One issue with government based monopolies is the top provider who wins the contract has a chokehold on the network and infinite lobbying power to continually shift things in their favor, vs the consumer's favor. No one has ever figured out a way to weed out corruption and bribery from easy-to-target gov-based choke points. It kinds of works when the infrastructure is available to multiple competing companies, but it really only works when the infrastructure is available to all companies, without entry fees and legal expenses that only 1 or 2 companies can afford.
Yeah, this man takes human nature completely out of the equation. He’s the kind of teenage “socialist” who says, “if it was ME who ran the socialism, it would be perfect.” Any video with him gets an immediate downvote now lol. He’s obviously being paid by leftists using “free market” talking points to push communism.
The government needs to stop acting like a business supporting business and switch to supporting people by regulating business and collecting appropriate taxes. The rest is hair splitting.
South Africa is case in point of monopolies at their best and worst: National Party built them and operated them reasonably efficiently and added value to the (admittedly closed off) economy, but should have sold them off far sooner. ANC ran them into the ground, looted them empty, removed billions of dollars in value from the economy, and drove millions into poverty.
Rory's point about English speakers (25:30) not needing to learn foreign languages is absolutely spot on, yet bafflingly misunderstood. It's usually smug middle class British people themselves, who think they're Chomsky because they can ask for a wine in Italian, pushing the idea that Brits are lazy because they don't learn languages
The fact that English is the lingua franca makes a lot of people lazy, whether English or not. They learn that language and don't bother with anything else. In many countries, it's difficult to practice because they will just want to speak English. I live in Germany, and made rapid progress because I simply refused to let them do that to me, but I was also very motivated. Now, I regard people who stayed at a rudimentary level with snobbish contempt, bemusement and a bit of sadness because they've cheated themselves out of a chance to live a much more interesting life.
@@villeporttila5161 That was actually very much the point -- English speakers can be just as lazy beyond their borders, and it's not just the English. The point about not knowing which language to learn is almost irrelevant nowadays because you don't really have to learn any.
@@SJ-nl6xl By being good enough that it wasn't a strain for them, by showing a high degree of motivation, by being friendly and simply not taking the bait when they tried to slide into English. Most of them realise quite quickly that they're in fact the rude ones when they just try to exploit you for English practice. This was before the internet became sophisticated, and I was able to immerse myself in German media without distractions. I listened to news radio all day, read the cultural pages in the newspapers, which is where the language is at its most ambitious. I learn best when the subject matter interests me, regardless of degree of difficulty. In fact, the easiest things are often the most difficult to retain, I find, because they're boring. I learned French the same way. Language classes are the definition of "boring". My brain goes to sleep and retains nothing.
I see the main problem that wasn't addressed - once you've made a government-sanctioned monopoly, how do you then dismantle it or create a competitive environment after N years?
My exact thought, I like Rory and understand his reasoning for the positives of a monopoly in the early stages but it doesn't answer what happens when it becomes corrupt, exploitative and makes any rules it please because it has no competitor. A most recent example would be Adobe who I cannot stand and want nothing to do with them because they are one of the most corrupt businesses working at the moment who are rinsing customers and literally taking ownership of any work that is on their cloud system to be used for machine learning. The only issue is if you work in any kind of design or editing software like I do there is no alternative that competes with them, there are people who say there are other alternatives and yes there are but nothing that comes close to Adobe and that is the issue here... they created software that was miles ahead of anyone else, realised they had no real competitor and now they make up any rules they like because they have a monopoly over the whole thing. Its literally the industry standard for the entire design and entertainment industry and now nobody has a choice because we have slowly progressed to the point of no return. Unfortunately the only answer for me is to slowly remove myself from it most likely take up an entirely new business venture all together because there comes a point when you have sacrificed enough values that it no longer serves you its the other way around. Creating a system where you have no other choice is akin to a form of slavery.
The same government who enabled a monopolistic entity can dismantle it with no problem whatsoever if the outcome in the end is no longer fruitful to the initial goal. The US government did this to Standard Oil which wasn't even a under the control of the government at the time. Monopolies tend to be less innovative over time and that will naturally open the market up to more competition. By then the infrastructure and network would have been established by the monopoly. It's akin to how telco companies have opened up various opportunities during their expansion days that gave way to the existence of the internet later, merely by capturing as much of the market as possible produces opportunities that would have never arose if there wasn't a strive for near monopoly. Government-sanctioned monopolies aren't exactly a radical idea, the public healthcare system is a prime example of this. The majority of people use the public healthcare system and public hospitals mainly because of its affordability, which was the result of funneling tax dollars into one efficient standardised system handled by a few corporations whilst consolidating the process making it cheaper for everyone. But that doesn't necessarily mean there isn't competition in the industry, there are plenty of gaps in the market that are too niche for monopolies to serve.
@@eat_ze_bugs"nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program" - Milton Friedman. When you give a group special benefits at the expense of the many, the monopolist has all the incentive in the world to lobby and advocate for keeping the status quo, whereas the average person who loses only a few dollars each won't put up a fight
Some services like health care, police, fire departments and the postal service are natural monopolies and so best left to the government (which should ideally mean “the people” 🙄). Introducing free market competition takes away from the quality and reliability of the service. Imagine having to tackle a fire and having the wrong fire station closest to you. Or the American nightmare of ending up in a hospital not covered by your insurance. Also, making profit a consideration makes them dangerously inferior in quality. Some services should be safe from corner cutting.
In the old market you slowly artificially inflate prices and issue the extra revenue in the form of low interest or free start up loans to various companies looking to enter the market, creating conditions they can undercut to attract customers. You essentially wean people off the service the state monopoly -provided prior to disbanding it leaving the new competitors to fill the gaps. The problem with competition now is that it really doesn't exist, the same 4 or 5 venture capital funds Blackrock etc own between an 6 and 15% stake in nearly everything now each. Those are commanding shares, Its quite hard to fathom just how many assets under management these companies have but I started with Blackrock so I'll finish with them. About 8-10% of every penny you spent in the last 10 years probably ended up in their pockets they have 10 trillion in assets under management up 2 trillion from when I checked last Christmas and the next one is Vanguard with 9.3 trillion. This is near complete market capture given that the entire US stock market as of july 24 was Valued at 55 triliion. These are colossal sums of money and huge amounts of control in the hands of very few. So to answer your question, right now you can't. Or rather you can for at least the few weeks that It would take Blackrock and Vanguard et-al to acquire a controlling interest.
The simple question is in who's benefit are you intending the result of any intention to be ? the individual or the wider group. The answer extremely rarely turns out to either or, rather to what degree.
