Government Should Nationalise The Energy Industry

To counter your points, which seem to support an incentive based free market approach to energy and environmentalism i would like to point out a number of difficulties in your arguments.

For example, in the UK there have been a number of disputes over pay from oil companies, especially in scotland where there was a 2 day strike.

Raising prices in a vastly disproportionate way to costs, in a way such as the energy profiteers do is the basis of capitalism is unfortunately the basis of capitalism, they can get away with this because of the inelasticity in the price of oil.
however, privatised British gas raising prices by 35 percent when wholesale gas prices actually fell is nothing other than a scam upon the people.

The ethanol example which you use, is in fact merely an intervention into the free market, not nationalisation.

In the UK energy is loosely regulated and completely privatised, therefore the government lacks the funds which could be brought in through nationalisation and social ownership of the power plants and raw materials.
The government could then therefore invest these funds in directly building the infastructure required for renewables such as wind power and tidal and HEP power (possibly geothermal although not really suited to the UK), or even clean coal technology. Which would create jobs in construction and maintainance and graduate jobs in engineering and new technologies.

truespud

03 Oct 2008 20:23

Comment

To counter your points, which seem to support an incentive based free market approach to energy and environmentalism i would like to point out a number of difficulties in your arguments.

For example, in the UK there have been a number of disputes over pay from oil companies, especially in scotland where there was a 2 day strike.

Raising prices in a vastly disproportionate way to costs, in a way such as the energy profiteers do is the basis of capitalism is unfortunately the basis of capitalism, they can get away with this because of the inelasticity in the price of oil.
however, privatised British gas raising prices by 35 percent when wholesale gas prices actually fell is nothing other than a scam upon the people.

The ethanol example which you use, is in fact merely an intervention into the free market, not nationalisation.

In the UK energy is loosely regulated and completely privatised, therefore the government lacks the funds which could be brought in through nationalisation and social ownership of the power plants and raw materials. 
The government could then therefore invest these funds in directly building the infastructure required for renewables such as wind power and tidal and HEP power (possibly geothermal although not really suited to the UK), or even clean coal technology. Which would create jobs in construction and maintainance and graduate jobs in engineering and new technologies.

Comment

To counter your points, which seem to support an incentive based free market approach to energy and environmentalism i would like to point out a number of difficulties in your arguments.

For example, in the UK there have been a number of disputes over pay from oil companies, especially in scotland where there was a 2 day strike.

The ethanol example which you use, is in fact merely an intervention into the free market, not nationalisation.