Opinion | Privatizing Canada Post would be a costly mistake
Opinion | Privatizing Canada Post would be a costly mistake
44 comments
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Steve Boots has some good videos discussing the whole ordeal. Highly recommend him to fellow left-leaning Canadians. He's a former teacher and has managed to teach me far more than I ever hoped to learn on my own.
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No need for an opinion tag if you're spitting straight facts
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Some things make financial sense but not in a national security, social security, or unity sense. Privatizing utilities generally falls into one of those categories. I was arguing with my brother once about privatizing the local telco and he said it wasn't profitable. I responded with, "So? It never had to be profitable." There were certainly problems with it, and the expense was one of them, but it hasn't really gotten much cheaper after privatization, although a lot of people who could afford to buy stocks made a lot of money. And don't ask why, when our company was converted to publicly traded, we all didn't get stocks in it. Saying that out loud just proclaims it for the money grab it was.
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Can I ask why package delivery should be a public service?
I can understand making things with inelastic demand like healthcare a public service, or natural monopolies like cell phones, but do amazon package deliveries need to be government funded?
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Public services are also required when providing a service to service level expectations wouldn't be profitable otherwise. We expect and demand that the post office deliver to every remote outpost in the country for whom there is no alternative, regardless of expense. Those deliveries could be anything, including something like medication. If you privatize it, a private company would immediately and naturally cut loose those unprofitable routes.
So in that way, it is an awful lot like healthcare. If you consider postal service a right, then it's functionally no different.
44 comments
Had privatization ever worked out? Like, ever?
I was trying to think of a single example where it made the service better and I legitimately can't?
Because it is never the service that privatization seeks to make better. Private corporations make more money. That is the only target metric.
Privatization of liquor in Alberta has worked out amazingly well. Booze is cheaper and there's a liquor store every 100 meters, some open well past midnight. It's an alcoholic's dream.
I was talking to someone about this very same postal issue, and his example was DHL. "Privatization turned them around! They're now an international company!!!"
Why the fuck does canada post need to be competing internationally? Just deliver the mail and have a gov't presence in small towns to provide other services.
Just spend the money to service canadians... It doesnt have to be profitable nor an international competitor
Also, DHL sucks...
Yes. It works out really nicely for our oligarchs.
It works for politicians who do the usual sleight-of-hand around "fiscal responsibility," and for the eventual shareholders.
There are some examples in places like Russia where things like the privatization of the food system has led to more options for citizens, but it was a rough transition and much of the privatization just ended up in more corrupt systems.
@BlameThePeacock @shani66 To add to this. The privitization of the Dutch energy market did drive down costs for the consumers.
It worked.
Untill the war in Ukraine. That wiped out any consumer gains and then some as we got hit with the full force of the exploded gasprices.