Ford did not have a monopoly, he simply made the better car for a short while. Musk did not have a monopoly, Tesla made the only EV which was not awfully bad and still does. The Post was a monopoly not to help it grow, but allow the state to to keep control over mail, and private couriers still existed, were not banned. Standard Oil gained a monopoly because they had a standardized product which worked predictably and customers preferred it, having a monopoly came later. In most countries the grid is a monopoly, at best there are smaller operators which own part of the grid but they are still local monopolies, and producing energy and selling to your immediate neighbours is basically banned all over the world: the national grid is a natural monopoly, but banning small local players does not help the grid at all.
Economically perhaps monopolies can occasionally help…however when a monopoly controls political and social messaging you create a nightmare and surrender control to them.
You realize you're talking about a utility? A government Monopoly is a utility. They can subcontract those out because with the user base is connected. These are usually run as services.
Monopolies are absolutely the most efficient mode of organisation in some times, places and sectors. That there should be single monopoly, and that monopoly should be bounded by geography, is an extra claim.
I've long believed that data protection concerns are a major blocker to opening up public monoliths like the NHS. Expanding provision to private hospitals and clinics is tenable if the government or some long-sighted, responsible public monopoly body keeps hold of patient data centrally. That information in the hands of for-profit private companies is begging to be monetised and sold on, absent hugely draconian data privacy laws, but splitting it up between providers loses the benefits and insights that can be leveraged by holding it all in one place.
This dichotomy comes up in many other 'big data' network applications, like electricity consumption, where there's a tension between market forces, which prefer disaggregating the end-to-end delivery to facilitate competition and the network effects of consolidating the data centrally. The tired 'public vs private' debate overlooks that dimension.
I think an Oligopoly would be preferred with specified rules of engagement, targets and funding, give the industry time to build up, and once the concept is proven, or a superlative alternative is found; remove the training wheels, and let the players gouge each others eyes out as usual. It's not stated plainly, but quite frankly it's a democratized, and legislated, orderly, cards on the table style of doing what the PRC is doing with EV, and to a painfully evident degree of success. It is time for us to listen to you, and emulate them.
The initial part about the cars is wrong. Combustion engines won the day beacuse of their durability and their range. He is right about monopolies when they are publicly owned. BUT private owned monopolies tends to push prices upwards.
Network goods can be classified as merit goods, which create externalities. My usage of the good, increases the value accrued to you, even though we may not know each other
You see this issue of "too many players" in software. Making a new "framework" is so easy, there's so little friction that new front end web frameworks come up constantly. There is also no solution, you cannot force people not to publish them. Then what happens? People buy into it while the ecosystem is thriving, then it dries up because people start the fun new project, and now you find yourself stuck in a technological tarpit you cannot unstick yourself from. Not to speak of all the people that become experts in technologies that are now undesireable.
29:44 "With profits going to the government" - erm, you mean "tendering out" to the private sector but not let them keep their profits? That makes absolutely no sense. Also, the hyperloop was supported by local goverment and its completely hopeless.
Yeah I'm not sure what he meant by that either. Maybe he meant nationalize it in order to privatize it later on. Or to get paid for the permit to be the monopolist. Not sure though.
@@plebjames but, based on what he said, these early business will most likely lose money for the 1st 5 years. so, he should talk more on who bear the loss
@@travelingparadise2823 in reality, firms that get government contracts are usually far too insulated from the consequences of their own failures e.g. the bosses of water companies getting huge bonuses even though they've received big fines, missed their targets and loaded the companies with debt
What I'd like to see is centralised advertising. Isn't it absurd that adverts themselves have developed this image of being an intrusive nuisance? Adverts can't even market themselves effectively? How about instead of ruining your experience of basically every service out there, we stick to a central location where you can voluntarily search for the kinds of things you're interested in seeing marketing for, maybe search for figures who endorse certain products/services who you want to support. Then a simple link to their website. There needs to be some impartial element to marketing, otherwise it's such a conflict of interest.
If there are monopolies then its not a free market. You could argue, but you would be wrong, that we need private monopolies in capitalism, but in free-markets no, its a paradox.
How do you deal with the question of so-called “natural monopolies”? These are situations where fixed costs to enter the industry are extremely high and variable costs are practically zero, which lead to the company that produces under these conditions to have a large consumer base in order to justify the massive fixed costs. Electricity distribution is one such case. Building and installing the transformers, the wires, poles/tunnels, etc. is expensive, but adding the little bit of wire to connect the next house or apartment is practically zero. So, in a perfectly unregulated market, you will have only one company willing to make the financial outlay to build out such a system,
@@oremfrien First step is to acknowledge they exist, second is to understand natural monopolies have extreme power and need to be regulated. You cannot use free market arguments in natural monopolies, because in this case, markets are not free. Should we allow natural monopolies to exist without regulation? Its a good discussion to have, what would be the advantages and the disadvantages on the absence of regulation? We can argue that regulated markets can produce the same results has unregulated ones by simply not regulating, but unregulated markets cannot produce the results of regulated markets.
@@josearaujo8616 Then I must have misunderstood what you meant. I thought that you were saying that the free market (implying some mechanism to prevent abuses) would not provide the conditions for monopolies. This is why I asked about natural monopolies. If you hold that regulation is necessary for natural monopolies to prevent anti-consumer practices, then we are aligned.
@@oremfrien My post was just to state the paradox in the title, monopolies are not free market expressions, nor can be seen ha such since they go against the concept of freedom. I also think regulation should not only look for consumer interests but to other sellers in the market. Regulation should protect all, not just aim for the lower price at the expense of other producers,
4:54 How is the current situation of the government enforcing all the rules of roads and traffic, akin to the government not intervening in the market? Just because it isn't making accommodations for driverless cars, doesn't mean the private sector is free of its influence. Only in the case of privately owned, unregulated roads across the city would that be the case.
He doesn't acknowledge the fact that when the service becomes valuable the vendor starts price gouging. He makes a case for monopoly while ignoring the singular problem, which is if one company has all the control they can charge whatever they want. A good example of this is power companies. This is a service that has tried to monopolize many times, but when it does they start sending their customers $10,000 bills in the mail, and the government busts them up, or sets regulations that prevent them from doing this. Electricity is a service that started out as a luxury, but over time has become a necessity. If power companies had their way, they would be charging luxury pricing to make themselves richer, and the public good of electricity and the upward mobility it brings would be locked to only the most wealthy who can pay for it. This isn't hyperbole, electricity is often used as an example for natural monopoly. See the history of the electric industry in the UK and US as an example. This is an industry that has to be heavily regulated to prevent surge pricing, and if you don't believe me look at what happens in Texas every time they have a snow storm. The only reason that happens is the lack of regulation and the companies use the excuse of "supply / demand" to demand customers pay outrageous rates. In reality this is price gouging in a disaster because they can.
