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Raff Karva

@miki @albertcardona

There is a prevailing belief in Poland that private is good, public is bad.

This has nothing to do with the reality and it stems from post communist attitudes.

If you want to see the true difference between private and public operations look at English vs Scottish Water companies.

Or German public trains vs English private trains.

Private companies have only one goal - to sell cheap products & services for as much money as possible.

25 comments
Jan (DL1JPH)

@RaffKarva
While I agree with the sentiment, it's important to note that DB is *not* a public entity but a publicly traded company with a controlling stake held by the state. The difference is that it, too, operates on a for profit model (and is failing miserably, given that they started debt free and now owe staggering sums to various banks).
@miki @albertcardona

Raff Karva

@DL1JPH @miki @albertcardona

Thank you, I was under the impression that DB operated just like ScotRail.

Raff Karva

@DL1JPH @miki @albertcardona

According to the Wikipedia Deutsche Bahn is 100% state owned enterprise:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche

It is therefore considered a public entity operating within the private sector. Banks lending money to DB consider state taxes as security against the loan.

The difference between a SEO and a Statutory Corporation such as Scottish Water is that SEO can invest in private companies such as four British train lines.

1/2

Raff Karva

@DL1JPH @miki @albertcardona

This means that each time you buy a train ticket in England, you’re defacto paying for Germany to implement Deutschland-Ticket, which gives the ticket holder unlimited Germany-wide travel for €49 per month.

If you need to commute for work from Manchester to London on Monday, expect to pay £114 one way.
_

Publicly owned DB: €49 per month unlimited travel

Private English company (owned by DB): £114 single ticket. 🤯

Jan (DL1JPH)

@RaffKarva
Yes, the ownership structure of DB is a bit strange... It gets even stranger once you look into the entire structure. There are parts that are, as you said, 100% state owned and parts that aren't. The Deutschlandticket is a bit of a misleading example here, though, as it is indeed state funded - *all* local rail companies have to sell and accept it, then they can claim state reimbursement according to the number of tickets sold. This isn't unique to DB Regio. @miki @albertcardona

Raff Karva

@DL1JPH @miki @albertcardona

I went down the rabbit hole of reading DB latest report.

Very interesting read:

ir.deutschebahn.com/fileadmin/

What stood out to me was this:

“More than 1.8 billion passengers took our trains in 2023, a year-on-year increase of more than 5%. By taking the train instead of driving, they traveled the climate-friendly way: our long-distance passengers reduced their greenhouse gas emissions by 7.5 million tons.”

Jan (DL1JPH)

@RaffKarva
That's quite a rabbit to chase indeed...

Yes, there are plenty of reasons to use rail over driving here, the Deutschlandticket being among them. The numbers look similar for the other public transport companies/agencies (there's another rabbit). Of course, there's plenty to complain about as well - you're likely to hear too much of it if you ever ask a German person about those.
@miki @albertcardona

Raff Karva

@miki @albertcardona

Thatcher’s government privatised water in England 35 years ago. Scottish water remained fully public during this time.

I don’t think there has been a better case study to compare private vs public ownership.

weownit.org.uk/public-ownershi

Mikołaj Hołysz

@RaffKarva @albertcardona Water (and other similar utilities, like electricity / internet / TV cables) are somewhat different, because you can't just lay new pipes / cables without government approval, and even if you could, it would be far too expensive. If one monopolist owns all the pipes and no other competitor can realistically lay more, there's nothing stopping the monopolist from raising the prices beyond all reason. This is why I'm not opposed to the government owning train track, undecided on them owning stations and related infrastructure, but definitely against public ownership of the actual trains and railroad companies themselves.

@RaffKarva @albertcardona Water (and other similar utilities, like electricity / internet / TV cables) are somewhat different, because you can't just lay new pipes / cables without government approval, and even if you could, it would be far too expensive. If one monopolist owns all the pipes and no other competitor can realistically lay more, there's nothing stopping the monopolist from raising the prices beyond all reason. This is why I'm not opposed to the government owning train track, undecided...

Raff Karva

@miki @albertcardona

I truly recommend that you study English private train companies (the whole of England got privatised by Thatcher)

It’s not one monopoly. It’s around 30 private companies.

