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Bill: Price Deregulation Act
Details
Submitted by[?]: Txurruka/Aperribai/Mayoz's OPX
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 2138
Description[?]:
| A bill to remove red tape for the more important firms in the nation. |
Proposals
Article 1
Proposal[?] to change Energy regulation.
Old value:: Energy is provided by private companies but the prices they can charge are regulated.
Current: Energy is provided by private companies which are not subject to any special regulations.
Proposed: Energy is provided by private, unregulated companies but subsidies are given to those on a low income.
Article 2
Proposal[?] to change The government's policy concerning phone services.
Old value:: The state regulates the rates providers can charge for phone service.
Current: There are no regulations on phone service.
Proposed: The state subsidizes the phone service of low income families but does not regulate the rates providers can charge for phone service.
Debate
These messages have been posted to debate on this bill:
| Date | 23:50:51, November 07, 2005 CET | From |  Txurruka/Aperribai/Mayoz's OPX | To | Debating the Price Deregulation Act |
| Message | The previous laws (and the proposed) make energy and phone usage affordable for all. The current laws do not. Allow me to explain why: Regulation, by its very nature, requires a government to regulate and a company to conform. The creation, enforcement and conformity of the price regulations all cost money (for example, you need to pay a bureaucrat to punch in the data so that they companies can be monitored. This is but one of a large number of possible examples). This money, in turn, is not being used to it fullest potential and is being wasted. The government that is spending money on enforcement could spend that money on health or education or even create room for a tax cut. On the other end, the company could use the money it has saved to increase technological standards, give a pay rise to the workers, give a larger dividend to shareholders or use the extra cash to undermine the opposition in a good old fashioned price war. Under the previous system, the government performed a simple action: take some from the rich to give the poor a hand. Waste was minimised and on the part of the companies, there was none. However, the poor have had this lifeline removed and had it replaced with a system that requires higher taxes and higher corporate waste, which as alluded to earlier, could be used for better things. Additionally, the higher taxes will require that the poor have still less money than they had previously, even without the assistance of the subsidy. Furthermore, price regulation creates a fixed market (ie one where there is an upper limit). Two things concern me about this. The first is that if the ceiling is not high enough, then power and phone production may no longer be profitable. If it is not profitable, it cannot work. This would also apply to a nationalised industry because at the end of the day, a government still needs more money coming in than going out, particularly given the tax dollars wasted on nationalising the industry in the first place. This deprives Baltusia of two very important utilities. The second is that there is now an enforced price, which means that power and phone companies no longer need to worry about competition since they know that their competitors can go no higher than they can, in essence removing an incentive to compete with price wars. For socialists, you dont seem to care much about the poor people. |
| Date | 14:36:56, November 08, 2005 CET | From | National Party of Baltusia | To | Debating the Price Deregulation Act |
| Message | Ahha, but if the systems themselves were owned by the state, waste would be furthermore minimized, and a need to make taxes higher reduced. As I mentioned before in a different debate, a single socialist act cannot sustain itself on its own. Without state ownership of these services yes, there will be waste. This is all the more reason to put these under control of the state. The emphasis for companies themselves now rests on quality of service, not price. A low-quality service will be removed from the marketplace quickly, as customers could switch with no heightened payment to themselves. |
| Date | 17:00:35, November 08, 2005 CET | From | Revolutionary Socialist Alliance | To | Debating the Price Deregulation Act |
| Message | A pathetic way to make a minority get greedy off the workers. We deplore this blatant exploitation for profit and hope others do too. |
| Date | 01:44:05, November 09, 2005 CET | From | Txurruka/Aperribai/Mayoz's OPX | To | Debating the Price Deregulation Act |
| Message | "Ahha, but if the systems themselves were owned by the state, waste would be furthermore minimized, and a need to make taxes higher reduced. As I mentioned before in a different debate, a single socialist act cannot sustain itself on its own. Without state ownership of these services yes, there will be waste. This is all the more reason to put these under control of the state." Bullshit and you know it. If you actually read anything I said, expansion of government regulation requires the government to hire more people. These people are paid from the taxes of the nation and the current system makes no allowances for the massive increase in red tape. Therefore, taxes must go up to compensate. Additionally, the money spent on these people regulating could be better spent on other things, thus getting the fullest potential out of every aureus instead of wasting it on some socialist pipe dream. "The emphasis for companies themselves now rests on quality of service, not price. A low-quality service will be removed from the marketplace quickly, as customers could switch with no heightened payment to themselves." By the definition of these industries, one cannot receive better service at another company, simply because there is only one product being sold: electricity (or a phone connection) which is the same no matter how you produce (or connect) it. The only way for companies to differentiate themselves in the marketplace is for them to have an aggressive price war, thus lowering costs for all. "A pathetic way to make a minority get greedy off the workers. We deplore this blatant exploitation for profit and hope others do too." By rewarding success and penalizing failure, the profit system provides a strong disciplinary mechanism which continually redirects resources away from weak, failing, and inefficient firms toward those firms which are the most efficient and successful at serving the consumer demands of their corresponding market segment. A competitive profit system ensures a constant re-optimization of resources and moves the economy toward greater levels of efficiency. Unsuccessful firms cannot escape the strong discipline of the marketplace under a profit/loss system. Competition forces companies to profit (which advocates of capitalism tend to equate with serving the public interest) or suffer the consequences. Under central planning, there is no profit-and-loss system of accounting to accurately measure the success or failure of various programs. Without profits, critics argue, there is no way to discipline firms that fail to serve the public interest and no way to reward firms that do. Therefore, they claim that centrally planned economies do not have an effective incentive structure to coordinate economic activity. OOC: Slavenka Drakulic made this point in How We Survived Communism & Even Laughed, where she argued that a major contributor to the fall of socialist planned economies in the former Soviet bloc was the failure to produce the basic consumer goods that its people desired. She argues that, because of the makeup of the leadership of these regimes, the concerns of women got particularly short shrift. She illustrates this, in particular, by the system's failure to produce washing machines (Wikipedia, 2005). IC: If the workers feel they are being exploited, they ave the legal right to go on strike and get better working conditions. |
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Voting
| Vote | Seats | ||||
| yes |
Total Seats: 133 | ||||
| no | Total Seats: 142 | ||||
| abstain | Total Seats: 58 |
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