Fortunately, competition to network effect is not such a big problem as he claims, since branding will tend to aggregate ~80% of the goods to 20% of the players. The superior competitors will emerge as those with the best financial management and marketing.
Norman Lumsden who played J. R. Hartley in the Yellow Pages advert, turned up at a night club in Cambridge (UK) backing in 1995 or so. He did an awful lot of dancing with numerous young woman. He did not appear to have a Yellow Pages with him! The nightclub certainly seemed to produce numerous opportunities.
I get that it might be a good idea to improve adoption, but say with the lockers idea, what do you do after 6 years or so when everyone is using lockers, and comes to rely on it. Then the monopoly can jack up prices after everyone has switched? The only competition element which keeps prices down in this model is that people have a choice "to not do the thing", but at some point it becomes like gas and electric - a necessity? I guess with the lockers example it might be easy in terms of new providers could enter, but they wouldn't have the coverage for a long time. I wonder if there is some new innovation or organisation that could be applied in house and land buying or selling, which seems currently a bit of a sluggish nightmare, snd given to drive adoption.
You would simply construct the monopoly limits such that once the business hits certain metrics, or level of adaoption the monopoly ends. Or because the government has joint control, they don't allow price hikes. Right now companies that have effective monopolies can jack up prices whenever they want and there's nothing the government can do.
agree. Also, I think the locker thing is better to be managed by local community, just like how there is a locker area for an apartment complex. If you want lockers to cover bigger area, sure you can; but, if a locker area covers 1 whole city, than, it probably already exist and called post office box?
This kind of economic government oversight was feasible and even effective until 1979, when free-market capitalism was replaced by laissez-faire capitalism. Much of the inefficiency of modern life in UK is that we have had a tendency to ideologically ring-fence government involvement in anything using Thatcher's ideals, rather than using pragmatism. The sad fact is that until we've revisited the natural boundary between public and private ownership and come to some kind of consensus, this rather more innovative and effective process simple won't be available to the country as a mechanism. BTW the boundary is (if you think about it), that anything which is a natural monopoly, infrastructure, and national welfare-based should be run by government, and anything else should be run by private enterprise. So no silliness with energy, water, and rail be in private hands, and no nationalizing the egg industry. Rail, water, and energy has never worked properly in private hands, and we've seen that the government seems to be unable to run car manufacturing particularly well. But once this dividing line has been agreed upon, government intervention then can concentrate on innovation along the lines described here. I'm hoping a few people in the Labour party watch this and take serious note. The only problem you have is that the Tories are ideologically opposed to government intervention in anything, so unless we can put safeguards in place they're likely to destroy and sell off government assets at the first opportunity they get. Again.
Important addition, land should be considered a natural monopoly, and probably the most important. Land value tax would be a good way to deal with its allocation
@@noahjohnson8740 Yes and no. Direct taxation on land - which we currently have in some form as part of Council taxes - will have a lot of unintended consequences. More important from my perspective is to reinstate the law of aggravated posession, and extend it so that land is used rather than held in abeyance as an investment. But taxes on assets is a different class of taxation than those on productive activity, which is where the real divisions between public and private ownership lie politically.
@@mikehutton3937 Council tax isn't really a tax on land, its correlated but it includes the value of the property too (its also based on 1991 prices and subject to other stuff). Taxes on productive activity have negative effects of reducing production, but land speculation is anything but - its withholding acces to a resource that already exists. I don't agree with taxing assets, but land shouldn't be seen as an asset you own its a resource you consume.
yeah no, we don't need monopolies. Saying "oh the poor were finally able to send post using the penny post" is not a good argument to have monopolies. The penny post was a normal post service that for some time it had a good business that outperformed the other post services. In every single example, a monopoly began with a great business in an ocean of other companies. In almost almost all cases, competitors catch up and everyone is on the same level and the cycle continues. A few years of monopoly is 100% normal and good and fine. A few years of monopoly is a good arc in someones life. More then that and it turns into "you die as a hero or live long enough to see yourself becoming a villain". Yes I am here after Google was declared a monopoly because they gave apple and others money to have google as the default web browser.
Well his argument case is: What if we want to provide a good or service ASAP, what if it vital that we do it? In this case waiting for the private sector to come up with a solution, especially if it does not make a profit at first, is not viable. In this video he proposes a crude solution. I am not sure I can provide a better one. Anyway the exact implementation is up to the government. Right now there are monopolies/oligopolies on almost everything around the world. Not sure what to do about that either. The Chinese seem to have found a solution that suits them though (make their own).
Consider that the American steel industry was greatly harmed by the lack of economies in scale possessed by foreign competitors, leading to its decline. The save is largely true of the auto industry and several others. The legal monopoly probably has little or no bearing on enterpernurial success, if not a negative correlation. Think Google
Government is very hard to work with. They are slow and expensive to work with. If the government "helps" businesses - it will overwhelmingly help rich and slow companies. Not a good idea. Here's one word for your proposal: Lobbying
Government monopolies are our monopolies, taxpayer monopolies, either they can stay government owned or we can have a tax system that lets private citizens own some but not all the shares. Private monopolies are dictatorships and should be avoided at all costs.
Rory, like millions of people, I admire your marketing videos. In this case, you would have been well advised to research what is going on in the development of electric vehicles and the liaison between the authorities and manufacturers. The task is huge and, as a result, is proceeding slowly and carefully, but it is happening
What you are describing is a return to good old Mercantilism my good sir, and not so much a Free market system. Private ownership doesn't make the system "FREE" market.
Two factors that have made electric cars more viable:- 1. Early electric cars suffered from needing very heavy "lead acid" batteries. Recent developments in batteries have made this much less of a problem. 2 Electronics, in control of motors, have enabled the use of, amongst other things, variable frequency AC drives and AC motors, which are much more efficient than the early DC drives.
Governments don't necessarily have to license the monopoly. There have been many recent successes in standards setting that drive interoperability between multiple providers that have led to massive improvements (the Internet for example). There have also been other innovative ways to seed new capabilities to the market, such as funded competitions (each player is funded, or the winner takes all sort of things) which encourages research and development in areas the Government would like to have developed for the benefit of the citizens in that country.
An English speaker should learn an obscure second language like Welsh. That way you can speak and write without most other people understanding you, except in a pub in Conwy.
