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Comment by insane_dreamer | Hacker News Reader

In other industries that might be ok (though not for the hundreds of thousands of people without jobs), but not this one. It would be like the US military being reliant on other countries, and potentially its main adversary (China), for its most advanced weapons.

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If something is critical to National Security or Human Survival, it should be Nationalized. So if Intel, or Boeing, or electric companies, or ISPs, or banks are really that necessary to the American Government that letting them fail would jeopardize our national security, then those entities shouldn’t be publicly-traded or privately-owned enterprises, full-stop.

Unfortunately, that policy is wholly incompatible with the current wealth-extraction and funneling model of the present-day economy, and that’s why it won’t happen until it’s so irreparably broken that the entire global status quo shifts to adjust.

Look at the military industrial complex. Nationalizing intel will turn it into the semiconductor industrial complex.

The US military industrial complex isn't nationalized.

It is.

But if you want to be pedantic it’s both nationalized and private. It depends on whether you’re referring to the military or industry.

When you create these hybrids of business and government, corruption is inevitable.

If I was referring to the military I wouldn't have answered.

Sure. I'm just saying your answer is incorrect. Doesn't matter whether you would or wouldn't of answered. You're completely wrong and you wrote a statement that is utterly false.

Then we already have a semiconductor industrial complex.

No we have a military industrial complex where semiconductors are one small part of industry.

The military-industrial complex is a consequence of privatization. Since the defense industry is 100% private, capitalistic corps with 1 customer, they have no reason to innovate or compete on prices. They can, and do, extort the government for as much money as humanly possible.

That wouldn't be possible if those entities were simply nationalized. But since the gov is a customer, and them a producer, and the gov NEEDS the thing, and only the private sector can give the thing, it's a money bath.

Of course it's really full circle, because while the industry is private it's actually funded entirely by taxpayers. Because the customer is the government. So the corps have a strong incentive to be as inefficient and greedy as possible, and you actually pay for that.

I don't know about full-on nationalization, but we have plenty of evidence to show the incentives for publicly-owned for-profit companies whose primary customer is the Government are strongly misaligned with the non-economic interests of the public.

I don't have a pat solution to this, but for example, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon have little reason to improve when they have a captive customer. Raytheon recently agreed to pay ~$1B in penalties for illegal exploitation of their position and the market doesn't care: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/raytheon-company-pay-over-950...

Pure capitalism for these kinds of uniquely critical products and services doesn't seem like the right answer.

Excellent comment. As someone who spent time in the MIC, I’m always glad to see others make the same sort of callouts about exploitation of the Government by entities unaligned with and detached from the goals of the people.

Extremes rarely work; rational compromise is what moves the needle forward, bit by bit.

Then why not nationalize it?

Exactly. Industries that are too big to fail shouldn’t be allowed to exist in general (anti trust regulation should see to that), but if that must happen for some reason, then it must be nationalized, or at least very tightly regulated, like utilities are.

It's not like the nationalized companies do that great. The USPS is in perpetual crisis and eventually the Federal Government is going to be on the hook for 10s of billions in pensions.

> ON the hook

Weird to see this framing for something that was promised as a condition of employment.

The USPS gets me my mail regularly. Not sure what else it should be doing. And yes, paying people pensions you promised them is a good thing to do and has nothing to do with mismanagement. Taking the money you had already promised for pensions to instead pay shareholders or executives seems to be mismanagement to me.

The USPS is only in perpetual crisis because people who are deeply against public goods passed a law requiring them to pre-fund retirement benefits 75 years in advance [0] which is utterly ridiculous.

[0]: https://apwu.org/usps-fairness-act

Nationalized industries are nationalized because they shouldn't have to care about profits and losses beyond a basic duty to use resources efficiently. The existence of the nationalized service is deemed to be so important that it must be run by the state to prevent any possible instability or interruptions.

With that being said, the situation of the USPS is not simple - it's been suffering political interference from elected officials for literally centuries. A very good example of why giving too much oversight power to elected officials and having too many political appointees is very dangerous.

Do you have any other examples? The USPS isn’t a nationalized company, it was always a branch of the government. It seems like the USPS is only in crisis because it has long been a political target with especially conservatives trying to sabotage it in order to demonstrate the downsides of public services. But the requirement to pre-fund retiree benefits was eliminated in 2022, is that what you’re referring to with the 10s of billions in pensions? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_Service_Reform_Act_of_2...

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