@bjoernstaerk @researchfairy from experience as soneone living in a country with plenty of that (public private partnerships, supposedly regulated essential services, privately managed public services, etc): it's just a strategy so the richbois can extract more tax money and blame "regulations" every time something goes wrong (which always happens eventually).
@ncrav @researchfairy also speaking from experience, there are many countries, many ways to attempt this. trains run like this in Norway, for instance. is it a success? no. better than how Britain did it, but i wouldn't recommend. but the problem with it is not that a rich person is now in charge of trains, or even that they're extracting tax money and blaming regulations. mostly just that it's not a good way to run trains.