BOLIVIA TAKES ANOTHER HUGE STEP ON THE ROAD TO SERFDOM

BBC:

Bolivian President Evo Morales has ordered the nationalisation of four private electricity companies.

Police moved into the offices of Corani, Valle Hermoso and Guaracachi firms, following Mr Morales' decree.

Corani is half owned by a subsidiary of France's GDF Suez. Guaracachi's main partner is Britain's Rurelec, while ELFEC and Valle Hermoso are local.

President Morales said that the government now controlled 80% of electricity generation in the country.

Last year, Mr Morales announced the takeover of a subsidiary of British oil company BP, which supplied jet fuel across the Andean nation.

He has recently nationalised oil and gas reserves to redistribute wealth to Bolivia's indigenous majority.

The four companies seized on Saturday account for more than half of Bolivia's electricity market.

They emerged following the privatisation of the state National Electricity Company in the 1990s.

President Morales nationalised the gas and oil industry in 2006 and the national telephone company in 2008.

Both those announcements also came on May Day, says the BBC's Andres Schipani in Bolivia.

THIS WILL END BADLY FOR BOLIVIANS, AS IT HAS FOR CUBANS AND VENEZUELANS AND NORTH KOREANS AND ZIMBABAWEANS. CHINA GOT AWAY FROM IT - AS DID RUSSIA AND INDIA.

SIGH.

WHEN WILL THEY EVER LEARN!? WHEN WILL THEY EVER LEARN!?

ADDENDUM: A PREVIOUS POST EXPLAINS WHY NATIONALIZATION FAILS:

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

WHAT IS THE THE PRIMARY DEFECT OF LEFTIST THINKING?

It is this:

The idea that the government can provide you with a better service or good than a private business - because the private business makes a profit at your expense.

In fact, the profit motive and competition are what make the private business a better provider.

Competition for your business forces them to continuously improve the good or service, and profit is their incentive.

Profit is "the good guy" - yet the left persistently attacks private enterprise for this very reason.

We heard it from Obama and Reid and Pelosi and Waxman and Hoyer over and over again: the insurance companies were the bad guys. Or Big Oil is the bad guy. Or Big Pharma. And so on.

If government was better at providing goods and services than the USSR would still be in business, we'd be driving Yugo's, Chinese wouldn't have opened up, and North Korea would be a better place to live than South Korea.

This irrational hatred of profit-seeking enterprises is the core defect of leftist thinking.

They call it GREED. They feel it's evil.

Well, as far as I know, no corporation ever committed genocide or forced people to live in a gulag.

Government is the problem, not the solution.