Comments by "Michael RCH" (@michaelrch) on "Can onshore wind revolution lower energy bills in the UK?" video.
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Ah but that's the beauty of renewables. They are impossible to monopolise because the barrier to entry is so low.
In the past, if your town (say), wanted to set up its own energy supply, that was flat out impossible. The supply chains required to operate a fossil fuel plant are massive and global and dominated by a small number of huge companies. Think mines, processing, plant construction, maintenance, machinery, etc etc
No community can do all this do you are reliant on those big greedy corporations, as you say, and you're permanently screwed.
But with renewables, all you need to do is buy some solar panels, a wind turbines or two, probably a battery and a connection to the local grid and that's 99% of the job done.
Renewables don't just clean up the energy system. They open the door to radically democratising it as well. 😀
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@nighttrain1236 I am not advocating for nationalising everything. Only major utilities that are natural monopolies.
On trains, the U.K. spends almost exactly the same im subsidies, £11bn in 22/23, but it gets an absolutely embarrassing railways network in return.
I am not against properly regulated markets - there is no such thing as a "free market" - but they have their limits, either due to the tendency of the market to favour natural monopolies (rail, water, energy, mail, etc) or where the services are too important to the running of a functional and civilised society (health, education, policing, fire brigades, etc).
The last 45 years have clearly demonstrated the limits of privatisation of the industries. That needs to be reversed. The social democratic consensus of the post war period led to faster and more fairly shared growth in the economy and overall prosperity than the failed neoliberal experiment that followed it. We need to learn that lesson and get back to a much more rational balance in the economy between what is run for profit by corporations and what is run for the public good by the public sector.
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@nighttrain1236 @nighttrain1236 Wrong on several counts there. I mean its a nice talking point, but its a lie (not your lie, the lie of right wing narratives generally)
Let's take the water industry as an example. Since privatisation, it has borrowed £53 billion. It has taken £72 billion in dividends.
20% of customers' are now paying to service debt that the industry took on to pay itself dividends.
And what was the outcome? The worst water system of any developed nation. Illegal spills of sewage across the entire system on a almost continual basis. Illegal water quality in almost every river in the country. AND rising costs for consumers.
Also you say that shareholders invest in creating productivity. No, they invest in creating profits. These can be very different things in practice, especially in poorly functioning markets.
You have to give up the idea that markets work in all industries. They simply don't. And where markets don't work, then any private, profit-drivem enterprise in that market is going to abuse the market for its own profits.
Things like water, rail, buses, the mail system, etc are natural monopolies. They do worse when privatised for everyone except for the shareholders who get to cream off profits rain or shine.
I run a business myself. I understand why market dynamics are helpful in the right industry, but you have to get off this ideological faith in markets and accept that they have their limits when it comes to overall utility and efficiency.
I will use the example of the Swiss transport system again. The Swiss public transport system is the best in Europe. It is probably one of the best in the world. And the reason is because it is meticulously planned and designed to be incredibly reliable and efficient. Does this server the bottom line of some shareholders somewhere. No. But it serves the Swiss people who use it incredibly well. Here is a video that demonstrates just how good it is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muPcHs-E4qc
If this system was sold off and fragmented among multiple providers, the entire system would fall to bits in a sea of market bureaucracy, broken scheduling and interoperation, horribly complex ticketing and fee structures.
It works because it is a national monopoly that is centrally planned and well funded. And that makes it some thing that the Swiss are justifiably extremely proud off.
Unlike the UK train system which is an international embarrassment.
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