Thread: Chavez moves on

...to nationalise US corporation owned electricity utility, as he approaches his third term:

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced plans Monday to nationalize Venezuela's electrical and telecommunications companies, pledging to create a socialist state in a bold move with echoes of Fidel Castro's Cuban revolution.

"We're moving toward a socialist republic of Venezuela, and that requires a deep reform of our national constitution," Chavez said in a televised address after swearing in his Cabinet. "We are in an existential moment of Venezuelan life. We're heading toward socialism, and nothing and no one can prevent it."
...
"All of that which was privatized, let it be nationalized," Chavez said, referring to "all of those sectors in an area so important and strategic for all of us as is electricity."

"The nation should recover its ownership of strategic sectors," he said.

Before Chavez was re-elected last month with nearly 63 percent of the vote, he promised to take a more radical turn toward socialism.

Chavez to nationalize U.S.-based utility - CNN.com

if only we could do the same in Europe, destroying public utility services in the name of freedom is a silly excercise

Yea, he can take em over and be run by the govt, like TTT, TOT, EGAT or the utilitys in Mexico, over priced, never work, wore out infrastructure, have a lot of people employed and no body working or that knows much more that who can get em the job.
to say nothing of the railroads both here and Mexico,, same same.

63% of the country voted for him, and he made no secret that he was going to continue the journey toward socialism.

i hope they are successful.

I used to like this bloke for sticking one up the US, but he's obviously going to do his best to push the country back afew decades. How many times does it need to be tried to prove that nationalised utilities and socialism don't work.

Nationalized oil is giving Venezuelans the cheapest gasoline on the planet. Resources should benefit the nation...not a small select cabal of industrialists.

^It will still be the biggest cock up since Dunkirk.

Originally Posted by surasak

Nationalized oil is giving Venezuelans the cheapest gasoline on the planet. Resources should benefit the nation...not a small select cabal of industrialists.

Private or nationalised, Venezuelans won't need to dig deep into their pockets to fill up for quite a while to come.

As to the move towards unbridled socialism, like many big cheeses before that let their magnificense go to their heads, this might well be the blunder that brings him down.

Originally Posted by Wallace

How can you morally take a public utility that has been paid for my the taxpayer and overnight turn a handful of private individuals into millionaires?

Exactly. Public Utilities should stay in the hand of the state, even if they are run efficiently like a private business. Public utilities shouldn't maximize shareholders dividends, but serve the public first. We should nationalize all public utilities, it's too strategic, they are the core of a well functioning society. Take that away and you are destroying the foundation of our society. See the Post Office debate in the UK for example.

Originally Posted by Wallace

BT was actually OK as a public utility, and BP was incredibly successful. What Thatcher did to these was nothing short of criminal.

Right on. Same with Argentina, and the cause of its collapse. Selling off those great assets at a discount to satisfy some kind of demaguoge agenda was beyond criminal, it's treason.

Same thing happened with water supplies in the UK. One of the largest owners of British water is now a French company. So how is that good for the average Brit?

When you consider what the French have managed to do with their railway systems and telecommunications (and I know they are not making a profit) then this has to be the right way for critical public services.

Originally Posted by Wallace

One of the largest owners of British water is now a French company

Generale des Eaux, isn't it ? one of the most evil company out there. Every water management contract they got from local governments, they managed to increase the price of water by 300%

France Telecom used to be OK, but like BT it's all fucked up again.

At the end, the private sector will reach the same folly as the state companies when it comes to waste of money and mismanagement. The difference is that some shareholders get bigger dividend cheques.

Privatization was the big rip-off of the 80s and 90s. Hopefully, governments will come back to their sense and switch back to the more traditional socialist economic models. Things as they are can't go on like that forever.

Originally Posted by Butterfly

Originally Posted by Wallace

How can you morally take a public utility that has been paid for my the taxpayer and overnight turn a handful of private individuals into millionaires?

Exactly. Public Utilities should stay in the hand of the state, even if they are run efficiently like a private business. Public utilities shouldn't maximize shareholders dividends, but serve the public first. We should nationalize all public utilities, it's too strategic, they are the core of a well functioning society. Take that away and you are destroying the foundation of our society. See the Post Office debate in the UK for example.

Originally Posted by Wallace

BT was actually OK as a public utility, and BP was incredibly successful. What Thatcher did to these was nothing short of criminal.

Right on. Same with Argentina, and the cause of its collapse. Selling off those great assets at a discount to satisfy some kind of demaguoge agenda was beyond criminal, it's treason.

The problem with government owned operations it becomes accecptable to operate at a loss. The degree of acceptability becomes greater and greater. To solve umeployment the government hires more and more employees and the utilities become a bloated wasteful operation. Acceptence of wasteful operations has a corrupting effect on society.
Publically owned companies are answerable to the shareholders and privately owned businesses are answerable to their lenders. Money is used more efficiently when there are investors expecting a return on the risk of their investment.
Which year was that? Argentinians seem to make mistakes again and again. It's almost cyclical.

