Electric companies are highly regulated utilities or government agencies because you’re pretty much stuck with whatever company provides service in your geographical area. To switch providers is pretty much impossible. So that’s an example of a natural monopoly where regulation is pretty much a neccesity.
Or are we talking about filling up your Honda? What’s the need for the government to own the gas stations, or for government to sell the gas to the gas station? There is no natural monopoly here, because while setting up a gas station costs a fair bit, there’s plenty of competition, and somebody else can set up a gas station literally across the street. I’m thinking of a particular intersection on my morning drive to work that has three gas stations on the three corners, and a 7-11 on the other corner which inexplicably doesn’t sell gas.
Setting up government run gas stations, or regulating them like utilities, won’t do anything to deliver cheaper fuel to the citizenry. If we wanted cheaper gas it would be better to subsidize gas. Except what we really want to do is the opposite, it would make more sense to raise gas taxes to discourage consumption, as long as we’re talking industrial policy.
What possible good could come from outlawing private enterprise in transportation fuel? Seriously, who thinks this is a good idea?
Since reorganization in 1971, the post office turned a profit for the first time in 2004 & 2005 (although those numbers still include heavy Government subsidies)
2004 - 3.1 Billion profit
2005 - 1.4 Billion profit
2006 - 900 million profit
2007 - lost 5.1 Billion
2008 - lost 2.8 Billion
2009 - lost 3.8 Billion
I didn’t go back and tally up the total losses for 1971 through 2003
Note: These numbers include the heavy government subsidies they receive
Efficient…hardly
No, for a variety of reasons, the foremost being that you can’t exactly trust mercenaries to always do what you tell them too, even when you are paying their wages. Someone else might just trump your offer, or they might start getting some odd ideas about who is in charge…
But it’s really an apples to oranges comparison. There is a huge difference between the Post Office (which was the topic under consideration) and the military. For one, the Post Office ISN’T a government agency simply providing a service to the citizens. If it was, then running at a ‘loss’ is pretty much expected, since the government isn’t expected to make a profit…it’s expected to provide the services that people need, want or that our representatives THINK we need or want (with the bonus that if a given Congress-critter can manage to bring some of that mana to his or her district then that will bring in money, jobs and, most importantly…VOTES! Woohoo, everyone is happy!).
If we ‘nationalized power’ it would be the Post Office all over again. The government would obviously have a monopoly on power (having ‘nationalized’ it and all), and so would run it in it’s usual inefficient, bureaucratically inept and inefficient way. It would be maximum suckage with very little actual benefit, since the government is not going to spend trillions on upgrading the infrastructure either…nor are they likely to be particularly successful at simply dictating new magic solutions or technologies to the problems of oil usage, power consumption or alternative fuels or technologies. In fact, they would probably stifle the process that is ALREADY happening, namely that the market is shifting to a desire for some alternatives. If you simply let gas prices rise naturally (or even artificially by increasing taxes a bit), then eventually you will reach a level where people WANT alternatives in sufficient numbers to actually drive an honest go goodness market for them. Just the opposite of ‘if you build it, they will come’, in the real world it works out to ‘if they are screaming for it, someone will build it because it will make the companies money by the boat load’…
The way it works in other western democracies is that because the government is democratically elected, they are actually accountable to the people. If the government sucks, the citizens don’t just give up like Americans, they get up and do something about it. That’s sort of the point.
“Peak oil” doesn’t mean we’re about to run out. It means the peak of the production graph.
It’s important not because of an absolute shortage–as you say, there will still be lots of oil on the market, for decades–but because of the difference in the supply and demand, what that will do to the price, and what that will do to the infrastructures that are dependent on oil.
Peak oil is not the end of oil, not by a long shot. It’s the end of cheap oil. Hope this helps.
Complaining about the post office is kind of odd, since for most of the history of the United States it employed more people than all other government positions combined, including the military.
The post office has to deliver to everyone for a flat rate, whereas a private company would simply refuse to deliver to rural areas.
As I mentioned, prices will slowly rise as the easier, more accessible and exploitable resources are used up. During that process, as prices rise, then currently unexploited resources will become more economically viable. While that is happening, other, currently non-economically viable technologies will become viable and will have their shots at gaining a market hold. In addition, companies will continue to develop other alternatives, which will also eventually get their shots at various price points.
Never said it was, old boy. Likewise, hope it helps.
You are conflating multiple things here, but the funny thing is that most (if not all) of those non-American ‘western democracies’ you are going on about actually have made a switch back to market based economies and away from nationalizing everything they can get their hands on. Sort of ironic, ehe?
Exxon-Mobil’s 2009 revenues were $301.5 billion. A $600 million investment equals two-tenths of one percent of their revenues. They aren’t exactly going all in.
Exactly. “Efficient” doesn’t automatically refer to making a profit; it also applies to whether or not the institution in question is capable of doing the job properly, profitably or not. Governments tend to do all sorts of things that are money losers precisely because we want them done, and private industry isn’t going to do tasks that never profit it. Not everything in the universe can be done at a profit.
Likewise, hope it helps.