But what if it resembles that moment at primary school where the two captains pick their teams? What do you do with the last few people who nobody wants? At school, they're grudgingly added to the teams alternately. In the real world, the private sector would say they were full.
Which leaves the state. Which could simply employ half of them to dig holes and the other half to fill them in. Is that the left-wing paradise? Or is it the right-wing paradise? Does it matter?
Maybe an economist could run the numbers. We'd have people getting exercise (yay!), learning a skill, earning an income, paying taxes, holding their heads high, etc, etc. Is this better, overall, than paying them unemployment benefit to stay out of the way?
But let's hope there's never an imbalance between diggers and fillers in taking time off sick.
More concrete
I'm not insulting hole diggers. Goodness knows it's a tiring job and there are plenty of holes that need to be dug and I'm happy that people will do it so I don't have to. But digging a hole to only have it filled in again (or filling in a hole provided someone has already dug it) stands in very nicely for a completely useless job.
Because I'm assuming that it doesn't actually make sense economically, even when considered across the whole country. Even if you don't restrict it to hole digging - maybe include going to libraries and moving books slightly to the left:
Or maybe if you include companies that sell electricity and gas to domestic users in Great Britain.
Once upon a time
A long time ago, British people used gas and electricity in their homes. The amount they used was measured on a meter and a bill would be sent occasionally to charge them for what they had used.
It was run by the public sector. (At this point, feel free to tell me that I don't remember how awful it was and how appalling and other words to describe powerless frustration.)
Whereas now we have a range of companies from whom we can buy gas and electricity.
The modern way
Bear in mind that we buy electricity and gas from retail organisations. They don't generate the stuff, excavate it, refine it, store it, pump it or maintain the infrastructure.
They measure what we use. And they take our money for it. They invent mind-bogglingly complicated charging structures in order to give us a choice of how much we end up paying and what colours are used on the bills.
Except we can't compare these tariffs because they're mind-bogglingly complicated. So instead we have a whole raft of other companies which compare tariffs for us. And they get a kick-back from whichever company we pick. And sometimes they don't tell us about all the tariffs because sometimes the kick-backs aren't big enough.
Microeconomically
...and I use that term as an amateur. Each household, through its energy bills, is paying for vast armies of hole diggers and fillers.
- staff to invent tariffs
- staff to handle customers joining their company
- staff to handle customers leaving their company
- staff to advertise their company
- staff to regulate the competition between the companies
- staff to run comparison websites
- staff to cold-call potential customers to ask them if they want to switch companies
- staff to handle complaints from people who keep being asked if they want to switch companies
- staff to handle complaints from people who were switched to another company even though they didn't want to be
- and so on and so on
- and so on.
Speaking of advertising (fourth bullet point above), I recently noticed that Wembley Arena is now 'The SSE Arena, Wembley'. Because, of course, obviously, a sporting/entertainment venue in north-west London should carry the name of a Scottish power company.
How much did SSE pay to get their name above the door? And how many customers have they got? Divide one by the other to find out how much extra these lucky customers are paying so that SSE can run that little vanity project.
(Although let's also remember that SSE's advertising once showed a giant lurking ape-ghost so getting their name on an arena is certainly not a lot stranger.)
Macroeconomically
I'm looking forward to someone telling that I'm not seeing the big picture.
But surely the biggest picture is that, if the retail sector were state-run, a public servant could very effectively estimate the amount of kWh needed by the whole nation and then bulk buy on the energy markets?
Wouldn't we then all get a better price than piecemeal purchase across a bunch of smaller companies? And less wastage too, since I'm guessing all those companies over-estimate because no one wants to be known as the company that let the lights go out.
And no one would be paying the wages of so many ancillary staff, or for branding sports halls or for running pointless advertising.
Oh, and if there were any profits they would stay in Britain.
Where do the profits go now? Some of them go to the state-owned energy companies of other countries who currently run some of our energy retail sector and laugh all the way to the bank. Yes, we are subsidising French and German households because their energy sector runs ours and repatriates the profits.
Have I got this fundamentally wrong?
Because if I haven't, the amount of money siphoned out of Britain for no reason is breathtaking. I really hope it was due to incompetence because the only other explanation is corruption on a massive scale.
More ludicrous nonsense
On BBC Radio 4's You and Yours this week, the story of a man who was transferred to another energy supplier even though he didn't want to be, told the salesman that he didn't want to be and then had a tough time sorting it out because the new company (which he didn't want) kept calling him Mr Armstrong (which wasn't his name).
Not sure how long the BBC will keep this link active, but here's the five minute piece.
I challenge you
If anyone can explain how and why the current system makes sense and/or is cheaper than going back to a single, state-run provider, please get in touch. Maybe put a comment below the line.
A prize for the best response.
