What
I don't understand is that groups of companies spread themselves far and wide, such as a firm I used to work for. One part of the company would sell holidays, another car and home insurance, another white and brown goods, another credit cards, gas, electric etc...

If one part fails, the other(s) prop up the failing part until it recovers.

How come the same is not true of a country?

Why not make cars, mine coal, produce steel, insurance, banking, tourism etc...?
(dchurch bah, Mon 23 Feb 2009, 19:17, 2 replies)

Ssh!
The ghosts of reagan and thatcher will find you, and god help those who let facts stand in the way of religion.
(tootired Is searching for a funny sig, nothing good so far, Mon 23 Feb 2009, 19:46, closed)

This
In a corporate organisation - is called cross-subsidation and is, providing the corporate structure entitles it - perfectly acceptable.

In a national economy it's called Nationalisation. Once upon a time it was perfectly acceptable. The nationalised steel industry made steel to support the nationalised railways (steel rails and steel bodied carriages), the nationalised motor industry (steel chassis and steel derived frames and bodies), the nationalised defence industries...need I go on?

Then the wicked witch of Grantham wandered onto the scene and proclaimed all of this self-sufficiency wasteful. And with one flick of her wand (which she called Keith Joseph) this utopia had gone.

Here I must declare that I was brought up in a shipbuilding town (Barrow-in-Furness) and saw first hand that ill-managed nationalisation had the potential to be exceptionally wasteful.

But with a deft and careful touch, eliminating the excesses and championing the most efficient this system may well have brought about an economy capable of weathering the current tempest.

Just a thought.
( The Disappointed Caravanner of the year, Mon 23 Feb 2009, 19:49, closed)

I do recall
wondering out loud at the time why everyone was queueing up to buy shares in British Gas etc when they were privatised - as National industries surely we already owned them?

I was shushed.
( The Light in Chains don't touch the Pope's boner, Tue 24 Feb 2009, 8:11, closed)