We’re all in on the culture war now
Typical conservative strategy:
- Public thing exists
- Become a lead weight in government so public thing gets underfunded and cannot adapt to market changes.
- Public thing no longer meets expectations.
- “See? It should be privatized and you won’t have this issue”
- Privatize thing. A few people make a crap load of money in the transition. Thing starts out acceptable for the first few years.
- “Oh no, capitalism uses an infinite growth ponzi model. How do we increase shareholder value this year?”
- Private thing gets underfunded and consumers get manipulated and abused.
Are we winning yet?
Didn’t England already go through that, and wasn’t it a complete failure ? someone knowledgeable quick please
Not really. British railways are 100% nationalised. All privatisation efforts have failed.
Relevant video: https://youtu.be/DlTq8DbRs4k?si=y-muiI81MKk3gin0
Privatized railways are mostly failures most of the time. Besides Brightline, and I think a bunch of the Japanese railway companies, no nation really has privatized passenger rail. But I think the Japanese system has a weird setup.
Actually, I think Italy and Germany have started allowing private companies to operate on their railways, but I think they need to fit it between the nationalized services. I could be wrong about that tho.
Privatized public transportation rarely works. At most you’ll find some success stories of companies that partnered with a government to jointly service a transportation line.
Thanks for providing these examples. They completely changed my mind about public transportation privatization
I disagree. Aside from privately owned Brightline who already owns the land around their stations, owns their tracks, and has a lot of incentive to expand their coverage, I have not heard of a single other piece of privatized infrastructure that actually benefits the users or actively engages in expansion