Monopolies to Break Up?

[ag]

Why would we want to turn the clock back? The solution to monopoly is to put those industries that have managed to make it to the top of the capitalist food chain is not to break them up (and risk destroying jobs and undermining the rationalization and centralization of production), but to bring them into public ownership. Monopoly in and of itself is not bad, but monopolies controlled by private capitalists are because they have an interest in fleecing the public.

Private monopolies may be bad, because they have an interest in fleecing the public. Public monopolies are much worse, though, because they have an interest in raping the public.

[ag]

Why would we want to turn the clock back?

There's something hilariously ironic about a post starting with this sentence and then advocating antiquated economics like nationalization.

But I'm not advocating for the old line type of nationalization that allows the decisions of the nationalized industry to be made by government planners or hired capitalist managers, so the assertion that what I'm advocating is 'antiquated' is incorrect. I want public ownership of industry, yes, but unless its combined with democratic control by the workers of those industries, it's going to inevitably run into the same issues that bureaucratized state industry did during the last century.

Democratic control of a monopoly by the workers means maximizing rent extraction from the population, while neglecting efficiency. This is, probably, the single worst way of screwing the society at large so far invented.

[ag]

 I hope that the initiative of the atlas “after dark” failsafe forum does not have any effect on these well-established allowances of reasoning monopolies. It would be such a tragic loss for the understanding of present day issues.

Would you mind translating this into English?