(06-01-2022, 04:48 PM)nguyenivy Wrote:(05-27-2022, 06:03 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: In my opinion, the firearms industry should be nationalized so that it can no longer offer blood money to those politicians who put campaign funds above human life. We also need a mandatory buy-back of all automatic and semi-automatic firearms even if such brings a profit to the seller.
Nationalisation of the firearms industry may also pave the way to look at other industries that adversely affected human life that are privatised (think of the Texas electrical grid in early 2021, for instance). In the UK they once had nationalised railways but once they were privatised service quality dropped while prices rose and services were cut in the name of profit. From what I understand the public there (except maybe the pro-Brexit people) at this point would be mostly for re-nationalising it. From our S&H viewpoint, isn't a 4T/1T era generally a time when the public would be more open to government playing a bigger role in our lives?
Military weapons are practically a commodity. If there is to be innovation in the practice of war, then it is not likely to arise from innovations in rifles. In the last Crisis the Red Army relied heavily upon rocket-based artillery, and it could utterly destroy the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front. The Red Army took huge losses from encirclements early, reflecting the incompetence of top leadership. The Wehrmacht ended up running out of cannon fodder and was unable to stop the British and Americans from their stab-in-the-back in the west.
There will always be mixed results for privatization. It would be a calamity if a basic service such as road transport were to be privatized on behalf of monopolistic profiteers who get the special bonus of the government being precluded from improving nearby highways even for purposes of safety. Profit-maximization usually implies monopoly gouging likely to make something once available so fiendishly expensive that people find ways to circumvent it. The lease arrangement for the Indiana Toll Road is the worst possible for motorists,. with tolls being adjusted automatically for the highest of the consumer-price index, the level of prosperity, or an automatic 2%. Motorists get the worst. A hint: Indiana 120, a lightly-traveled two-lane blacktop, is lightly traveled east of Elkhart; US 12 in Michigan west of Sturgis is typically within five miles of the Toll Road. Somewhere between Sturgis and Elkhart one goes across the Michigan-Indiana state line and has light traffic to face.
The fault with monopoly is that it makes everything more expensive for non-monopolists. Monopoly tends to inflate profits for a few while depressing overall economic activity. Monopolists are usually very poor at services.
Now here is a problem: what happens if motor transport becomes obsolete?
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.