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Avi Lewis: Canada's airports are not for sale (www.ndp.ca)
submitted 1 month ago by to c/canada@lemmy.ca
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[–] 10 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Yeah, the "losing jobs" explanation is bullshit. BUT, I still am not comfortable with the privatisation. A crown corp can still be operated WHILE profiting off stuff. Want to raise revenue to support new HSR? Raise the expected profit margins for the crown corps.

As for "liberating capital", well that makes sense if we're talking about a private corp, whose fundraising capacity is low. But when it comes to a well managed COUNTRY like Canada, you can raise funds very easily and cheaply.

You don't have to sell off critical infrastructure to do that.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    It's quite true that according to Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) that the government can simply create the money to build things like transit. But the political culture of Canada is that this can't possibly be true---so the Conservatives would fight tooth and nail against it. If something remains a Crown Corporation there is inevitably pressure to politicize it. But selling it to the private sector, the new owners get to own whatever anger comes from users--not the government.

    This is the core problem with the Leftist idea of government ownership of everything. If we do that, then business decisions start getting made for political reasons--which destroys the efficiency of businesses. And this sucks the productivity out of the economy. And that makes workers poor. And that gets us back to the 'losing jobs' aspect of what Lewis was saying. I'm much more in favour of Social Democracy where business is business and government is government--and government is there to firmly regulate business and make sure that it doesn't abuse people or the environment.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 month ago

    So you argue:

    Government owned corps means that politics gets involved in the management of the corp which leads to inefficiencies. Ideas that sound politically popular (while not necessarily being logical) get executed over ideas that are logical.

    But to this I argue, we already exist in a system where the state exists. If a state can regulate a market, it already means that it can regulate corporations by passing whatever laws it wants. Meaning, legally speaking, a state doesn't even need to own a corporation to execute its will.

    Let's look at a scenario. Lewis comes to power. The rail companies aren't owned by the government. However, Lewis knows he'll get more votes if all rail workers get a raise of 20%. Hence, Lewis's NDP passes a new piece of legislation WITHOUT even owning the rail companies called "Critical infrastructure labor investment plan". Basically, it mandates rail workers among others a minimum wage 1.2x that of the federal minimum wage.

    As long as the state exists, and as long as it is popular, it still can kinda do whatever it wants in this context.

    Hence, while your argument isn't wrong per say, the dangers it points at already exist. The fact that something like this isn't happening in the market is evidence enough, isn't it?

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