Comments by "Ash Roskell" (@ashroskell) on "Richard J Murphy"
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@Eimost : Yes, I get the idea, but just don’t get how that works in practical terms. When can you cash a bond, for instance? There must be restrictions, or the former owner could just cash them all on the day of the forced sale, forcing an instant purchase. Why wouldn’t they? In the hopes that their bonds go up in value? What does that depend on? The value of the company they just divested themselves of, or interest rates, or some other mechanism? This guy may well be 100% right in his assertion, but he sure as hell didn’t explain how any of the important aspects of it works. He left so many logical questions unanswered (at least from a layperson’s perspective) that I was left very distrustful of him as a source.
He might as well have said, “The tax payer doesn’t pay for it, ‘cause the computer says no.”
And that’s leaving out all of the other real world costs that are discrete to each case. Like when a water company’s pollution gets so bad that people start suing the water board for deaths or injuries and fines have to be paid. If we nationalised the water companies, which I strongly believe we should, where does that money come from if not the public purse? Each industry can be accused of real world harms for which the former companies would be responsible.
Now, you may be able to answer all of my questions and the many more that I have (most of them more obvious than legal wranglings over settlements) but that still leaves the question: Why didn’t he?
All I heard was, “2 + 2 = 3, because it just does.”
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@AlecBrady : I’m not suggesting that government bonds don’t work. Nor do I fail to grasp the basic premise of how the promissory note aspect of sterling works. I know what money is at a fundamental level. What I am saying is that this video does not explain its main premise. It sets out to explain why the tax payer faces no financial burden from the nationalisation of important public services, yet fails to do so. Indeed, it raises more questions than it answers. No intelligent viewer, starting with little to no knowledge of how nationalisation works, can come away from this video with even the basic premise answered, let alone not asking a heap of other important questions.
The mistake of this video is probably that the writer/s assume too much pre-knowledge on the part of the viewers. Which is odd, considering that people with sufficient basic knowledge will already understand the point he’s making and not require explanation.
He’s basically saying, “This works this way, and this other thing comes out like this, oh, and that other thing will result in this,” without ever explaining how or why these things should be the case. It’s like getting a lesson on grammar without ever teaching people how to spell.
I’m sure the choir enjoyed it. But I came to it hoping to learn something. I left with more questions than answers.
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@AlecBrady : After watching the video a second time, (to see if I’m just being a bit thick here?) I think I’ve identified two points that could have transformed at least my understanding. Firstly, the example he chose, the water companies: he doesn’t explain how they generate profits in the first place, which is not immediately obvious to a lay person. No one charges anyone for getting water from the tap, anywhere in Britain. The companies, presumably, get their money from the water rates, which are identified on your council tax bill, but beyond that, I have no clue as to the complexities of how they make money. So explaining a good, clear example would have helped.
Then the bonds: He tells us what was once done with them and something about what they were valued at, without ever explaining how that value is reached, what effects its value (either now or back then), or even the fundamentals of what a government bond is, how it’s different from just having cash; or what restraints or measures are put in place that make bonds fundamentally different to cash in such a purchase.
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