Its global - be kind of hard to nationalise that.
I see MaidSafe as working for its users, not to benefit a small no of priveleged shareholders.
Utilities, transportation and health care that we have no option but to use and then line the pockets of shareholders is a different story.
Really not sure what you mean…Maidsafe the company or do you mean the Safe Network? Assuming you mean the Network, then insofar as it is “owned” then yes it is a collective thing - I see it more as a technological resource for humanity, in the same way air and water are Natural Resources - I think its equally valid to describe these things as being owned either by everybody or nobody…but I have a problem with the word “owned”.
As to whether it would be nationalised, then what exactly is the difference between “Nationalised” and “owned collectively” - I’m not really seeing the distinction. You can think of Safenet as operating within one large global “nation” - in that way you could describe it as “nationalised” I suppose 
I see the opportunity to use MaidSAFE’s and Open Source’s model to apply to other areas where the cost of privatization is too high and the price of government control is inefficiency and corruption.
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Tell me more about this 3-week blackout in 1988?
Was it nation-wide?
What was the root cause?
Why do you automatically assume government control = iinefficiency and corruption?
Thats what we come to expect from private ownership of utilities.
Just look at the provision of utilities in the UK if you dont believe me, dominated by a cartel of 6 big price-fixing companies in which the idea of “competition” is a very poor joke.
No, it wasn’t nationwide. It was a blackout that occurred in a wide region of the Coromandel. It was caused by overload of the network, due to the fact that people were using more power than the system could handle.
Supply was insufficient for the demand. This occurs in government-run systems because, when pricing is removed (or subsidised), it no longer reflects what’s being demanded on the market, providing very little indication of 1) what is being demanded now (easier when they can just measure the power being used at the time), and 2) what will likely be demanded in the near and far future (more difficult absent speculative market phenomena).
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Government regulations cause oligarchies within banking, finance, energy, health care etc… They we turn around and say “Capitalism doesn’t work” But that isn’t capitalism. Its oligarchy. If you had real competition you would have real markets and real capitalism. What we have most places is cronyism and corruption. You cannot open a barbershop without asking at least 10 government agencies for permission let alone a bank or a energy company.
Decentralization returns us to a place where markets can begin work the way they naturally should work. The system still needs to be built and come to fruition, but that is what is being built.
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Wikipedia tells a somewhat different story.
To assume that private = good, public = bad, is lazy and dogmatic.
Private profit and greed has no place near essential public utilities.
I could turn this completely around and claim that the failure of the USSR was die not to socialism but to them not being socialist enough.
But very few would listen.
Likewise very few will listen to your rants about how your “freedom” is constrained because the people demand you adhere to some basic rules.
My heart bleeds for these brave pure capitalists who will lead us all to the Promised Land, it really does.
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Who says they must be for-profit?
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You make some good points and it brings to mind Britain in the seventies. I think the problem is that whether we follow a left or right (for simplicity) political path, private or public ownership etc, the fundamental underlying problem is that whatever central authority possesses power, eventually becomes corrupted by greed or power. It’s like a see-saw really. Back in the day when unions were strong and utilities were publicly owned, the union bosses become powerful and demanding, we go the other way and private corporations take the piss. Whatever your politics, the problem is the centralisation of power, not the “Govt” as if it were some dark entity - the centralised nature of it is the issue.
I was there, my friend. What wikipedia has to say is rather irrelevant. It is an objective truth that supply of electricity in my country has vastly improved since privatisation.
Again, I’m not saying that the privatisation was an overall good; the way it has worked here is that the government allowed our publicly-owned resource to be sold off to crony interests, and then regulation has kept other competition out of the market. Some good effects, some bad.
To assume that someone is assuming is… still assuming. And is lazy and dogmatic. Perhaps I actually have real arguments, based on logic, that are the foundation for my opposition to public ownership/operation of resources.
This smacks of a sophistic catch-phrase. Private profit does not necessarily include greed. What of all the corner-store/dairy owners? They often make profits. Are they necessarily greedy? On the truly free market, greed costs, as others can compete freely against you in terms of price. The situation you are living in has nothing to do with a free market. Rather, it has evolved from state interference in the market, and sales of public goods to private interests. This more closely resembles corporatism, than capitalism.
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Show me a privatised not-for-profit utility company and I’ll show you a tax scam or other rip-off.
