Comment Re:but isn't capitalism the most efficent system? (Score 1) 237
From an excellent video by Tom Nicholas, How energy privatization is bankrupting Britain:
Even before the recent increases in the wholesale cost of gas energy suppliers have been steadily ratcheting up prices. Outside of the global oil shocks of the 1970s the average price of electricity consistently went down under nationalization. Adjusting for inflation the average Brit was paying 36 percent less to turn the lights on in 1990 than they were in 1946. Far from driving down prices attempts to introduce competition to the market have actually reversed that trend. Between 1998 and 2019 the average domestic electricity rate increased in real terms by a whopping 80 percent.
So in addition to Margaret Thatcher just "normally" fucking up prices for consumers by privatizing the electricity production in Great Britain, it now also is additionally fucked up unstable (and additionally expensive after Russia invaded Ukraine) by making it so massively dependent on gas.