[jfman]

Originally Posted by Pierre

Because competitors don’t exist because they can’t come up with a product as good, for the price. That’s not market failure, everyone else had the same opportunity, one of Microsofts competitors for a windows type OS was IBM. Much bigger and better funded.

There are always winners and losers, new entrants into a market by their presence do not guarantee competition, they have to have a desirable product.

As long as they are given the chance to market and sell their product fairly, that is all that is required. The consumer decides.

You also didn’t answer whether Gates and Job’s family, should be stripped of their wealth.

I didn’t see the value of responding to your point. You are describing market failure. Over and over you are describing market failure.

BT was sold off 35 years ago, before Optical Fibre was even a thing. Deregulation of telecommunications in the U.K. was , and is, a resounding success.

If telecoms was still a state run utility, Jesus! you think it’s bad now? We’d probably still on dial-up.

And BT continue to benefit from the customers and infrastructure carried over from the nationalised company. The network isn’t just the fibre, it’s the poles, ducts, property and network they benefit from.

A competitor can’t just dig up Britain and deploy an identical network and give us competition which is why regulation is required.

The water and energy sectors were privatised over 30 years ago. Who are the billionaires makes billions after investing billions in Victorian infrastructure?

From their own pockets or from the revenues. If it’s the latter, which we know it is, ultimately that comes from the customer.

Also people forget that the utilities also had their own operational arms. I.E. the guys that dug up the roads, designing, maintaining and installing. That is all now contracted to 3rd parties providing real competition and value in the sector, with cross sector savings and expertise passed back to the consumer. I bet they don’t re-nationalise those bits.

If there’s genuine competition and innovation why would they?

As someone well versed in “economic theory”, you don’t show it. Especially in the area of once nationalised utilities.

Far from it.

---------- Post added at 20:12 ---------- Previous post was at 20:07 ----------

Originally Posted by nomadking

The £4bn comes from post-tax profits of the businesses. They are entitled to live anywhere in the world, or the profits could go to another parent company that could be based anywhere in the world. Still no UK tax liable.

That’s fine. Old Boy’s golden eggs go to Monaco. That’s exactly my point.

You said.

The examples given were Apple and MS.

It’s have benefitted from a hyphen between “not” and “in” to make the distinction.

Banks can't "provide mortgages as a multiple of cash deposits held". There are liquidity rules. The nearest they can do is essentially recycle the money by selling on the mortgages, as Northern Rock did. Somebody still has to "buy" those mortgages with money from somewhere real.

They don’t. They need reserves as a percentage of the loans. The rest doesn’t exist except on a spreadsheet.