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1. Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Friday, 07-Dec-2018 23:06:18 EST Strypey

   Look how "investment" by foreign capitalists helps us maintain and improve the infrastructure in our country ... NOT!
   https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/377817/waiwera-pools-to-stay-closed-for-most-of-summer

   1. Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Friday, 07-Dec-2018 23:14:46 EST Strypey

      in reply to

      There are so many similar examples in Aotearoa, where public infrastructure has been sold to "investors", who then asset-stripped them (railways), abused resulting monopolies (Telecom), or ran them into the ground (AirNZ), then finally sold the steaming remains back to the public for a higher price than we got when it was sold. The #RogerAwards have been reporting on this for years.

      1. Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Friday, 07-Dec-2018 23:18:32 EST Strypey

         in reply to

         The idea that private hierarchies are inherently more "efficient" at running things than public administration, non-profits, or commons, has been disproved so many times by examples like these, it boggles the mind that some people still believe it.

         1. Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Friday, 07-Dec-2018 23:28:41 EST Strypey

            in reply to

            I know I keep pimping 'Throwing Rocks ...' by #DougRushkoff, but it just does such a good job of explaining why corporate hierarchies and "investment" extract value out of things, rather than adding it, leading to the results described above. As does The Corporation:
            https://kino.social/the-corporation-2003/

      2. Dimitris Kardarakos (dimitrisk@mastodon.technology)'s status on Saturday, 08-Dec-2018 14:04:07 EST Dimitris Kardarakos

         in reply to

         @strypey usually, before selling the public infrastructure to the "investors": abandon it, let the citizens get frustrated, let the media say how beneficial private investment could be for improving it and finally sell it at low price...

         1. Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Sunday, 09-Dec-2018 08:37:02 EST Strypey

            in reply to

            @dimitrisk trur that. There's a book called 'The New Zealand Experiment' by a legal scholar named Jane Kelsey, and a documentary called Someone Else's Country by Alistair Barry, that tell the story of how all this was done by NZ governments of both "left" and "right" through the 1980s/90s.

         2. neil 🍄 (neil@social.coop)'s status on Sunday, 09-Dec-2018 09:25:03 EST neil 🍄

            in reply to

            @dimitrisk @strypey Currently happening to the National Health Service in the UK.