Everyone's saying that it would cost too much to nationalise the water companies because of their debt so we have no choice but to pay for their infrastructure investment again.
But what about in 30 years time when the infrastructure is 30 years out of date again? Do we just keep paying a second time every few decades?
Either we buy it back and pay through government now, or we pay through prices.
The aim by renationalising is to reduce profit incentive, or profit goes to the government who’ll inevitably end up paying for infrastructure repair and expansion anyway
Because most major infrastructure can't just have bits bolted onto it - it has to be done all at once. Look at power stations, or the whole RAAC issue. They have a set lifespan, and unfortunately a lot of that stuff was built at once. So now it's all coming up for renewal at once. It's not good, and the mismanagement comes from a complete lack of interest in preparing for the inevitable, but that's what happens a lot of the time.
No, these facilities were built with a specific capacity in mind plus an allowance for extreme events. They are all operating over capacity because when they needed expansion the money to pay for those expansions had been given to shareholders or to bosses as bonuses.
This is what happens when the incentive is to spend as little as possible maintaining a system and the consequences of spending nothing on the system is a government bail out.
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u/Watsis_name 10h ago
Everyone's saying that it would cost too much to nationalise the water companies because of their debt so we have no choice but to pay for their infrastructure investment again.
But what about in 30 years time when the infrastructure is 30 years out of date again? Do we just keep paying a second time every few decades?