New Commission May Ban English Water Companies From Making a Profit 42
Water companies in England could be banned from making a profit under plans for a complete overhaul of the system. The Guardian: The idea is one of the options being considered by a new commission set up by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) amid public fury over the way firms have prioritised profit over the environment. Sources at the department said they would consider forcing the sale of water companies in England to firms that would run them as not-for-profits. Unlike under nationalisation, the company would not be run by the government but by a private company, run for public benefit. The nonprofit model, which is widely used in other European countries, allows staff to be paid substantial salaries and bonuses but any profits on top of that are returned to the company.
Gonna be expensive (Score:2)
The spot for Water Works in Monopoly [fandom.com] would become useless. There'll be no point in buying it.
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You dweeb! Everybody knows Monopoly [wikipedia.org] was born in the U.S.
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You dweeb! Everybody knows Monopoly [wikipedia.org] was born in the U.S.
It's everywhere. https://boardgamegeek.com/boar... [boardgamegeek.com]
the free market solves everything! (Score:2)
Re: the free market solves everything! (Score:3)
Theyâ(TM)re monopolies, so itâ(TM)s hardly a free market. I canâ(TM)t just to get my fresh water from (or send my waste to) a different company. Not only that, theyâ(TM)re abusive monopolists and a perfect example of why these are bad. My Thames Water bill has gone up nearly 40% in the last five years and they want to put it up by over 50% **after inflation** in the next five. Meanwhile, theyâ(TM)ve extracted billions of pounds in dividends while running up billions in debt and w
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Rail was nationalized after they outsourced all engineering and didn't know any more how the signals worked.
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and stuck in the past. Odd how the state owned neighbor was able to get rid of the gates and has full speed tolling all over the place.
also that neighbor got rid of the gates in the ETC like over 15+ years ago.
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Or the owner loaded it down with debt and diverted the money. A previous owner leveraged the purchase, then transferred the debt to the company and 2 Billion to themselves. I'm going to go on a limb and say the new scammer did something similar.
What is the regulator supposed to do? Reward them for the scam by letting them shoot the fees into the stratosphere?
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https://www.bbc.com/news/busin... [bbc.com]
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Non profit companies are an improvement? (Score:3)
Non profits are run for the benefit of the board and directors, for the benefit of the public my ass.
If it's some public scum sucking investment company you can at least buy shares in the scum sucker ... a non profit doesn't even give you a reach around.
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Non profits are run for the benefit of the board and directors, for the benefit of the public my ass.
If it's some public scum sucking investment company you can at least buy shares in the scum sucker ... a non profit doesn't even give you a reach around.
They even spell out the problem in the summary:
The nonprofit model, which is widely used in other European countries, allows staff to be paid substantial salaries and bonuses but any profits on top of that are returned to the company.
To me? This says flat out that if the company happens to be heading toward a profit, it will be handed out in executive bonuses. Every time. Which means it will focus on profit *JUST* as much as a fully "profit first" company, it'll just be much more personally incentivized for the executives. Brilliant plan to funnel that wealth *RIGHT* to the top with no intermediary steps.
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It's not that dark.
1) They don't have stock options (which is most of how private company executives plunder the public).
2) "Substantial" salaries are going to be well under typical CEO and executive branch compensation (on the order of $240,000 vs 2.4 million dollars)
3) The lower salaries *can* attract people who actually want to serve the public
Compare public vs private sector salaries.
You *do* want competent people running the organizations so you can't go too low or they will be incompetent or heinousl
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In the US, I'd say many of the non-profit hospital systems are examples of this. The people at the top are well compensated. Here is an article that I found interesting with links to others. https://www.houstonchronicle.c... [houstonchronicle.com]
Hospitals in the US are built like old world cathedrals now, monuments to the ego of the board. Wouldn't it be something if that money went into patient care instead? Gee, I wonder why our costs go up astronomically year over year?
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A non-profit is like a for-profit company, except they're okay with a net profit of £0. They have almost all of the same concerns. They'll still squeeze people for cash. A government agency can tap into general funds or deficit spending if revenues are too low for the level of service they are obligated to provide.
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In the US, I did work for a dental nonprofit. They couldn't have above a certain amount at the end of the fiscal year, so they bought land. Land! LAND!!!
Maybe as a mutual? (Score:2)
Perhaps they could structure it as a mutual corporation: run for the benefit of the customers, not publicly traded.