If you have to go back to Henry VIII to find a good example of a system, which benefited from a government backed network effect, you missed an update patch or two mate.
Is this basically just economies of scale. The NHS only works if it's centralised and not not broken up and privatised into little bits because the savings come in scale.
This is inane. Why would a company do good business if it were the only game in town AND its priority is profit? The only way it would work would be if the priority were the service quality and the ownership were the people themselves in service to their community. Or else it would be just like things like parking authorities in Philadelphia and Chicago
You had me until "network goods work better as monopolies, so governments should invest in building them up." You lost me at "and then enable private businesses to step in and start taking profits." Literally the only reason why we put up with the wealth-concentrating nature of capitalism is that competition drives innovation, so innovation is a positive externality of greed. That's why regulations want to encourage competition. So when the network monopoly is successfully built up via government investment, why give it away to a private business at that point? It should be the other way around: private businesses can take profits from the initial build-up process by being government contractors, but once the network is up, the government should retain ownership of the new infrastructure, and either use the profits to fund even more infrastructure, or run the thing at razor-thin profit margins as a public service.
I feel like Rory is dancing around the edges of communism, which he tries to offset by involving corporations... once the network is up, it becomes the people's commodity, they own the means of production, etc...
@@ytubeanon And why exactly are we so afraid of treating certain things in a way that communism wants to? As in building a hybrid economic system, where natural monopolies like network goods are state-owned and run like communism, but markets where competition is beneficial remain in a capitalist free-market system. What is wrong with that idea?
@@sUmEgIaMbRuS as a Canadian I'm surprised you aren't aware how communism is perceived in America no matter the merits, it's political suicide, feel free to look it up
Are you really suggesting the govt pick “winners”? The powers that be decide what we need and make it happen? That is truly bonkers Electric cars failed because of range, charging and price. Exactly the same as now except govts are trying to create an electric monopoly. You have interesting ideas and are a great communicator but you do talk rubbish sometimes.
Lol monopolies have never ever been a good thing. Always ended up detrimental long term. Because to get to that point they have to actively compete by suppressing competition in very unethical and detremental to society. Earning the top position naturally is through competence and effort. Naturally there will be a competitor that is also just as good in different ways. That kind of competition spurs inivation and growth. Coke and pepsi is a great example. Can't think of any monopolize that didn't end well. Absolute power corupts absolutely. At the end government has to step on from out cry of the abuse of power that is detramental to the market and society.
This guy must believe in Santa Claus. 😂😂😂 Does he know about greed, corruption and the desire for power? Can he think about negative side effects for what he's proposing? I mean... the guy thinks monarchy is a proper form of government... well it for sure can be a proper form of government but for who, and for how many?
This is one of the dumbest things I've heard lately. Let's be clear, in order to actually have capitalism, we must have competition, but monopolies have no competition, thus they are not capitalist. What this speech demonstrates is that we need fewer advertising executives.
Guardian article. In this case does “regulation” mean “corruption”? 👇 Two-thirds of England’s biggest water companies employ key executives who had previously worked at the watchdog tasked with regulating them, the Observer can reveal. Cathryn Ross, the new interim joint chief executive of Thames Water and a former head of watchdog Ofwat, is one of several ex-employees working for water companies in senior roles such as strategy, regulation and infrastructure. An analysis by the Observer has found 27 former Ofwat directors, managers and consultants working in the industry they helped to regulate, with about half in senior posts.The findings have raised fresh concerns over a revolving door between the regulator and the industry. “There is a merry-go-round between the core regulators and the regulated utilities,” said Sir Dieter Helm, a former government adviser and professor of economic policy at Oxford University. “Regulators are not paid very well, and if there is the potential of future jobs in the firms they regulate, it creates potential conflicts of interest.” Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrats’ environment spokesperson, said there should be more robust rules and vetting procedures for former regulators moving to the private sector. Calls for a crackdown on the revolving door come amid concerns that Thames Water is at risk of collapse from about £14bn of debts. There is public anger that water companies were allowed to pay out billions of pounds to shareholders by borrowing vast sums against their previously publicly owned assets.
One issue with government based monopolies is the top provider who wins the contract has a chokehold on the network and infinite lobbying power to continually shift things in their favor, vs the consumer's favor. No one has ever figured out a way to weed out corruption and bribery from easy-to-target gov-based choke points. It kinds of works when the infrastructure is available to multiple competing companies, but it really only works when the infrastructure is available to all companies, without entry fees and legal expenses that only 1 or 2 companies can afford.
Yeah, this man takes human nature completely out of the equation. He’s the kind of teenage “socialist” who says, “if it was ME who ran the socialism, it would be perfect.”
Any video with him gets an immediate downvote now lol. He’s obviously being paid by leftists using “free market” talking points to push communism.
Wow, if only there were some rules of some sort they could put in place that could prevent such things.
they never worked, ever.@@eomoran
That's why you just make the company non profit
Lol ; )
Rory should be the next Dr. WHO.
Daaaamn
hes basically perfect I'd like to see that
Just as fictional.
He has the correct feel as the Dr should have
@@ArandomNutter That's not a coincidence. The man is a sophist.
The government needs to stop acting like a business supporting business and switch to supporting people by regulating business and collecting appropriate taxes. The rest is hair splitting.
This is like a Ted talk but with swearing
Much too funny!
If I did a Ted talk and someone said that to me afterwards, I would take that as a bold face compliment xD
South Africa is case in point of monopolies at their best and worst: National Party built them and operated them reasonably efficiently and added value to the (admittedly closed off) economy, but should have sold them off far sooner.
ANC ran them into the ground, looted them empty, removed billions of dollars in value from the economy, and drove millions into poverty.
This man is such a genius in this silly world
Rory's point about English speakers (25:30) not needing to learn foreign languages is absolutely spot on, yet bafflingly misunderstood. It's usually smug middle class British people themselves, who think they're Chomsky because they can ask for a wine in Italian, pushing the idea that Brits are lazy because they don't learn languages
The fact that English is the lingua franca makes a lot of people lazy, whether English or not. They learn that language and don't bother with anything else. In many countries, it's difficult to practice because they will just want to speak English. I live in Germany, and made rapid progress because I simply refused to let them do that to me, but I was also very motivated. Now, I regard people who stayed at a rudimentary level with snobbish contempt, bemusement and a bit of sadness because they've cheated themselves out of a chance to live a much more interesting life.
