from memory, he said:

"Go in, bomb the country, and whip a little industry on them

(yeahhhhhh)

U.S. industry....

(YEAHHHHHH)

Because those are the middle two letters in the word industry, US......."

The whole reason that we helped those countries out with "industry" is that we knew that the ability to produce goods was the key to long-term longevity and independence for a country. Now there's no more industry at home. What has happened to us?

Kind of brings it all full circle to Mike's original post. Large corporations won't invest in the United States not because they'd rather be in China, but because of the moronic capital gains taxes that this country levies. Small businesses can't get off the ground because of lack of venture capital. Now, of course you'd think that if the gov't did anything, it would have made making available venture capital a cornerstone of their bailout processes.

Instead, with unregulated cash, the banks decided to play a game of blind man's bluff, holding the money and waiting in the bushes to use that cash to buy other failed banks, thereby swelling their respective empire. Of course, all this did for the banks was to gain more defaulting debt, and find themselves in risk of collapse because of it.

I have to kind of laugh to myself, as with all the mergers of my personal accounts, Bank of America owns my ass :D

Combwork
07-06-2009, 06:01 AM
Bethlehem Steel foundries that have been dormant for 30 or more years ain't coming back.

Would that be impossible? If dormant means the same as mothballed and not destroyed, could your steel mills be restarted if the demand was there? To the best of my knowledge, you've not had a war on your own territory since the civil war. Whatever you get involved in, although as a proportion of the population your loss of life has been as bad as everyone else's your manufacturing base has remained undamaged. After WW2, not only did your own economy skyrocket, you were able to trade benifically with much of the rest of the world. If the demand is there, and no-one figures out a way to hit you on your own ground, war could be a real boost to the American economy. All you've got to figure out is who to hit first................

Kamakiri
07-06-2009, 11:18 AM
Nothing is technically impossible, but I live about 10 miles North of the great steel foundries that once populated this area heavily, and there's very little left of them around here. The technology back then was from the late 1800s, which enabled the Japanese steel mills, with then-current 1950's technology, to survive and flourish.

Picture the same kind of effort it would take to resurrect a steam locomotive that's been sitting as long. Possible yes, but......

Twodogs
07-06-2009, 12:35 PM
In a sickening irony, the biggest steel plant in KC got cut up for scrap.:(

merrylander
07-06-2009, 04:22 PM
Well that's private industry for you, they were so busy wallowing in the profits nothing was done to upgrade the facilities.

Of course even if Japan had better steel plants they were subsidized by the government, had a very interesting chat with a Japanes trade official in the San Francisco airport over a few beers - young folks just can't seem to hold their licquor any more.