A mate of mine's a socialist, which ensures that we never run out of things to talk about. Some time ago, before Hugo Chavez carked it, he sang the praises of the Chavez nationalisation plan.
Seizing private property (however dubiously it might have been acquired) and redistributing it to serve a populist cause is a one trick pony, I told him. Chavez won't be able to dupe another Megacorp to do all the hard yards just so he can walk away with the rewards.
Business investment and confidence pretty much goes out the window as well, leaving the nation state isolated from investment like a modern day Sakoku policy. So, if you're going to commit to such a policy, you'd better have a phenomenally amazing game plan, because you won't be able to pull another stunt like that for a while.
I doubt that Labour and Greens have a phenomenally amazing game plan. More likely, Shearer has been wrestled into throwing the hard Left another bone. There are a number of ways to go about easing price pressures on the residential electricity market. Nationalising the power companies is not one of them.
Nutty, nutty stuff indeed.