And PLCs have further obligations and restrictions reflecting the responsibility they have towards the public.
Still, wouldn't it be nice if a profitable business was state-owned and the profits be used to provide further services to the public?

^ We're not talking about Privatising utilities, but Nationalising private companies. Completely different.

Yes, got a bit distracted earlier.
The issue is nationalising privately owned industries.
The point which has been made is that key strategic industries may be owned by foreign or international shareholders who have little interest beyond profits and a strategy to ensure future profits - this is very different from the aims of a state-ownership.

Now, in Venezuela, and South-America in general, private ownership and neo-liberalism have been tools applied by US capital and its proponents.

From a Chomsky interview:

Support for democracy has been declining—not for democracy but for the democratic governments—has been declining through Latin America, for a pretty good reason, the governments have been associated with neo-liberal programs which undermine democracy—IMF, treasury department programs—so your support for the governments are declining. There are exceptions, and the major exception by far is Venezuela.
...
In Venezuela, the oil is in Zulia province, which is where the opposition candidate is coming from, right on the boarder of Colombia (one of the only states [in Latin America] where the US has a firm military presence). It’s a rich province, pretty anti-Chavez, and it happens to be where most of the oil is, and in fact there is rumor of a Zulia independence movement, which, if they can carry it off, the US could then intervene to protect against the dictator. That’s Venezuela.

Privatised utilities are usually more productive and efficient. They also tend to keep their processes and equipment up to date, whereas nationalised companies are usually bloated, inefficient and don't spend enough money on modern technology or R & D.

That's why this is a backward step.

[Bought to you by Economics 101]

How very true MTD, Mexico nationalized everything, now they have shitty Phone service and very expensive, shitty electric and train service and all expensive, Pemex oil and fuel prices are very high and it is their own oil they use.
When things go private then there is room for competition and service gets better and prices have to stay competitive.
Thailand is a good example of nationalized utilities where everything is over priced and service and performance is shitty, TTT MAXNET ADSL is shit, but it is the only one you can get on TTT lines. They shine your ass off when you complain, either pay it or do without, fucked up attitude..
EGAT is a junk outfit and rates have went up damn near double and service and quality is still the shits, running anywhere from 160 to 240 Volts at our house and continuously variable, and interrupted service.

USA does have private phone co. that are not allowed to form a monopoly, service is great and prices are as cheap as anywhere in the world.
Power co. are private and service is good and dependable.

You will never convince me that nationalization is a good thing for a quality public utility's because you will always end up with pork barrel operations.

The downside of private utilities is that they can and do screw the consumer regularly. A few years ago California had an electrical supply crisis because the utilities got together and found it more profitable to send the electricity to states where there was more profit to be made, and, as a result California faced shortages and blackouts (which subsequently resulted in profits once the electricity was sent back to CA).

I think national energy sources should be for the public good and ought to be nationalized. If the government is the one building the dams, for example, then the public ought to be getting the power cheap since the public funded the dams with their taxes. I think it's crap that the government makes a profit by selling the power to the utilities and then the utilities then turn around and make a profit selling the power to consumers. Likewise, if the oil fields are on public lands then the government makes money through royalties paid by the oil companies....why create more middlemen? Just refine and sell the refined products on the open market.

Back to Reality for the Socialists and Commies

Can't you just imagine a Govt. operated refinery, shit look at the billions of dollars they have pissed off or lost in Iraq.

Yes the govt. did build a lot of generation dams, some are private, the private ones are smaller and they do distribute the product.
But the govt has no infrastructure to distribute the power to homes and small business, but they will run high voltage lines into large users like aluminum plants but it would be cost prohibitive to buy existing or build new grids.
And the power that stopped going to Calif. and went elsewhere was generated by private industry co. in Texas that sold to the highest bidder, and Calif was not it.
Them assholes in southern Calif. super city's are always crying for some thing, they take all the water from Nor Cal and ship it to LA, they have been trying for years to get Oregon Columbia river water sent down to them, they want water from Idaho, Washington, damn who's fault is it that they built a super city in the fucking desert,,fuck em.

I really don't see much difference between nationalized energy and energy controlled by a small number of companies acting like a virtual monopoly.

At least if you don't like the bastards running the government you can toss them out. Can we easily do such if the oil companies decide to gang up and charge more for gasoline?

Public resources should be owned by the public. That goes for oil, coal, electricity, water, etc. It just seems stupid to pay the extra cost simply to give the illusion that you are buying from a private company.

Originally Posted by Wallace

I say good luck to Chavez and I hope he puts his money where his mouth is and lets the people of Venezuela benefit directly from what are potentially very rich businesses.