More on what I don't like on the left

Here's another example: Lindsay Mackie rails on about the Royal Mail privatisation at Liberal Conspiracy.

Before going into the complete lack of balance in the article revealing the writer's prejudice, one question needs to be asked. Was the Royal Mail not in private hands, what justification would be given for public provision of mail services? What about the mail delivery market makes it so special that it needs to be government run?

There is no reason why the delivery of mail needs to be a government service, no reason why competition between different providers couldn't improve the service. What about transporting valuable items? Insurance would work just fine for that. What about delivering to remote places? Pigouvian subsidies would bring the private marginal benefit of delivering to the Shetland Islands just as well as having the government run the whole shebang.

On the various criteria on which we might justify government intervention, there is little doubt that actually, Royal Mail doesn't really tick any of the boxes.

Furthermore, Mackie reveals a very obvious bias/prejudice (tick as appropriate) against all market provision of everything. Statements like "so we can have privatised competitors whose aim is not public service but profit" are very indicative, and really show an incredible level of blinkeredness. Is it really possible in a free market that by actively trying not to serve the public interest (provide products people want etc), a private company could make profits? No, is the obvious answer. To make profits in a competitive market a private company must serve the public interest.

Now of course, markets run badly such that participants have market power (become too-big-to-fail) give great examples of why markets are apparently so bad.

Yet funnily enough, Mackie uses BT as some example of where apparently we've done badly out of selling it off. Why on earth should we have the government running telephones?!?! And more to the point, would we have seen the kind of innovation in the telephone industry without the sell-off? Where BT could have made perpetual losses safe in the knowledge it would be bailed out? I think the answer is abundantly clear, and the use of this example really shows the absurdity of what Mackie is trying to propose.

Apparently also, everything surrounding the privatisation "smacks of ideology". Mackie is clearly unaware that everything she writes is pure ideology. If we want to get away from ideology, we try to look at, as close as we can, objective facts. We start from the premise of perfect competition, and what that would achieve, and then we ask: Where does this model fail? And do the failures justify government intervention? And if they justify intervention, what form is best?

This is something Mackie is 100% not doing, and instead is falling into that trap that all on either extreme of the left/right spectrum are forced to do: To mislead and deceive.