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On Saturday 30 Mar 2013 15:11:17 Kevin Chadwick wrote: |
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> On Sat, 30 Mar 2013 13:06:16 +0100 |
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> |
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> Norman Rieß <norman@×××××××××.org> wrote: |
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> > As we all know everything works better and cheaper when things are |
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> > |
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> > privatized |
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> |
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> Actually No it's not so simple at all. |
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> |
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> You get incompetence in private and public and you may be more likely |
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> to get away with it for longer in a public service than in a market with |
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> competition but there are many examples where things simply get worse. |
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> |
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> In the UK, water companies were privatisied and fat cats made lots of |
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> money letting the pipes deteriorate for future generations. |
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> |
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> British Telecom, well that's a mixed bag but it is certainly a |
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> tiny shadow of it's original self. |
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> |
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> We know ideals and theory hardly ever work but theoretically public |
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> should be much better when well managed. |
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|
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Well, as you said, "... it's not so simple at all." ;-) |
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|
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Errors, incompetence, inefficiencies due to organisational friction and poor |
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structures, plus perverse incentives exist in all organisations. They feed on |
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human traits and do not depend simply on the public, or private type of |
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ownership, despite what political propaganda based on the prevailing Neo- |
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liberal economic dogma would have you believe. |
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|
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In the UK, in particular, we have had railways, water, gas and energy all |
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privatised and costs increased 3 to 4 times as a minimum, while performance in |
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many cases decreased dramatically. Failed privatisations and re- |
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nationalisation en mass of railways is an example where fat subsidies to the |
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private sector did not produce the improvements in performance or cost |
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efficiencies promised at the beginning. The UK government is now pushing with |
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the privatisation of the Health Service, despite the majority of studies |
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showing that a public ownership model is a more cost effective model. British |
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Telecom was actually a mixed bag, i.e. there are areas of improvement, |
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especially where technological innovation could be easily taken advantage of |
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(read low business risk). |
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|
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Economic theory speaks of 'natural monopolies' where high risk and very long |
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term investments with relatively low returns, make public ownership more |
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suitable. Typically these kind of industries are better and cheaper managed |
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under public ownership; i.e. goals of ownership and those of customers/users |
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are better aligned. However, markets with smaller scope and and shorter life |
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span, is where private sector ownership and competition thrives and excels. |
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|
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|
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> I wonder if ISPS wouldn't be handling things like TalkTalks |
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> Homesafe in such a stupid manner (across the board is where it is |
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> stupid, even for non users of the service) where they redirect all the |
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> http traffic through an undoubtedly insecure layer 7 handling huawei |
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> device with less commercial pressures or analysing bandwidth at layer |
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> 7 when they should be doing so more safely and completely at layers 3 |
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> and 4 leading me to believe they are not just thinking about bandwidth |
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> usage. Why does it matter if you download 1000Gb via torrents or http. |
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> ACKs can be managed in any case. |
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> |
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> I'm glad open source is beginning to make strides into public services |
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> as it should help put an end to expensive interoperability issues (if |
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> we stay away from non posix things like systemd, though even then |
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> shouldn't be too bad ;-)). |
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|
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Talk-Talk is not the only UK ISP who undertakes deep-packet inspection, and |
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filtering of DNS. There was a debacle only a couple of years ago when |
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TalkTalk (along with Virgin, PlusNet, and Sky I think) gave their users' |
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details to some lawyer who in turn blackmailed them with a law suit against |
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their alleged p2p activity. Some users paid him, but most told him where to |
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go and stick his head! I think his email account and company PC was also |
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hacked and a lot of information leaked. He ended up in court for failing to |
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protect private data! :D |
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-- |
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Regards, |
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Mick |