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I think you’re right here; without centralised power, the situation would be very different. Although decentralisation effectively becomes anarchy, if we decentralise power to the individual level. (Bear in mind that anarchy does not mean ‘no rules’, but simply ‘no rulers’.)
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I couldn’t give a monkeys whether you call them capitalists or oligarchs, whether you call it capitalism or corporatism. The names don’t matter, the greed and disrespect for the consumers remains the same.
I and most folk I know reject it and totally distrust the motives of any who would try to tell us otherwise.
We have seen what they have done in the UK and elsewhere,
Take your corporate greed and the ideology that underpins it , especially the whining about “freedom” and roll it into a thin cylinder.
That last part is too complicated for our “freedom” warriors.
Well, I guess that sums up your argument.
You are, however, missing the point.
Capitalism, when operating under a centralised power structure, is a fundamentally different beast than Capitalism under liberty. The presence of a centralised power structure offers opportunities that Rockefeller salivates over. Large moneyed interests gain the capability to swing elections, bribe politicians, network with power-brokers, influence the writing of regulations that affect their own industry, and the list goes on and on.
Not to mention the fact that corporations are a creation of government! Without the government, corporations would have no limited liability, which would mean that the private investors would be vulnerable to losing all of their assets, not just the assets they directly invested in the company.
Capitalism under liberty is a different proposition. In a truly free market, where large corporations do not help to write regulations (and thus limit their own competition), and government is not available to help create monopolies, the only course a business has to prosper, is to concern themselves with consumer’s desires.
My utility company is non-profit, customer owned. Why shouldn’t it be? It is for the good of us all. All done without coercion too. The land owners at the turn of the century banded together to put together a utility… It raised all of their property values to be able to run wells and lights etc… They embedded ownership of the utility with the titles to the land that it served…
That is the model that makes the most sense in my mind. That is more or less how MaidSAFE is going to be funded and run. Lots of things can be run in such a manner.
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I would be genuinely interested to hear these and agree with the rest of your post. Could you just explain how the Free Market model you are proposing provides for things like welfare?
Obviously you do not understand what the difference between mediation and centralized decision making is. Mediation is where you help both parties empathize with each other and see things from each others point of view, the mediator acts as a neutral party and helps aid in negotiations and collaboration. The mediator however does NOT arbitrarily decide what is done with the property or whatever else is in dispute.
And no flipping a coin is not centralized decison making any more than any kind of gambling is.
What incentive does what have to buy or own shares in anything? If something is of value the one can buy shares in it. As the value goes up your profit raises, as the value goes down your profit lessens. Also you’d get a say in what happened with the property. What incentive does one have in buying a share in a company? Same concept.
Why?
Not the same everywhere.
Corruption can happen in both public and private sectors. In the public sector if the democratic system or whatever user feedback system you have to respond to the people’s wishes doesn’t work then you get lag between problems and responses. And you also get political corruption in there what with politicians choking out programs they don’t approve of for political reasons, not that the public doesn’t need or want them but that the politicians don’t approve of them. Take how Harper doesn’t want green energy but is pushing for the oil industry for instance and therefore funds for the environment and green energy, including things like BC Hydro are being downsized.
Then you have corpratism where you have corporatiions bribing politicians and buying out their competition. Corpratism is NOT free market capitalism. Another word for corporatism is fascism. Note how public sector corruption and private sector corruption are so much alike, corporations buying out politicians and politicians backing their favorite corporations.
It doesn’t matter if you go left or right. It doesn’t matter if you go public or private. There is corruption either way. Fascism occurs when politicians start getting bribed by giant corporations which also corrupts the private sector by eliminating competition. It hurts BOTH public and private worlds. (Actually it also hurts the spiritual/religious as well as fascism also includes the merging of church and state and the abolition of religious freedoms but we won’t get into that here.) You want to start a cooperative or a commune? Go right ahead! Anarchy won’t stop you from doing that. The problem lies in the idea that EVERYONE has to live the same way. You build a public road and then feel that others are OBLIGATED to pay for it? What? If you want to obligate others to pay for the road build a toll road and require compensation for it’s use. The intention of building a public road is to build a road that EVERYONE can use free of charge is it not? Then why do you feel that others are obligated to pay anything for it, fair share or not? Do you give someone a gift only with the expectation you will receive future compensation for it?
Also people can we remember this was supposed to be about the creation of an app for polycentric law. There’s no real need for us all to fight. The statists can go one way and the anarchists can go another way and we can all create our own lovely little communities. That’s the beauty of decentralization.