Privatisation has been a costly failure in Britain • Hacker News Board

Re: Privatisation has been a costly failure in Britain

#581

Post by ccppurcell » Wed, Jul 12, 2023, 7:50 AM UTC

madaxe_again wrote: post #346

ccppurcell wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money is power. Regulation is a fig leaf. Think of taxation: the government makes all the rules on how much tax a business should pay under this or that circumstance. How much tax do the biggest companies pay? Next to nothing, pound for pound. Because they are able to use their money to exert power. Companies will always do this, so regulations will always erode over time.

This is a function of the form and culture of government - our current system, of professional politicians, is ruinous. I have numerous thoughts on what would be better, such as sortition, or devolution and administrative federalisation, but as long as we have party politics and elections on mass scales, we will have corruption baked into the system. What we have worked reasonably well before mass communication, but…

I think we probably agree on a lot of things! I would prefer to increase the relative power of local councils and often think about how to implement some version of sortition. You might be interested in the concept of "random ballot" (that's the Wikipedia page title) if you don't already know it.

Re: Privatisation has been a costly failure in Britain

#582

Post by panick21_ » Wed, Jul 12, 2023, 7:58 AM UTC

sarchertech wrote: post #517

panick21_ wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean sure, we can talk for hours about issues with Amtrak. However that doesn't change what I said so I'm not sure why you are bringing it up. Amtrak most likely wouldn't be profitable if they had priority.

I think you may have conditioned by HN to assume that any comment is a refutation. I brought it up because it’s an additional piece of the explanation for why amtrack can’t support itself on ticket prices alone.

Fair. I'm just saying that its one of many factors so I was confused why you would bring it up specifically.

Re: Privatisation has been a costly failure in Britain

#583

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jul 12, 2023, 8:19 AM UTC

ch4s3 wrote: post #402

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…

Rail is different I think. Private companies successfully operate rail networks all over the world. The NYC subway system was built privately and only fell apart due to urban flight. Most of Japan rail network is private I believe, and more than a dozen companies. I think Stockholm's subway and regional rail systems are privately run and have been for ~30 years.

[deleted]

Re: Privatisation has been a costly failure in Britain

#584

Post by flanked-evergl » Wed, Jul 12, 2023, 9:21 AM UTC

LastTrain wrote: post #555

flanked-evergl wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I definitely don't think they are inherently better. I'm sure some of them are good, but the real problem I see, as I already pointed out, is that shareholders have less ability to hold management to account than in more traditional business structures.

How do I hold the the CEO of Cable One to account, let alone better than I can hold my electric co-op to account? On my co-op I have a voting share, can run for office, directly lobby other co-op members directly, etc etc.

> On my co-op I have a voting share, can run for office, directly lobby other co-op members directly, etc etc.

If you are a member of the co-op, sure. Not everyone who trades with a co-op is a member. If you are a shareholder, in a company, most likely you have votes, as I think less than 10% of companies have different share classes with unequal voting rights, and of those most still have some voting rights. So in both cases (with limited exception), shareholders have voting rights. So there is no difference here, in fact all of the things you listed is valid for more traditional businesses.

The main difference, at least for the cooperative I worked for, was that no individual can have more than 1 share, where as in other incorporation models individuals can have more than 1 share. This is advantageous as one individual can expend resources to buy shares, then use the control granted by those shares to improve efficiency and the value of the shares they acquired, and everyone who is a shareholder benefits from this. No similar mechanism exists in a co-operative.

Maybe, with a cooperative, on a small scale, you can lobby enough people to effect change, but it takes a lot of time, and usually the people with time to fiddle with the politics of a co-operative probably should have as little as possible say in how it is run as they likely have nothing more productive to do.

I do vote in some co-operatives, I even vote in the co-operative I worked for, I look at the candidates, and I can clearly tell that there is no way they will change anything, never mind do something as drastic as replace the inept leadership. I could of course expend lots of time to try and convince them, but this is a massive gamble.

If I see a company is ran poorly, and I have money to buy enough shares to change it, the gamble is a lot smaller. I know it takes X resources to aquire Y% of control.