In the US, State Farm is probably the largest example of a mutual.
Profits are returned to the customer as more favorable rates, or rebates.
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The board of State Farm can rewrite the bylaws and take over complete control, limited only by fiduciary duty. What keeps them on the straight and narrow is market discipline.
For a natural monopoly that force is absent, there is only the regulator. Who just gets bullied or corrupted into letting them raise fees as they find ways to divert the money, "we really needed to take a loan to pay dividends, now let us tax the peons and maybe there's a little something something plausible deniable in it for you in t
I live in the UK (Score:4, Informative)
I live in Manchester, UK - I've lived in NYC and Athens previously, both cities with less water (especially the latter), and yet I pay rather exorbitant prices here for water (over $50/month for 2 people at the current home) in comparison. The idea of the Conservative government at the time (I think it was Thatcher's era?) was that if you take a public utility that is a natural monopoly and gift it to for-profit companies they would, somehow, with the magic of capitalism, invest more in infrastructure than the ol' government run utility company. What happened, to everyone's surprise is that they stopped investing to maximize profits and when it rains (which is like half the days a year this being England) they no longer have the capacity to process the sewage so they just spill it into the sea untreated. They get fined for this, but the fines are lower than the cost of investing into infrastructure. It's a disgrace...
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Untreated sewage? No, shit is included I think.
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I can assure you that there manifestly is shit. In the sea for one.
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The water companies are billions of pounds in debt and unable to discharge it through bankruptcy as they are deemed necessary.
And you feel that this will result in something positive for the citizens?
What I see is that the population will pay dear for the "taxes (fines)", cost cutting in maintenance and price controls. The whole point of taxes is to provide a service for the benefit of the taxpayers.
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I live in Manchester, UK - I've lived in NYC and Athens previously, both cities with less water (especially the latter), and yet I pay rather exorbitant prices here for water (over $50/month for 2 people at the current home) in comparison.
1. Compared to California or Florida, that's not exorbitant.
2. You are mostly paying for sewage treatment -- that's where the bulk of the water company's costs are. Unfortunately, what you are really paying for is the shareholders' dividends.
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As for treatment, an excuse for hiking up bills was to allegedly pay for the chemicals used which had gone up in price due to Brexit. Except this was bullshit as the suppliers were mainly UK based and their prices hadn't increased by any noticeable margin.
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It's worse than that. Part of the deal of privatisation was that there would be investment in infrastructure before dividends would be even considered being paid out. But when they decided to not bother, no one in Government took them to task for this breach of contract, allowing one company in particularly to be acquired by Macquarie who lumped completely unrelated debt of billions onto it then walked off with a nice profit a few years later thanks to fuck you accounting. And still no one in Government did
Wrong link (Score:3, Informative)
Fascism vs. outright Communism (Score:1)
So, unlike outright Communism — which a nationalization would be — the proposal would switch to Fascism [usatoday.com], whereby the corporation remain ostensibly private, but still under full control of the government. Politicians — and government officials — would love this ability to blame "greedy KKKapialists" for failures, while taking the praise (if any) for the wise oversight.
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Oh, and just when I thought the crayon-eater may have given up, they show back up with more incorrect fascism and communism talk.
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I've lived in a number of places, with some private, government, and cooperative utilities.
Personally, I have found that the cooperatives to have the best mix of service and price. For profits have been the worst.
At some point, you need so many controls to keep a for profit company from shitting the bed, it is better to go to a different model.
My bill used to be (Score:2)
£2 per year or something. And noone would be bothered if you didn't pay. Of course it was so laughably tiny very few people didn't.
Nowdays, it trumps even the gas bill.
What??? For-profit water and sewer? (Score:2)
Some years ago, Ontario proposed to change the law to allow that, and to put the services up for bid. I bid an unlimited amount of money for the Chatham water and sewerage service and noted that I would charge the residents commensurately.
Oddly enough, the law never passed.
Natural monopolies should be publicly owned (Score:3)
Shortage of water (Score:2)
Shortage of water is coming in 123
Kafkaesque bureaucracy will arrive at the same time the water runs out.
Law of unintended consequences (Score:2)
If a water company can't make a profit then what incentive is there to give a fuck? Good service? Nope. Fixing leaks? Nope. Cryptosporidium? We don't care.
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