Gregory's ServerThatcher’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.
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16 comments
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. 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: @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. @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. @kraweel65 @albertcardona @miki @RaffKarva People who complain about the state of DB have clearly never spent much time relying on the British train system. @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  @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. 😁  @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. @albertcardona @IanSudbery @kraweel65 @miki But that’s the whole point. Comparison. German train service is public. Former is great and cheap.  @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??? “Myopic Maggie” - I never heard that before. Good one. Yeap, it’s always been this way with private companies: @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. 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. @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? 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... 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. |
@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...