Re: Privatisation has been a costly failure in Britain

#585

Post by yread » Wed, Jul 12, 2023, 9:41 AM UTC

robertlagrant wrote: post #525

yread wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of corporate tax code is about taxing the money flows from the company to the physical persons. Somehow buybacks weren't taxed until recently.

I think this is wrong, twice: - buybacks are taxed when a person gets money for their shares, as capital gains tax - lots of corporate tax is about exactly the opposite of what you say; i.e. reaching inside a company's bank account and taxing its profits directly, rather than waiting for the money to flow out and taxing it as VAT/income tax/cap gains. A huge amount of money and effort is spent on balancing this corre…

Yes, but when your shares gain in value you can borrow more money on them. That is not taxed.

Re: Privatisation has been a costly failure in Britain

#586

Post by sarchertech » Wed, Jul 12, 2023, 11:15 AM UTC

panick21_ wrote: post #582

sarchertech wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you may have conditioned by HN to assume that any comment is a refutation. I brought it up because it’s an additional piece of the explanation for why amtrack can’t support itself on ticket prices alone.

Fair. I'm just saying that its one of many factors so I was confused why you would bring it up specifically.

Mostly because it’s the single biggest thing that keeps me from using Amtrak. The last few trips I’ve taken, we ended up sitting waiting on freight trains for many many hours.

Each big city we came to we had to stop and wait without having any idea how long it would take for “freight traffic to clear”.

I love train travel, and I’m not price sensitive at all, but the delays were completely absurd.

Re: Privatisation has been a costly failure in Britain

#587

Post by hnbad » Wed, Jul 12, 2023, 11:24 AM UTC

red-iron-pine wrote: post #473

hnbad wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a pet peeve when market maximalists talk about how public services are "inefficient". Efficiency in economics refers to profitability. If a public service isn't profitable, that actually makes it efficient in a practical sense because a public service being profitable would mean it is overfunded (i.e. it's receiving more funding than it needs to operate). In practice this often means politicians will squawk a…

> This is a pet peeve when market maximalists talk about how public services are "inefficient". Efficiency in economics refers to profitability. If a public service isn't profitable, that actually makes it efficient in a practical sense because a public service being profitable would mean it is overfunded (i.e. it's receiving more funding than it needs to operate). Ehhhh... nah. There is still a cost vs. return. Post…

Yes, but economic efficiency measures profit, not "number of packages shipped per dollar". Also that metric may not even be meaningful in isolation and optimizing for it may lead to worse (social) outcomes.

The problem with Medicare in the US isn't that Medicare is inefficient. The problem with Medicare in the US is that the US has a private healthcare system and Medicare exists on top of it. A universal public healthcare system wouldn't perform the same way in terms of bang for the buck because the dynamics would be very different.

Re: Privatisation has been a costly failure in Britain

#588

Post by WentFullRetard » Wed, Jul 12, 2023, 11:36 AM UTC

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Re: Privatisation has been a costly failure in Britain

#589

Post by Moomoomoo309 » Wed, Jul 12, 2023, 11:49 AM UTC

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…

I have a hard time thinking of any privatization wins in the US, to be honest. Pretty much every example in recent memory I can recall was an abject failure. Can you list a few? I agree with you in principle, but I just can't think of any...

Re: Privatisation has been a costly failure in Britain

#590

Post by oblio » Wed, Jul 12, 2023, 12:54 PM UTC

arethuza wrote: post #227

aembleton wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As you're being downvoted, here's more info on the history of Network Rail [1]. From memory, it was formed after the Potters Bar crash and realisation that Railtrack was trying to squeeze to much money out of the network. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Rail

This reminds me of the "Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphising Larry Ellison." rant - why are people surprised the private companies find any way to squeeze every penny of profit out of the services they run, it's what they do! And in the absence of competition that will be through underinvestment and shitty services (literally).

> why are people surprised the private companies find any way to squeeze every penny of profit out of the services they run, it's what they do!

Because companies bullshit their "missions" and "goals" everywhere and repeat after me, PROPAGANDA WORKS. Even if you think it doesn't, it plants a seed somewhere in the back of your head that's very hard to dislodge and clouds your "fully rational decisions".

After hearing from a myriad channels that companies want what's best for the customer, from a myriad authority or friendly famous figures, the average person is convinced they must be right. If you ask them directly they'll agree with you, and then their actions will show the exact opposite.