In case you needed any more proof that the current government is being led by the Left party (Levica) and Prime Minister Robert Golob is just riding the socialist death train, you have it now. Namely, the Prime Minister has announced that the nationalisation of one of the energy companies is possible in the near future in order for our country to be able to guarantee energy supplies. Yes – nationalisation in the year 2022!
The Prime Minister said that the energy crisis has brought with it peculiarities at the European level, too, which no one could have foreseen. He also mentioned the recent nationalisation of Uniper, Germany’s largest gas importer.
That is why the government has set aside 750 million euros in the B-balance of the state budget to be used for the financial claims and investments accountsa for a recapitalisation of the energy sector, should it be required.
“It is quite possible that Slovenia will also have to nationalise a company in the near future, within the next month. This is not about socialism or communism, but about solving the energy crisis and ensuring a stable energy supply,” said the Prime Minister.
Well – the Prime Minister, for whom Mongolia is also supposedly a “socialist” country, clearly does not know the definition of socialism. Socialism is a system where the means of production are state-owned. So this is a de facto prediction of socialism and fulfilment of the programme of the Left party, which, in its 2017 programme that was presented at the founding congress of the party, which was still called the United Left back then, announced the gradual nationalisation of private enterprises.
But why did they come to the idea of nationalisation at all? The game they are playing is very clever. First, they will destroy private energy companies with their policies. When a company can no longer provide energy services because it would have to sell them below cost, the revolutionaries will come in and buy them out with taxpayers’ money. For themselves. As we know, in Slovenia, once something is state-owned, it is extremely difficult for sticky politicians’ fingers to give up the “loot,” because a state-owned company, backed by a bottomless sack of taxpayers’ money, provides very fertile ground for various consultancy contracts, nepotistic employment and recapitalisation of the companies of the “right” entrepreneurs. Golob has announced that as much as 750 million euros have been set aside for this purpose. And as you are reading this, remember the pensioners who called in on our show “Who Is Lying to You?” (“Kdo vam laže?”) in tears and told us that they do not have enough money to get through the month.
Smells like the times of blood
We are returning to a time when the means of production were owned by the state party oligarchy, and the people lived in squalor, queuing for basic foodstuffs. How will a state-owned energy company be better than a private one? It has already been empirically proven that people are much more frugal when managing their own money. State apparatchiks can easily be complete economic laymen, fulfilling the tasks of a politician. Of course, a state-owned company will also face the same market constraints as a private one – the market will still work, and energy will still be bought according to market laws, no matter how regulation-ridden the European market is. The advantage of a state-owned company is that it will be “recapitalised” by you and those pensioners who do not have the money to pay their bills at the end of the month. Those who will run these companies will not be the ones to do it. Nor will they be held responsible for bad business decisions. But you will. There will always be enough money in the end, at least for state-owned companies and left-wing non-governmental organisations. But not for you.
“We will transfer ownership of companies to the state and local authorities. To this end, we will change the vehicles of capital and socialise profits,” reads the Left party’s programme. The coalition has so far given in to these extremists once, in the sabotage of the Slovenian Armed Forces, when they cancelled a contract for the German Boxers, leaving the taxpayers with a bill for 70 million euros. In the event of nationalisation, the bill would be much higher – probably worth billions. But you will cover the potential losses of the national energy company, just as you covered the losses of the state-owned banks before they were sold off for a pittance by left-wing governments.
Andrej Žitnik