@@robertalenrichter obviously the point doesn't apply if you live in the country
@@villeporttila5161 That was actually very much the point -- English speakers can be just as lazy beyond their borders, and it's not just the English. The point about not knowing which language to learn is almost irrelevant nowadays because you don't really have to learn any.
how where you able to force them to speak German with out being rude. Thks @@robertalenrichter
@@SJ-nl6xl By being good enough that it wasn't a strain for them, by showing a high degree of motivation, by being friendly and simply not taking the bait when they tried to slide into English. Most of them realise quite quickly that they're in fact the rude ones when they just try to exploit you for English practice. This was before the internet became sophisticated, and I was able to immerse myself in German media without distractions. I listened to news radio all day, read the cultural pages in the newspapers, which is where the language is at its most ambitious. I learn best when the subject matter interests me, regardless of degree of difficulty. In fact, the easiest things are often the most difficult to retain, I find, because they're boring. I learned French the same way. Language classes are the definition of "boring". My brain goes to sleep and retains nothing.
I see the main problem that wasn't addressed - once you've made a government-sanctioned monopoly, how do you then dismantle it or create a competitive environment after N years?
My exact thought, I like Rory and understand his reasoning for the positives of a monopoly in the early stages but it doesn't answer what happens when it becomes corrupt, exploitative and makes any rules it please because it has no competitor.
A most recent example would be Adobe who I cannot stand and want nothing to do with them because they are one of the most corrupt businesses working at the moment who are rinsing customers and literally taking ownership of any work that is on their cloud system to be used for machine learning. The only issue is if you work in any kind of design or editing software like I do there is no alternative that competes with them, there are people who say there are other alternatives and yes there are but nothing that comes close to Adobe and that is the issue here... they created software that was miles ahead of anyone else, realised they had no real competitor and now they make up any rules they like because they have a monopoly over the whole thing. Its literally the industry standard for the entire design and entertainment industry and now nobody has a choice because we have slowly progressed to the point of no return.
Unfortunately the only answer for me is to slowly remove myself from it most likely take up an entirely new business venture all together because there comes a point when you have sacrificed enough values that it no longer serves you its the other way around. Creating a system where you have no other choice is akin to a form of slavery.
The same government who enabled a monopolistic entity can dismantle it with no problem whatsoever if the outcome in the end is no longer fruitful to the initial goal. The US government did this to Standard Oil which wasn't even a under the control of the government at the time. Monopolies tend to be less innovative over time and that will naturally open the market up to more competition. By then the infrastructure and network would have been established by the monopoly. It's akin to how telco companies have opened up various opportunities during their expansion days that gave way to the existence of the internet later, merely by capturing as much of the market as possible produces opportunities that would have never arose if there wasn't a strive for near monopoly.
Government-sanctioned monopolies aren't exactly a radical idea, the public healthcare system is a prime example of this. The majority of people use the public healthcare system and public hospitals mainly because of its affordability, which was the result of funneling tax dollars into one efficient standardised system handled by a few corporations whilst consolidating the process making it cheaper for everyone. But that doesn't necessarily mean there isn't competition in the industry, there are plenty of gaps in the market that are too niche for monopolies to serve.
@@eat_ze_bugs"nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program" - Milton Friedman. When you give a group special benefits at the expense of the many, the monopolist has all the incentive in the world to lobby and advocate for keeping the status quo, whereas the average person who loses only a few dollars each won't put up a fight
Some services like health care, police, fire departments and the postal service are natural monopolies and so best left to the government (which should ideally mean “the people” 🙄). Introducing free market competition takes away from the quality and reliability of the service. Imagine having to tackle a fire and having the wrong fire station closest to you. Or the American nightmare of ending up in a hospital not covered by your insurance. Also, making profit a consideration makes them dangerously inferior in quality. Some services should be safe from corner cutting.
In the old market you slowly artificially inflate prices and issue the extra revenue in the form of low interest or free start up loans to various companies looking to enter the market, creating conditions they can undercut to attract customers. You essentially wean people off the service the state monopoly -provided prior to disbanding it leaving the new competitors to fill the gaps.
The problem with competition now is that it really doesn't exist, the same 4 or 5 venture capital funds Blackrock etc own between an 6 and 15% stake in nearly everything now each. Those are commanding shares,
Its quite hard to fathom just how many assets under management these companies have but I started with Blackrock so I'll finish with them. About 8-10% of every penny you spent in the last 10 years probably ended up in their pockets they have 10 trillion in assets under management up 2 trillion from when I checked last Christmas and the next one is Vanguard with 9.3 trillion.
This is near complete market capture given that the entire US stock market as of july 24 was Valued at 55 triliion.
These are colossal sums of money and huge amounts of control in the hands of very few.
So to answer your question, right now you can't.
Or rather you can for at least the few weeks that It would take Blackrock and Vanguard et-al to acquire a controlling interest.
District heating via shared ground/water source heat pumps in dense urban areas. Utterly impossible to solve without being government imposed.
Governments are the thing that prevents this.. so many illegal processes involved..
Auroville.
Not true. Impossible to solve without monopoly.
@@Jac486 and if something is a natural monopoly it needs to be accountable through the machinery of government.
Big Rory fan, his captivating delivery makes others seem bland and unwatchable in comparison.
Why do we always compare one with another?
The simple question is in who's benefit are you intending the result of any intention to be ? the individual or the wider group. The answer extremely rarely turns out to either or, rather to what degree.
Ford did not have a monopoly, he simply made the better car for a short while. Musk did not have a monopoly, Tesla made the only EV which was not awfully bad and still does. The Post was a monopoly not to help it grow, but allow the state to to keep control over mail, and private couriers still existed, were not banned. Standard Oil gained a monopoly because they had a standardized product which worked predictably and customers preferred it, having a monopoly came later.
In most countries the grid is a monopoly, at best there are smaller operators which own part of the grid but they are still local monopolies, and producing energy and selling to your immediate neighbours is basically banned all over the world: the national grid is a natural monopoly, but banning small local players does not help the grid at all.
Economically perhaps monopolies can occasionally help…however when a monopoly controls political and social messaging you create a nightmare and surrender control to them.
Early electric car batteries were very heavy. That was the decisive factor apparently.
I assume the range was terrible too.
@@richardc316 and not all homes had electricity supply, especially out of the big cities
They still are.
@@richardc316 same problem
agree. I think this is the most important factor than the one he brought up
For non network things. This does kind of exist. Isn't that what patents do. Grant monopoly and incentivize innovation.
I guess but aren't patents quite limited? As in you might not be able to patent the whole idea but a small part?
You realize you're talking about a utility? A government Monopoly is a utility. They can subcontract those out because with the user base is connected. These are usually run as services.
