Main | About | Tutorial | FAQ | Links | Wiki | Forum | World News | World Map | World Ranking | Nations | Electoral Calendar | Party Organizations | Treaties |
Login | Register |
Game Time: December 5460
Next month in: 01:32:30
Server time: 14:27:29, March 28, 2024 CET
Currently online (1): Brazil25 | Record: 63 on 23:13:00, July 26, 2019 CET

We are working on a brand new version of the game! If you want to stay informed, read our blog and register for our mailing list.

Bill: Nationalisation of All Critical Industries

Details

Submitted by[?]: Democratic Socialist Party

Status[?]: defeated

Votes: This is an ordinary bill. It requires more yes votes than no votes. This bill will not pass any sooner than the deadline.

Voting deadline: August 2094

Description[?]:

All industries that are critical to the running of the country are nationalised so as to ensure good service is available to all citizens, regardless of economic backgrounds.

Proposals

Debate

These messages have been posted to debate on this bill:

Date18:45:42, August 10, 2005 CET
From Democratic Socialist Party
ToDebating the Nationalisation of All Critical Industries
MessageWe hope this bill will help bring equality to more people across Trigunia. Free government phonelines will provide telecommunications to all, so there is no disadvantage to thos who are poorer. Other nationalised industries will provide services at lower prices, and be more widespread. For instance, public transport will benefit as there will not be the pressure to only run the most profitable routes, so busses and trains can travel to less populated areas. This not only benefits the public but also the environment.

Overall, we hope this bill will allow all people to live a little easier, as they do not have to spend as much on critical services.

Date20:11:44, August 10, 2005 CET
From Liberty Party
ToDebating the Nationalisation of All Critical Industries
Message"All industries that are critical to the running of the country are nationalised so as to ensure good service is available to all citizens"

Do you actually believe that nationalisation ENSURES good service? OOC: food is pretty critical to citizens, maybe you'd like to ask people in North Korea how their nationalised farming is working for them? I hear their roads, electricity, water and telephone supply is pretty amazing too. How about Russia, China, Cuba - ciritical services are great there too. If I ever need a life-saving operation I'm heading straight to Cuba to enjoy the good service ensured by nationalisation.

The reality is that the only thing nationalisation ensures is that service can never be any better than the competence of the government, since there is no choice between suppliers.

The cost of service actually goes up because you have a monopoly supplier able to charge monopoly rents. The quality of service tends to be mediocre at best, since there is no competitive pressure to improve.

Since this is, without a doubt, one of the worst ideas in the history of politics, The Liberty Party will be voting NO.

Date21:00:02, August 10, 2005 CET
From Capitalist Party
ToDebating the Nationalisation of All Critical Industries
MessageThe Capitalist Party applauds the DSP for becoming more active and starting what we hope to be an active if unsuccessful opposition to the Government. We need opposition to be effective and active and hopefully the DSP, perhaps the Equality Party and others will fufill that role.

On the merits of the bill, we believe in the efficiency of the private sector and are against the state owning key industries. We echo the thoughts and arguments expressed by the Liberty Party.

Date08:59:16, August 11, 2005 CET
From Democratic Socialist Party
ToDebating the Nationalisation of All Critical Industries
MessageYou simply cannot compare the nationalised healthcare of countries like Cuba and Russia to privatised countries like America. Cuba and Russia are both very poor countries, and even if the healthcare was privatised it would still suck because no one can afford anything better. Countries like China however would be far better for comparison, as they are at an economic level closer to Trigunia. Over the last few years they have begun re-privatising, but in 1978 China became communist.
This is direct quote from an article published by the NCBI (National Centre for Biotechnical Information) in 1993 about the healthcare in China and how it has changed since 1978 and the nationalisation:

"China has made significant achievements in reducing mortality, increasing life expectancy, and providing primary health care."

The rest of the article can be found here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=8313490&dopt=Abstract

Also, government firms having monopolies is not necessarily a bad thing. This is because they aren't working for profits, so due to their large size get a lot of benefits that reduce costs, known as Economies of Scale. These come from buying in bulk, the fact that a factory that is 10 times the size doesn't cost 10 times as much, the ability to have specialised management, and many others. This all means that monopolies have far smaller costs than a collection of privatised companies would, and since they are working for the people, and not for profits, they can sell their services at far lower prices than a collection of smaller privatised companies could.
The monopoly of nationalised industries also allows them far more resources and opportunities for research and development than a group of smaller private companies has.

