[Rickenbacker]

Firstly any companies whose profits rely on cheap oil (airlines, plastics etc) but then all companies affected (in order of severity) by a global recession. Won't they just declare bankruptcy and dissolve? WHat will keep investors and more importantly shareholders fleeing like those proverbial rats? Do any private industries have an obligation to provide the services they currently do?

Is it public services or bust?

[thor]

Interesting point. The way I see it is that energy companies do not exist to do us a favor, so in case things turn sour as PO really kicks in, they have no obligation to invest and ensure future supplies. The privatised energy markets do not have any obligation to society whatsoever and have the freedom to do anything they want with their business. No?

[Rickenbacker]

agreed. I wonder if anyone does have any sort of legal responsibility to provide for the peoples needs. Otherwise we might regret ceding control of all our land and natural resources to secretive hierarchical liquidisable unnaccountable institutions. oops.

[katkinkate]

I've always considered it a bad idea to privatise vital social infrastructure (water, electricity, sewerage treatment, jails, health, education...). The company's only obligation is to maximise profit for the shareholders. The customers and quality of service is only of secondary importance. And despite this, so many of the worlds governments insist on going against me and privatising this important basic elements that keep civilisation going. And now they are going to find out why its such a bad idea.

[I_Like_Plants]

"Legal responsibility to provide for the people's needs" that's pure Communism, only in Communist/Socialist governments do you find laws like that. And the track record of those governments is not good, because while they were bound to those laws, they were also the enforcers of those laws, so you got results like the gulags, mass starvation, whole classes like the kulaks intionally starved/killed.

The idea behind the USA's form of government was to have a hands-off policy and have people free enough to look out for their own needs, on an individual and local basis. The track record of the USA is MUCH better in that regard, even taking into account things like slavery and factory conditions like those described in Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. (I always wondered why the family in the book didn't just start walking until they got into farm country, and get jobs working on a farm and get going on their own as farmers, like they were in the old country. I've flown over Chicago and seen the layout, in the early 1900s they'd not have had to walk far.)

In the US there have been some modifications of the hands-off policy, such as LBJ's unsuccessful War On Poverty, Nixon's statist racial-equality laws which brought about Affirmative Action and have done more to set back racial relations in the US than David Duke could dream about, and state welfare systems that result in costs per welfare recipient of something like $30k a year, while the people in need themselves are lucky to get $10k a year of it.

Beware people who say "We're from the government and we're here to help you".

[Rickenbacker]

good post plants. I wasn't advocating it, just wondered where the responsibility lies.
I guess its on us, and the problem is not the system itself, but the faith we place in it to provide everything it promises indefinately.
Back to my survival library! Hunting traps are next on the list. Theres so many deer in england that we cull them to keep them from eating the farms (we wiped out all their natural predators - the lynx, the wolf etc.) Im going to have to get over my queasiness about killing cute things.

[Wildwell]

Taken to an extreme..

The investor side of things doesn't matter a jot. Ultimately you can only claim against something you have invested in, when you are able to do so or because you can enforce that claim or it's sensible to. You can't get blood out of a stone sometimes.

Investment is a risk..period.

Likewise if there aren’t the resources, you cannot provide public services and it doesn't matter how important they are or how morally obliged you are, sometimes it just can't be done.

The government usually takes over, provided it has the resources, but most governments have very good ways of finding resources even if in some cases it means rounding up civilians or printing money – in some cases.

All privatised serves are protected by law, which is why it's such a laugh why some of them are privatised in the first place. Their job - at least by English law - it's to maximise the return for their shareholders. And they need to do this in any case to get investment. The public hate ‘fat cats’ and profits, but really if those companies weren’t making that money it’s down to the public to fill in the shortfall through tax.

Lots of red tape sounds like a good idea from the government side, but this can be very counter productive in the privatised environment, which of course doesn't fit in very well with public ethics if companies have ‘free reign’. Red tape potentially costs billions in some cases.

Take electricity. It would be no good a companies announcing next week the lights will be off because the secretary have overdrawn on the credit card and unable to buy coal. The people or its government are hardly likely to say 'Oh, okay then'...government has to step in and bail them out most of the time. It's very doubtful in many cases privatising essential services actually produces efficiencies and in some cases too much 'efficiency' is bad, especially in safety critical applications or where you need plenty of system redundancy.

[RdSnt]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('thor', 'I')nteresting point. The way I see it is that energy companies do not exist to do us a favor, so in case things turn sour as PO really kicks in, they have no obligation to invest and ensure future supplies. The privatised energy markets do not have any obligation to society whatsoever and have the freedom to do anything they want with their business. No?

[thor]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('I_Like_Plants', '"')Legal responsibility to provide for the people's needs" that's pure Communism, only in Communist/Socialist governments do you find laws like that.

[Doly]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('I_Like_Plants', '"')Legal responsibility to provide for the people's needs" that's pure Communism, only in Communist/Socialist governments do you find laws like that.

[I_Like_Plants]

There's a lot of it in the USA too, and we're also going down the tubes.

[Leanan]

I think governments will likely take over the airlines and such. After all, with globalization, they are competing with many government-run or government-supported airlines.

And really, it's not that big a difference. Our transportation systems are all massively supported by the government. Amtrak gets the most flack about it, but cars, planes, etc., are no different. Federal funding pays for most roads and highways. What use would cars be without highways, and could even the wealthiest person or company build the U.S. interstate system? No way.