Australian here we actually encourage innovation and development. We even have a TV show that discusses marketing called gruen
Monopolies are absolutely the most efficient mode of organisation in some times, places and sectors.
That there should be single monopoly, and that monopoly should be bounded by geography, is an extra claim.
I've long believed that data protection concerns are a major blocker to opening up public monoliths like the NHS. Expanding provision to private hospitals and clinics is tenable if the government or some long-sighted, responsible public monopoly body keeps hold of patient data centrally. That information in the hands of for-profit private companies is begging to be monetised and sold on, absent hugely draconian data privacy laws, but splitting it up between providers loses the benefits and insights that can be leveraged by holding it all in one place.
This dichotomy comes up in many other 'big data' network applications, like electricity consumption, where there's a tension between market forces, which prefer disaggregating the end-to-end delivery to facilitate competition and the network effects of consolidating the data centrally. The tired 'public vs private' debate overlooks that dimension.
Perfect! A lot good exhamples from history. Worths every minute:)
I think an Oligopoly would be preferred with specified rules of engagement, targets and funding, give the industry time to build up, and once the concept is proven, or a superlative alternative is found; remove the training wheels, and let the players gouge each others eyes out as usual.
It's not stated plainly, but quite frankly it's a democratized, and legislated, orderly, cards on the table style of doing what the PRC is doing with EV, and to a painfully evident degree of success. It is time for us to listen to you, and emulate them.
The initial part about the cars is wrong. Combustion engines won the day beacuse of their durability and their range. He is right about monopolies when they are publicly owned. BUT private owned monopolies tends to push prices upwards.
Network goods can be classified as merit goods, which create externalities.
My usage of the good, increases the value accrued to you, even though we may not know each other
You see this issue of "too many players" in software.
Making a new "framework" is so easy, there's so little friction that new front end web frameworks come up constantly.
There is also no solution, you cannot force people not to publish them.
Then what happens? People buy into it while the ecosystem is thriving, then it dries up because people start the fun new project, and now you find yourself stuck in a technological tarpit you cannot unstick yourself from.
Not to speak of all the people that become experts in technologies that are now undesireable.
29:44
"With profits going to the government" - erm, you mean "tendering out" to the private sector but not let them keep their profits? That makes absolutely no sense.
Also, the hyperloop was supported by local goverment and its completely hopeless.
Yeah I'm not sure what he meant by that either. Maybe he meant nationalize it in order to privatize it later on. Or to get paid for the permit to be the monopolist. Not sure though.
He means licence it and some of the profits go the government (either as a flat fee or a share of the profits)
@@plebjames but, based on what he said, these early business will most likely lose money for the 1st 5 years. so, he should talk more on who bear the loss
@@travelingparadise2823 in reality, firms that get government contracts are usually far too insulated from the consequences of their own failures e.g. the bosses of water companies getting huge bonuses even though they've received big fines, missed their targets and loaded the companies with debt
What I'd like to see is centralised advertising. Isn't it absurd that adverts themselves have developed this image of being an intrusive nuisance? Adverts can't even market themselves effectively?
How about instead of ruining your experience of basically every service out there, we stick to a central location where you can voluntarily search for the kinds of things you're interested in seeing marketing for, maybe search for figures who endorse certain products/services who you want to support. Then a simple link to their website.
There needs to be some impartial element to marketing, otherwise it's such a conflict of interest.
29:00 What he's describing has already been invented. It's called a patent.
This is basically the cheobol system that led to the present day S.Korea economy.
It has down side but does it damn sure work!!
If there are monopolies then its not a free market. You could argue, but you would be wrong, that we need private monopolies in capitalism, but in free-markets no, its a paradox.
How do you deal with the question of so-called “natural monopolies”? These are situations where fixed costs to enter the industry are extremely high and variable costs are practically zero, which lead to the company that produces under these conditions to have a large consumer base in order to justify the massive fixed costs.
Electricity distribution is one such case. Building and installing the transformers, the wires, poles/tunnels, etc. is expensive, but adding the little bit of wire to connect the next house or apartment is practically zero. So, in a perfectly unregulated market, you will have only one company willing to make the financial outlay to build out such a system,
@@oremfrien First step is to acknowledge they exist, second is to understand natural monopolies have extreme power and need to be regulated. You cannot use free market arguments in natural monopolies, because in this case, markets are not free.
Should we allow natural monopolies to exist without regulation? Its a good discussion to have, what would be the advantages and the disadvantages on the absence of regulation? We can argue that regulated markets can produce the same results has unregulated ones by simply not regulating, but unregulated markets cannot produce the results of regulated markets.
@@josearaujo8616 Then I must have misunderstood what you meant. I thought that you were saying that the free market (implying some mechanism to prevent abuses) would not provide the conditions for monopolies. This is why I asked about natural monopolies.
If you hold that regulation is necessary for natural monopolies to prevent anti-consumer practices, then we are aligned.
@@oremfrien My post was just to state the paradox in the title, monopolies are not free market expressions, nor can be seen ha such since they go against the concept of freedom.
I also think regulation should not only look for consumer interests but to other sellers in the market. Regulation should protect all, not just aim for the lower price at the expense of other producers,
So a free market destroys itself as fast as it humanly can?
If it’s a monopoly. May as well have it belong to the government.
Then you could maybe have some control over it.
4:54 How is the current situation of the government enforcing all the rules of roads and traffic, akin to the government not intervening in the market?
Just because it isn't making accommodations for driverless cars, doesn't mean the private sector is free of its influence. Only in the case of privately owned, unregulated roads across the city would that be the case.
28:30 that's a fantastic point!
He doesn't acknowledge the fact that when the service becomes valuable the vendor starts price gouging. He makes a case for monopoly while ignoring the singular problem, which is if one company has all the control they can charge whatever they want.
A good example of this is power companies. This is a service that has tried to monopolize many times, but when it does they start sending their customers $10,000 bills in the mail, and the government busts them up, or sets regulations that prevent them from doing this. Electricity is a service that started out as a luxury, but over time has become a necessity. If power companies had their way, they would be charging luxury pricing to make themselves richer, and the public good of electricity and the upward mobility it brings would be locked to only the most wealthy who can pay for it. This isn't hyperbole, electricity is often used as an example for natural monopoly.
See the history of the electric industry in the UK and US as an example. This is an industry that has to be heavily regulated to prevent surge pricing, and if you don't believe me look at what happens in Texas every time they have a snow storm. The only reason that happens is the lack of regulation and the companies use the excuse of "supply / demand" to demand customers pay outrageous rates. In reality this is price gouging in a disaster because they can.
