Why are you talking about profiteering? This was just a business doing it’s thing.
State sponsored enterprise is what happens in autocratic countries. At the whim of the ruler enterprise is expropriated, whenever something is seen as adequately tempting.
You may think some ill-informed voting public is an okay form of autocratic governance because you’d slap a ‘democracy’ label on it, but it would result in widespread expropriation of businesses by government officials who would consequently wield immense power. The economy would collapse because the incentive to outperform would be gone. There would be a brain drain from private enterprise into government bureaucracy. This is the principle reason why socialist and autocratic governments have relatively unproductive economies. When The People’s Republic of China realized this and permitted private ownership and enterprise, their economy took off as people found an incentive to work harder...
>State sponsored enterprise is what happens in autocratic countries. At the whim of the ruler enterprise is expropriated, whenever something is seen as adequately tempting.
Oh boy, you are not gonna like it when you hear about the "military industrial complex".
>The economy would collapse because the incentive to outperform would be gone.
You speak as if huge chunks of our society haven't been socialized with great results. You want to re-privatize the fire department, so they have more incentive to put out fires? Privatize the police force, so they have more incentive to stop crimes? It's not so straightforward as "private enterprise = proper incentive structure" - it's possible to engineer incentive structures with better outcomes than the free market.
State sponsored enterprise is what happens in autocratic countries. At the whim of the ruler enterprise is expropriated, whenever something is seen as adequately tempting.
You may think some ill-informed voting public is an okay form of autocratic governance because you’d slap a ‘democracy’ label on it, but it would result in widespread expropriation of businesses by government officials who would consequently wield immense power. The economy would collapse because the incentive to outperform would be gone. There would be a brain drain from private enterprise into government bureaucracy. This is the principle reason why socialist and autocratic governments have relatively unproductive economies. When The People’s Republic of China realized this and permitted private ownership and enterprise, their economy took off as people found an incentive to work harder...