Ditto planes. The only reason aviation took off was the feds built the airports. The FAA still funds something like 90% of the cost of building new airports. Then there's the government bailouts the airlines often get. Commercial airlines have never been a really profitable industry in the U.S. If we applied true laissez-faire capitalism to the aviation industry, most airlines would have long since gone bankrupt. Probably only one would remain, and its passengers would all be millionaires, flying at more-than-first-class prices.

[Rickenbacker]

Yeah, we privatised the previously state-run rail network in the UK, and now ticket prices are insanely high with overcrowding that would be illegal if we were cattle. Splitting profits between about 2000 different companies running the trains, the lines, the staff, the stations, the security, the shops, the on-train cafe's etc. etc.
And yet the government has paid absolutely tons (many billions, haven't got time to check, work in the morning!) to keep it running at some sort of acceptable level, which it isnt. I guess you could call it pseudoprivatisation.

lol I think coin the phrase "pseudocapitalism" for 'socialist' public service policies.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('I_Like_Plants', ' ')
"Legal responsibility to provide for the people's needs" that's pure Communism, only in Communist/Socialist governments do you find laws like that.

[Macsporan]

"Legal responsibility to provide for the people's needs" that's pure Communism, only in Communist/Socialist governments do you find laws like that."

Here in this vile totalitarian horror-camp called Australia we have such laws and they have done much to make our lives pleasant and prosperous.

Oh hold on, maybe Australia isn't Stalinism Under the Southern Cross, after all.

I lack patience with Yank Right-Wingers who a) don't know anything about other countries and are proud of it and b) think that any restriction on the so-called "right" of psyhopathic corporations to screw whoever they like to the ceiling is the moral equivalent of the Gulag Archipeligo.

People providing vital services should be mandated by law to do so. This can be written into their articles of incorporation. The "freedom" of unscrupulous, greedy corporations to leave people high and dry without water, power and gas is one we can do without.

In any case Free Market capitalism is an sado-masochistic Anglo-Saxon wank-fantasy that will be leaving on the same boat as the personal automobile.

Get used to it.

Believe me, by the time this is over you'll be on your knees sobbing with joy that the government is here to help you.

[gego]

This is an issue of allocation of resources.

It does not matter if resources are relaltively plentiful of relatively scarce. The same mechanisms should work.

In a free market, people vote with their money or other trade items for what they want, and the marketplace responds. If there is little corn and people want corn, the price will go up until it is enough to make sellers willing to sell. If corn is scarce, the sellers will get a high price and make a good profit and others will be encouraged to abandon what they are doing and produce corn, so the supply will go up to the extent that nature allows additional corn production. People make choices based on what money they have, what prices are and what alternatives there are. History has shown that this works the best at getting people what they need, both in good times and bad.

In a controlled market, government decides what is to be produced. This was shown to be a failure in many places, most notably the Soviet Union, where many things were produced in excess that nobody wanted, and many things were underproduced that people really wanted.

Many people think that the US has a free market now. This is bull. The government interfeers so much in manipulating things in favor of big money contributors that it is a big mess, but because people are easily deceived, they think they are free instead of slaves and they do not realize that the government directs wealth out of their pockets into the pockets of the priveleged few.

In spite of the inability of the masses to understand, when things start to go down, government will fail. I know many of you want government to come in and take care of you, but fortunately 60 to 80 percent of you will no longer be here in 40 years after peak oil, so those of us left will have little choice but to fend for ourselves and trade freely among ourselves. The people who call themselves government will likely have long before swung from hemp neclaces. I have little doubt that people driven by freedom and self sufficiency will be the most likely to be the survivors, and those "government is going to take care of me" people will be the dieoffees.

Since I have little control over what nature will deal us post peak, I plan to find interest in watching the collapse from a safe distance.

[Macsporan]

Gego.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'H')istory has shown that this works the best at getting people what they need, both in good times and bad.

[Doly]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'H')istory has shown that this works the best at getting people what they need, both in good times and bad.

[Macsporan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')here was rationing in America during WWII, if Wikipedia isn't lying.

Also, the fact that there is a certain amount of government control over pricing and/or rationing doesn't necessarily mean that the government will control the price of every item. In UK during WWII there was control over some essential items and free market on the rest.

[Rickenbacker]

Yeah, as long as the rations kept people healthy enough to live, I don't think thered be too much complaint about it, as it seems inherently 'fair', and the black market would be there for those little luxuries that would actually be appreciated in ther scarcity rather than scoofed down in a hurry on the way to work!

What I worry about it how likely we are to maintain our massive amounts of imported food when the countries we import it from will need it (and more probably) to survive. Though a quick glance at africa would suggest we've got a lot of practice in that arena.

The other main thing I worry about is distribution networks, of power, of food, of water, of materials. Either it has to come ot you or you have to go to it, both of which are going to become mega expensive. Nuclear powered electric trains are an obvious solution in small countries like the UK, but the US with its vast expanses of little occupied land may find it increasingly difficult to exist as one centrally controlled nation. I predict concentrations of population in specific areas, with their own governments.

Have we got ships that don't run on oil? It will be ridiculous if we go back to the days of sail ships, but at least thats a lot of employment! If not then I can't see how we can avoid having to produce what we need on a local basis.