Fortunately, competition to network effect is not such a big problem as he claims, since branding will tend to aggregate ~80% of the goods to 20% of the players. The superior competitors will emerge as those with the best financial management and marketing.
Short-term government monopolies didn't work out with patents, or copyright. Why would this be any different?
Norman Lumsden who played J. R. Hartley in the Yellow Pages advert, turned up at a night club in Cambridge (UK) backing in 1995 or so. He did an awful lot of dancing with numerous young woman. He did not appear to have a Yellow Pages with him! The nightclub certainly seemed to produce numerous opportunities.
Entertaining survey with lively examples.
Mr. Sutherland nay have reinvented "patents..."
22:24 Or we all adopt an open, interoperable standard. We make the standard a Monopoly and not the companies themselves.
Edit the video down to half the length by snipping out occurrences of "OK" and "kind of"
I get that it might be a good idea to improve adoption, but say with the lockers idea, what do you do after 6 years or so when everyone is using lockers, and comes to rely on it. Then the monopoly can jack up prices after everyone has switched? The only competition element which keeps prices down in this model is that people have a choice "to not do the thing", but at some point it becomes like gas and electric - a necessity?
I guess with the lockers example it might be easy in terms of new providers could enter, but they wouldn't have the coverage for a long time.
I wonder if there is some new innovation or organisation that could be applied in house and land buying or selling, which seems currently a bit of a sluggish nightmare, snd given to drive adoption.
The monopoly would be limited to 5 years 🙂
You would simply construct the monopoly limits such that once the business hits certain metrics, or level of adaoption the monopoly ends. Or because the government has joint control, they don't allow price hikes.
Right now companies that have effective monopolies can jack up prices whenever they want and there's nothing the government can do.
agree. Also, I think the locker thing is better to be managed by local community, just like how there is a locker area for an apartment complex. If you want lockers to cover bigger area, sure you can; but, if a locker area covers 1 whole city, than, it probably already exist and called post office box?
The government has a role in business. That's why it's called political economy.
'pop on a rugby shirt..' class.
New drinking game, drink each time you hear "ok"
I ran out of alcohol, I had to buy more before the mid point
One thing worse than a public monopoly is a private monopoly
This kind of economic government oversight was feasible and even effective until 1979, when free-market capitalism was replaced by laissez-faire capitalism. Much of the inefficiency of modern life in UK is that we have had a tendency to ideologically ring-fence government involvement in anything using Thatcher's ideals, rather than using pragmatism. The sad fact is that until we've revisited the natural boundary between public and private ownership and come to some kind of consensus, this rather more innovative and effective process simple won't be available to the country as a mechanism.
BTW the boundary is (if you think about it), that anything which is a natural monopoly, infrastructure, and national welfare-based should be run by government, and anything else should be run by private enterprise. So no silliness with energy, water, and rail be in private hands, and no nationalizing the egg industry. Rail, water, and energy has never worked properly in private hands, and we've seen that the government seems to be unable to run car manufacturing particularly well. But once this dividing line has been agreed upon, government intervention then can concentrate on innovation along the lines described here.
I'm hoping a few people in the Labour party watch this and take serious note. The only problem you have is that the Tories are ideologically opposed to government intervention in anything, so unless we can put safeguards in place they're likely to destroy and sell off government assets at the first opportunity they get. Again.
saved me typing it, thank you!
Important addition, land should be considered a natural monopoly, and probably the most important. Land value tax would be a good way to deal with its allocation
@@noahjohnson8740 Yes and no. Direct taxation on land - which we currently have in some form as part of Council taxes - will have a lot of unintended consequences. More important from my perspective is to reinstate the law of aggravated posession, and extend it so that land is used rather than held in abeyance as an investment. But taxes on assets is a different class of taxation than those on productive activity, which is where the real divisions between public and private ownership lie politically.
@@mikehutton3937 Council tax isn't really a tax on land, its correlated but it includes the value of the property too (its also based on 1991 prices and subject to other stuff). Taxes on productive activity have negative effects of reducing production, but land speculation is anything but - its withholding acces to a resource that already exists.
I don't agree with taxing assets, but land shouldn't be seen as an asset you own its a resource you consume.
yeah no, we don't need monopolies. Saying "oh the poor were finally able to send post using the penny post" is not a good argument to have monopolies. The penny post was a normal post service that for some time it had a good business that outperformed the other post services. In every single example, a monopoly began with a great business in an ocean of other companies. In almost almost all cases, competitors catch up and everyone is on the same level and the cycle continues. A few years of monopoly is 100% normal and good and fine. A few years of monopoly is a good arc in someones life. More then that and it turns into "you die as a hero or live long enough to see yourself becoming a villain".
Yes I am here after Google was declared a monopoly because they gave apple and others money to have google as the default web browser.
Well his argument case is: What if we want to provide a good or service ASAP, what if it vital that we do it? In this case waiting for the private sector to come up with a solution, especially if it does not make a profit at first, is not viable.
In this video he proposes a crude solution. I am not sure I can provide a better one. Anyway the exact implementation is up to the government.
Right now there are monopolies/oligopolies on almost everything around the world. Not sure what to do about that either. The Chinese seem to have found a solution that suits them though (make their own).
excellent
Consider that the American steel industry was greatly harmed by the lack of economies in scale possessed by foreign competitors, leading to its decline. The save is largely true of the auto industry and several others.
The legal monopoly probably has little or no bearing on enterpernurial success, if not a negative correlation. Think Google
Government is very hard to work with. They are slow and expensive to work with. If the government "helps" businesses - it will overwhelmingly help rich and slow companies. Not a good idea.
Here's one word for your proposal: Lobbying
Very interesting
Government monopolies are our monopolies, taxpayer monopolies, either they can stay government owned or we can have a tax system that lets private citizens own some but not all the shares. Private monopolies are dictatorships and should be avoided at all costs.
The government already does this through artificially low interest rates
Rory, like millions of people, I admire your marketing videos. In this case, you would have been well advised to research what is going on in the development of electric vehicles and the liaison between the authorities and manufacturers. The task is huge and, as a result, is proceeding slowly and carefully, but it is happening
Marketing is also known as the world's oldest profession.
I always thought something else was the oldest profession? 😉
Imperial penny post would have been 1d, not 1P.
What you are describing is a return to good old Mercantilism my good sir, and not so much a Free market system. Private ownership doesn't make the system "FREE" market.
25:44 Second language example
They speak Dutch in South America
rory is behind the times. the driverless cars already have no problem with the following the road or seeing the traffic lights..