Then compare those companies to one state owned Deutsche Bahn. DB is by far the best train travel I experienced throughout the whole of Europe.

€49 per month for unlimited country wide travel in Germany.

£114 for a single ticket from Manchester to London.

Raff Karva

@miki @albertcardona

There’s this myth sold by capitalists that within the private market competition leads to lower prices and better services.

This is unfortunately nothing but a myth.

What happens in reality is this:

theguardian.com/business/2022/

Uli Hofmann

@albertcardona @miki @RaffKarva Wow! Sitting in a „fast“ train across Germany right now, I do not quite know how to digest this praise for DB! Rarely heard. 😉 Truth to be told: The 49€ do not allow to use these fast trains… Still, you can get (criss-)cross-country with it.

Raff Karva

@kraweel65 @albertcardona @miki

In Germany, you can easily live in Hannover and commute for work to Bremen or Hamburg for €49 per month.

In England same distance work commute from Peterborough to London is £788 per month only available on two (out of 25) train lines.

Also, I used trains in Germany hundreds of times, not once was it cancelled. In England 1 in 10 commutes are cancelled each month.

Privatisation is a scam.

Ian Sudbery

@kraweel65 @albertcardona @miki @RaffKarva

People who complain about the state of DB have clearly never spent much time relying on the British train system.

Ian Sudbery

@kraweel65 @albertcardona @miki @RaffKarva

Last time I was in Germany, the ICE I was on was taken out of service due to a fault. The whole experience showed me what the correct way to deal with such a situation. We were delayed by 30 minutes.

Trains going out of service happens very frequently on UK trains, and I'm often abandoned with no help or advice, delayed 3 or more hours, forced onto overcrowded alternative trains

Florian Haas

@IanSudbery @kraweel65 @albertcardona @miki @RaffKarva

Incidentally, I tell my compatriots who complain about the state of ÖBB that they clearly haven't spent much time relying on long-distance rail in Germany. 😁

Albert Cardona

@IanSudbery @kraweel65 @miki @RaffKarva

It’s a bit of an unfair comparison, because the British rail system is perhaps at the bottom (and distant from the second-bottom) of Western European rail.

Raff Karva

@albertcardona @IanSudbery @kraweel65 @miki

But that’s the whole point. Comparison.

German train service is public.
British is private.

Former is great and cheap.
Latter is appalling and expensive.

Grant

@RaffKarva @miki @albertcardona

Ahhh... Myopic Maggie.

The truth is, privatised 'public services', e.g. roads, rail, power, sewage ... are ALL cartels. That's it. There's nothing clever about it and every single one of them is ONLY interested in maximising profit.

What on earth is the point???

Raff Karva

@gsymon @miki @albertcardona

“Myopic Maggie” - I never heard that before. Good one.

Yeap, it’s always been this way with private companies:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_

Grant

@RaffKarva @miki @albertcardona

Ha!

Yes, I came up with 'Myopic Maggie' a few years ago, after ongoing discussions with a very old friend, who thought that Maggie was a true great. Sigh.

It was her complete lack of vision. Her failure to understand humanity and the inevitability of her policies that led me the nickname.

I was often heard in the late 80s saying ... 'just wait to see what this will lead to in 30yrs' ... and ... well, here we are today. Totally predictable.

Raff Karva

@gsymon @miki @albertcardona

Poland is roughly a decade behind England in privatisation. Moreover, Poland did not adopt the full scale privatisation as introduced by Reagan-Thatcher neoliberalism.

A lot of my polish friends have this naive view of capitalism. They don’t see that given enough time privatisation always ends up with monopolies and/or cartels. Each time the public ends up paying more for worse product or service.

Grant replied to Raff

@RaffKarva @miki @albertcardona

When faced with this, I tend to ask a rhetorical question :

"If you let people do what they want.. what will they do?
...
They'll do what they want."

This aspect of humanity, is where free markets and unrestrained capitalism fall apart. You can't let them do what they want, because some people are the shittiest narcissists you can imagine and they will do anything to get cash and as we all know... money=power=money=power...

Raff Karva replied to Grant

@gsymon @miki @albertcardona

I often say:

Circa 10% of humanity is naturally greedy. Circa 10% of humanity is naturally altruistic. The rest can be swung either way.

Capitalism is set up by the greedy.

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