The large size also ensures better service as they can employ more specialized people than a lot of smaller firms could, so you always have an expert there. It has also been proven than nationalised industries provide a lot of jobs, more so than privatised industry. Nationalised industries work often with an almost limitless budget, and so can provide essential services, even at a loss. Such as with public transport, a privatised service runs far less often to far fewer places, which is bad for the people and bad for the environment. If the bus and train services were nationalised, more people would use them, and own far fewer cars, thus doing the environment a lot of good.

Finally, privatised industries are subject to the market forces, supply and demand, far more than nationalised ones. It is often argued this causes income disparities due to the profit drive. In short, privatisation makes the rich richer and the poor poorer. Privatisation destroys equality, and even without the rest I feel this is a good enough reason to nationalise.

Date14:31:28, August 11, 2005 CET
From Capitalist Party
ToDebating the Nationalisation of All Critical Industries
MessageYou should send this to vote to establish your party with the electorate.

Date16:58:39, August 11, 2005 CET
From Liberty Party
ToDebating the Nationalisation of All Critical Industries
MessageOOC: Actually I can compare the nationalised healthcare of communist countries such as Cuba and Russia to privatised countries like America since it is a direct response to your assertion that nationalisation ENSURES good service. These countries have nationalised health services that do not ensure good service. Moreover, the common thread among countries like Russia, Cuba, North Korea et al is that they are communist regimes where the state runs everything - and runs them all poorly.

I am glad you used China as an example. As the article you link to mentions, the substantial improvement you talk about began in 1978. Interestingly, 1978 is when China began its economic reforms, which began the process of moving economic management from the state (incompetent) to the individual (more competent). This has led to China's rapid economic growth and large amounts of foreign investment. This growth increased national wealth, allowing the state to spend more on healthcare, and inevitably healthcare improved.

However, in case you think that my illustrations of communisty regimes is simply a semantic sleight of hand, ask the British how they think their NHS is working for them. Alternatively look at Canada, where earlier this year, Chief Justice Beverly McLachlin wrote, "access to a waiting list is not access to health care" recognising that George Zeliotis, in being failed by the incompetent public system and denied access for reasons of political zealotry to a working private alternative was having his rights under the Canadian charter infringed.

As was neatly summarised in OpinionJournal, "There are only two ways to allocate any good or service: through prices, as is done in a market economy, or lines dictated by government, as in Canada's system. The socialist claim is that a single-payer system is more equal than one based on prices, but last week's court decision reveals that as an illusion. Or, to put it another way, Canadian health care is equal only in its shared scarcity".

Government firms having monopolies _is_ necessarily a bad thing, because enforced monopolies are ALWAYS a bad thing. It absolutely and by definition prevents anyone who can do a better job from doing so.

The operation of these monolithic services becomes operated by civil service mandarins who by and large are unaccountable (only the government stands for election - and they are likely to be replaced by another government equally incapable).

Economies of scale apply to all buyers, not just governments (i.e., there is little evidence that an entity buying for the whole national health service would be able to negotiate better prices than, say, an entity buying for a quarter of the national health service). Since even a privatised system would involve large operators they too would benefit from economies of scale. Indeed, they benefit more from economies of scale as they have a greater pressure to leverage their buying power as they are accountable to shareholders. As the civil servants operating public services have essentially no accountability, there is no motivation to leverage their potential economies of scale. This is why corruption tends to be extremely high in state monopolies, and why producers love selling to governments.

The monopoly of nationalised industry may ALLOW the resources for more research and development (although if, as you indicate, they have passed on their alleged savings through economies of scale onto the end-user to provide services at lower prices, the monopoly no longer has those resources (you can only spend money once)), the reality is that monopolies DON'T use their resources on R&D - they don't have to, since there is no reward for improving quality or service or technology (they are unaccountable and have an essentially limitless budget, they can just keep taking money from the taxpayer), what need to they have to provide improvements? This is most clearly evidenced by the telephony where decades under state monopoly ensured that telephone quality did not improve. Once the state monopolies were privatised and were introduced to competition, technology improved at a rapid pace, and prices plummeted. The reason that broadband took so long to appear at first was because telephone companies were monopolies. The reason that it spread so fast in the last few years is because competition among the now privatised companies necessitated it.


subscribe to this discussion - unsubscribe

Voting

Vote Seats
yes
  

Total Seats: 11

no
   

Total Seats: 430

abstain
  

Total Seats: 114


Random fact: Don't put "the" as the first word in your party name, because when parties are referred to in news reports, their names are preceded with "the", e.g. the [Socialist Party] has lost.

Random quote: "A conservative is a man who believes that nothing should be done for the first time." - Alfred E. Wiggam

This page was generated with PHP
Copyright 2004-2010 Wouter Lievens
Queries performed: 62