Two factors that have made electric cars more viable:- 1. Early electric cars suffered from needing very heavy "lead acid" batteries. Recent developments in batteries have made this much less of a problem.
2
Electronics,
in control of motors, have enabled the use of, amongst other things, variable frequency AC drives and AC motors, which are much more efficient than the early DC drives.
Monopolies allow trades unions to fcuk things up: rail, electricity, mail.
1979
26:55 yeah that's Scandinavians, we love making fun of each other XD
So funny and clever
Governments don't necessarily have to license the monopoly. There have been many recent successes in standards setting that drive interoperability between multiple providers that have led to massive improvements (the Internet for example). There have also been other innovative ways to seed new capabilities to the market, such as funded competitions (each player is funded, or the winner takes all sort of things) which encourages research and development in areas the Government would like to have developed for the benefit of the citizens in that country.
50 minutes of a public display of spineless submission. Should be in other proper websites. Austrian school of economics is a timeless meme 🤣🤣🤣🤣
An English speaker should learn an obscure second language like Welsh. That way you can speak and write without most other people understanding you, except in a pub in Conwy.
… or you could have a government service, provided by the government, subject to popular vote-like they do, in the USA.
If you have to go back to Henry VIII to find a good example of a system, which benefited from a government backed network effect, you missed an update patch or two mate.
Is this basically just economies of scale. The NHS only works if it's centralised and not not broken up and privatised into little bits because the savings come in scale.
Economists use the term monopsony to describe a monopoly buyer. The NHS can use its buying power to lower drug prices.
I love that Rory is married to a Vicker when he's clearly an atheist.
Nice
Absolute Monarchy, not Constitutional.
This is inane. Why would a company do good business if it were the only game in town AND its priority is profit? The only way it would work would be if the priority were the service quality and the ownership were the people themselves in service to their community. Or else it would be just like things like parking authorities in Philadelphia and Chicago
Why would a company do good business anyways? Boeing has airbus to fight with and that hasn't stopped them assassinating their own whistleblowers.
Gosh, Andy Serkis has really let himself go.
Rory Sutherland - The only public speaker with a camel toe.
literally an oxymoron
You had me until "network goods work better as monopolies, so governments should invest in building them up." You lost me at "and then enable private businesses to step in and start taking profits." Literally the only reason why we put up with the wealth-concentrating nature of capitalism is that competition drives innovation, so innovation is a positive externality of greed. That's why regulations want to encourage competition. So when the network monopoly is successfully built up via government investment, why give it away to a private business at that point? It should be the other way around: private businesses can take profits from the initial build-up process by being government contractors, but once the network is up, the government should retain ownership of the new infrastructure, and either use the profits to fund even more infrastructure, or run the thing at razor-thin profit margins as a public service.
I feel like Rory is dancing around the edges of communism, which he tries to offset by involving corporations... once the network is up, it becomes the people's commodity, they own the means of production, etc...
@@ytubeanon And why exactly are we so afraid of treating certain things in a way that communism wants to? As in building a hybrid economic system, where natural monopolies like network goods are state-owned and run like communism, but markets where competition is beneficial remain in a capitalist free-market system. What is wrong with that idea?
@@sUmEgIaMbRuS as a Canadian I'm surprised you aren't aware how communism is perceived in America no matter the merits, it's political suicide, feel free to look it up
By definition, if monopolies exist, it's not free market.
Terrible resolution, think of the internet, think FAANG.
Facebook, Apple, Netflix, Google. TESLA!
Australians r wardens & inmates period
I wondered why this guy keeps coming up in my TH-cam feed, when I have no interest in the subject - it's because he's a corporate shill
Are you really suggesting the govt pick “winners”? The powers that be decide what we need and make it happen? That is truly bonkers
Electric cars failed because of range, charging and price. Exactly the same as now except govts are trying to create an electric monopoly.
You have interesting ideas and are a great communicator but you do talk rubbish sometimes.
Lol monopolies have never ever been a good thing. Always ended up detrimental long term. Because to get to that point they have to actively compete by suppressing competition in very unethical and detremental to society. Earning the top position naturally is through competence and effort. Naturally there will be a competitor that is also just as good in different ways. That kind of competition spurs inivation and growth. Coke and pepsi is a great example. Can't think of any monopolize that didn't end well. Absolute power corupts absolutely. At the end government has to step on from out cry of the abuse of power that is detramental to the market and society.
Oh yeah, fascism.
This guy must believe in Santa Claus. 😂😂😂
Does he know about greed, corruption and the desire for power?
Can he think about negative side effects for what he's proposing?
I mean... the guy thinks monarchy is a proper form of government... well it for sure can be a proper form of government but for who, and for how many?
If government was a proper tool for solving complex human problems then the Penny Post would still cost 1 Penny :)
This is one of the dumbest things I've heard lately. Let's be clear, in order to actually have capitalism, we must have competition, but monopolies have no competition, thus they are not capitalist. What this speech demonstrates is that we need fewer advertising executives.
Decent, Rory is normally much more interesting
All i see is a boomer still stuck on 3.1 windows explaining why capitalism is a failure.
There is no such thing as free market capitalism. Capitalism requires regulation. Regulation is the opposite of "free".
Guardian article. In this case does “regulation” mean “corruption”? 👇
Two-thirds of England’s biggest water companies employ key executives who had previously worked at the watchdog tasked with regulating them, the Observer can reveal.
Cathryn Ross, the new interim joint chief executive of Thames Water and a former head of watchdog Ofwat, is one of several ex-employees working for water companies in senior roles such as strategy, regulation and infrastructure.
An analysis by the Observer has found 27 former Ofwat directors, managers and consultants working in the industry they helped to regulate, with about half in senior posts.The findings have raised fresh concerns over a revolving door between the regulator and the industry.
“There is a merry-go-round between the core regulators and the regulated utilities,” said Sir Dieter Helm, a former government adviser and professor of economic policy at Oxford University.
“Regulators are not paid very well, and if there is the potential of future jobs in the firms they regulate, it creates potential conflicts of interest.”
Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrats’ environment spokesperson, said there should be more robust rules and vetting procedures for former regulators moving to the private sector.
Calls for a crackdown on the revolving door come amid concerns that Thames Water is at risk of collapse from about £14bn of debts. There is public anger that water companies were allowed to pay out billions of pounds to shareholders by borrowing vast sums against their previously publicly owned assets.
No! Token networks built on blockchains will achieve this without the dystopian nightmare associated with government monopolies.
Guy needs to chime in on more issues from a marketing view