Até Mais, Lisbon

[Peter Korsten]

Martin Naef schreef:

> The trouble is, though, that in too many cases the "remedy" is to 
> replace government monopolies with private oligopolies - at best. This 
> is particularly true for infrastructure where it just doesn't make any 
> sense to have more than one physical provider. With the ever increasing 
> difference between the rich and the average person, no wonder people are 
> suspicious against a treaty that seems to put even more power into the 
> hands of international mega-corporations where we have absolutely no 
> control. Now whether rejecting this particular treaty makes any 
> difference here, I don't know.

Again, I can't comment about other European countries, because I don't 
know the situation there, but in the Netherlands the 'free for all' 
attitude is already on the way out, and you see more and more powerful 
government agencies (usually called 'authority') that are there to 
ensure that no party gets a virtual monopoly or oligopoly (which, by the 
way, is a very strange word if you think about it). Examples are the EU 
action against roaming tariffs for mobile phones, and the actions 
against Microsoft.

Infrastructure should be government owned or government run, and this is 
even the case in the UK these days, after the disastrous privatisation 
by the Thatcher government.

- Peter