Crooked, crooked lead…

By Kostas Stupas

Crooked, crooked lead…

SYRIZA recently launched a campaign accusing the government of wanting to privatize water.

The government denied that such a thing was its intention, and counterattacked by saying that SYRIZA had entrusted EYDAP and EYATH to Superfund and planned to return them to government control.

“SYRIZA has allocated EYDAP and EYATH to Superfund for 99 years. The government will fully respect the decision of the Council of State. And these two companies will leave Superfund and return to the Greek government,” the Prime Minister answered a question. About water. “Water is a public good”, asserted the Prime Minister while talking to SKAI…

See: Mrs. Mitsotakis: EYDAP and EYATH will return to the state after the elections

Our country is full of leftists, statism, lies and hypocrisy.

No one denies that water and air are public goods and everyone has a right to them free of charge.

But the water is found in the lakes of Yiliki of Marathon, etc., and not in the spring of Kir-mitsos in Petralona. To get to the pipeline, someone has to build and operate a transportation, refining and distribution system.

So the question that arises is whether this work can be done better and cheaper by the government or a private company?

That is not to say that no one is advocating that government monopolies should be transferred to the private sector. Just as every man pursues his own self-interest, every business pursues its own self-interest, and if we grant monopoly privileges to a private enterprise, we become its hostages.

OTE was once a state-owned company and monopoly in telecommunications. For an average person to get a landline phone, unless someone has “teeth” in the party dictatorship, they have to wait years.

Each phone call costs a crore, and some who have landlines are locked with a special lock to limit the number of calls…

Today, there is no state monopoly on telecommunications and local calls are almost free as they are included in the fixed rate.

If there’s anything annoying about telecommunications today, it’s the daily phone calls from private companies competing to provide even better service at cheaper prices.

The question, then, is whether there is a way to involve private companies in transferring water from the lake to the pipe, aiming for better service at a lower cost.

E.g. Can some private companies take up the modernization and maintenance of the network, whose age and inability to repair damages in time due to government monopoly, causing huge water losses?

Water on the planet is becoming a scarce and precious resource due to population growth and environmental changes.

If it is expensive and wasteful to run it through a state monopoly, should we consider private involvement at some stage to get better results for consumers and the environment?

If you get thirsty on the street, you go to a kiosk to buy a bottle of water. In the refrigerator you will find options of private companies because no government agency can do this job better and cheaper than private companies. If any of these companies cause any damage to the resource they have the right to exploit, their license will be immediately revoked and financially destroyed. The same will happen if he sells substandard water to consumers.

State water monopolies don’t sell bottled water because they can’t compete with private companies on quality and price.

The fact that we have not discussed ways to ensure that we don’t waste a natural resource called water and provide better services at cheaper prices demonstrates the dominance of the false leftist view that government, state monopolies and state planning can achieve better results from the private economy. .

From a party like New Democracy that espouses liberal ideas, one would expect them to defend these ideas, not do the bidding of the left on statistics…

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