I was under the impression that the government of Australia was adopting policies in favor of renewables, encouraging the fossil fuel plants to shut down. I'm not sure what privatization has to do with that. Here in Texas we began privatizing back in 2002, and while there are some distortions in the market, we've seen nothing like what is happening down under. We also produce the most wind energy of any state in the US and consume about as much energy as Great Britain. Personally I'm paying around 10c per kwh. I'm not saying it's a perfect system, but it doesn't seem to be working out too bad for us.

https://youtu.be/O5bTbVbe4e4?t...

"it's just money sitting in a bank"

Banks with funds on deposit do not simply leave them there in a digital vault, they are reinvested or used to meet the reserve requirements of their respective central bank, so the idea that money sits idle there is a fallacy.

"All they need is having competition which feels comfortable with that lower profit level."

This is correct, a healthy market will fairly quickly adjust prices and wages through simple competition among the competitors. Corporate taxes however are passed on to consumers, employees and owners in the form of increased prices for goods or services, decreased benefits or wages, and decreased profits. The key point is that a company is a fictitious legal entity which only exits on paper...no matter how convoluted the process is, people, and only people, pay taxes.

Diesel trucks are not designed to carry people, they are designed to carry freight, so this is not a fair comparison. You should either compare the Prius to a bus if you are looking at the efficiency per person carried, or compare the weight of the Prius to the truck:

A roughly 75,000 pound semi truck will achieve over 6mpg cruising at highway speeds, while a 3,000 lb toyota prius will achieve around 50mpg doing the same. So the semi can move 25 Priuses worth of weight one mile on 1/6th of a gallon of diesel, while 25 Priuses need 1/2 a gallon to move themselves one mile(1/50th a gallon each times 25 = 25/50th = 1/2 total)...the Prius burns 3 times as much fuel per pound, and of course most personal vehicles are far less efficient than a prius.

There remain today only three countries with Soviet style planned economies: North Korea, Laos, and Cuba. The GDP per capita in Cuba is 6k usd, and they are one of the most corrupt nations in the world. Until they move towards capitalism and crack down on the corruption they will continue to be impoverished and there will continue to be very little resources to spend on high speed internet.