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Privatisation has been a costly failure in Britain

economist.com

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Re: Privatisation has been a costly failure in Britain

#261

Post by wolframhempel »

naijaboiler wrote: post #246
Nursie wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Free markets are the most effective way to facilitate technological progress and economic growth which indeed benefits everyone - although not in equal amounts. When employed in the right place. It's very much not clear that train networks are that place, in fact I'd say it's quite clear in the UK that train networks are not that place.

exactly. Free markets don't work in situations where there is natural monopolies.

Totally agree (I'm the guy from the original comment on top, so this was more of a follow up :-))

Re: Privatisation has been a costly failure in Britain

#262

Post by Cymrukicks »

iso1631 wrote: post #142
jleask wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cutting corners and costs e.g. shutting ticket offices, doing just enough to barely offer the service. It's not like your passengers have any sensible alternative. If that doesn't do it then you can also load the company up with debt and pay yourself a nice dividend until rates rise.

> shutting ticket offices Why should I pay higher prices/taxes to keep ticket offices 90% of the country and increasing don't use open? International Airlines finished moving to e-ticketing 15 years ago

What happens if you're blind or disabled?

Re: Privatisation has been a costly failure in Britain

#263

Post by pbhjpbhj »

sschueller wrote: post #130
magicalhippo wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in Oslo they privatized trash collection. The contract period was up and the new winner had won because massively cheaper price. Turned out the winner was massively cheaper because they had massively underestimated the work required. Trash piled up for weeks while the new trash collectors worked illegal amounts of overtime trying to get rid of it. Now, this switch had happened just before local elections, which…

Why do we have to relearn this over and over and over? It's such a waste of money which the right should be the ones complaining about. Unregulated privatization does not work because privatization means optimize to the max which includes cutting corners in labor laws to the health the citizens.

We don't. The right-wing know that ultimately this methodology is poor for provision of necessary services, they can still take money from the tax-payer using it and that is their goal.

Do more direct democracies have this problem?

There are several things in the UK that have been clear attacks on our democracy that it feels could have been avoided if it were possible to force a national vote on them. Proroging parliament. Neutering parliamentary standards. Tory party members solely being allowed to choose succession for multiple PMs. And so on ...

Allowing water companies to pay bonuses and dividends whilst putting up rates and pumping effluent into our rivers at massively increased rates ... a national vote would allow an opposition party to put a solution to stop that to the populous and it could be fixed, somewhat.

Although, with the levels of deceit and manipulation, just flat out immorality, the Tories have practiced in recent years maybe they could get the public to vote for more profits for shareholders and more shit pumped into the rivers. I despair.

Re: Privatisation has been a costly failure in Britain

#264

Post by waihtis »

HWR_14 wrote: post #243
waihtis wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why not a private non-profit instead of government?

Why prefer a private non-profit to the government? I like non-profits in some cases. They're great at funneling money into specific causes that people care about. Especially small ones (a local theater group is the go to example) or politically charged ones. But "the trains running" doesn't seem like one of those. Why not have the government oversee it?

any government system is too likely to be corrupted by politicians in relatively short timeframe

Re: Privatisation has been a costly failure in Britain

#265

Post by dffdsa432 »

cycomanic wrote: post #240
dffdsa432 wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about losses from federally funded corporations like USPS and Amtrak that are bailed out every year? Amtrak loses over $1 billion/yr and they are still "nationalized." USPS loses multi billions per year.

The USPS is "loosing" money because it was told to prefund it's Healthcare having to set aside $100 billion in 10 years (unlike any other company) . Moreover, it's much more a service than a business, e.g. it can not really set its own prices. https://www.barrons.com/articles/usps-louis-dejoy-post-offic...

I don't get it. The USPS has lost billions due to government policies and can't enforce prices due to government policies. They are forced to deliver to unprofitable routes and have prices set to inflation due to government policies. Private delivery services like Amazon and Fedex are generally profitable and don't have these issues. Why is a government alternative better?

Re: Privatisation has been a costly failure in Britain

#266

Post by avar »

spiralpolitik wrote: post #108
Vaslo wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ISPs are not mandatory for human life.

In the UK a lot of NHS trusts now require you book doctors appointments via the internet. The majority of UK government services now push you to self service via the internet. At this point life in the UK without an internet connection would be very difficult and in some cases fatal.

Then book a doctor's appointment at a library, café, or if you truly have to do it at home a neighbour would surely spin up a hotspot for you in the 5 minutes it takes if it's a dire emergency.

Someone with no home connection to the Internet is still way ahead of anyone in the 20th century, where you often needed to travel in person to various government offices throughout the year for things that can now be trivially done online.

People "need" ISP's for entertainment purposes.

Re: Privatisation has been a costly failure in Britain

#267

Post by pbhjpbhj »

andy_ppp wrote: post #123
wolframhempel wrote: post #9

I am a deep believer in free markets as the most efficient mechanism for distributing goods and services, creating better offerings and lower prices through competition and encapsulating risk in innovation. Unfortunately, none of these apply to the privatization of inherently public commodities that run on top of an underlying network infrastructure. This can be streets, railway tracks or water pipes - whenever there…

They should be publicly owned but the money ring fensed and the prices rise depending on works needed. For example I think it would cost something like £100bn to sort out the sewerage system in the UK - we should just ask people what they want (continue as is or have higher bills) and charge people based on their assets an amount over say 5-10 years that covers it. So for rich people it might be several thousand £ pe…

The water companies could afford to address the problem, they just chose to afford dividends instead.

Absolutely, privatise and then increase taxation if needed to provide the service. But why do you need to, just give a water allowance per person and then adjust prices above the allowance to cover the cost of the service?

Re: Privatisation has been a costly failure in Britain

#269

Post by veltas »

badcppdev wrote: post #127
veltas wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The infrastructure isn't privatised though, it's maintained by Network Rail.

People literally died before it became Network Rail due to badly maintained infrastructure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railtrack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Rail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southall_rail_crash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladbroke_Grove_rail_crash Edit: To be 100% clear the badly maintained infrastructure was the responsibility of a for profit private company at the point where people…

Southall:

> The passenger train operating company had failed to inform Railtrack and the signaller that the automatic warning system (AWS), which warns drivers of adverse signals, had been turned off in the cab of the HST.

But Ladbroke Grove was Railtrack's fault entirely (within the first few years of its creation). Meanwhile it's been 20 years since National Rail was created, when do we get to blame current governments and National Rail for bad infrastructure?

Re: Privatisation has been a costly failure in Britain

#270

Post by scott_w »

danuker wrote: post #107
jleask wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cutting corners and costs e.g. shutting ticket offices, doing just enough to barely offer the service. It's not like your passengers have any sensible alternative. If that doesn't do it then you can also load the company up with debt and pay yourself a nice dividend until rates rise.

> load the company up with debt and pay yourself a nice dividend I am new to this. Doesn't a dividend come from profits? What profits are there if you need debt? And who will loan to you if your business plan is to exit scam?

> What profits are there if you need debt? And who will loan to you if your business plan is to exit scam?

If you’re a water company, after government bailed out the banks, chances were good you’re not going bust. What are they going to do? Let the entire population of London die of dehydration?

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