Public property: Keep out

So a “public ownership” model has successfully driven China’s economy for the last thirty years?

So says The Guardian’s Seamus Milne, a socialist so impressed by the authoritarian state’s “public ownership” approach to economic growth – never mind that China’s economy has annually soared since it chucked communist economics and began a Great Opening to market economics in 1979 – that he thinks we should take some inspiration from it.

Whatever the merits of public ownership, China is hardly the place since to study it. Its public has about as much control over the state’s property (terrifyingly broadly defined) as does Cuba’s.

Milne’s ramblings reminded me of one of Trimble’s better quips about Sinn Fein seeking a Celtic Cuba; an observation too few Irish Republicans felt insulted by.

By the way, if you want a decent sense of what “public ownership” would lead to in a Sinn Fein run Celtic Cuba, just ask yourself: What’s the swankiest building on the Falls Road?

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