[cm3]

It's a matter of different politics. Norway chose not to basically let private companies take all the profit from natural resources, while in the UK there's this weird system in place that has politicians ruining public orgs like infrastructure providers to afterwards claim they fixed it, once they pushed for privatization, and all they did was get it back to where it was before in quality of service. After that, it's profit-driven and the population has to fight for laws to keep up existing quality standards they pay for with taxes. There are European countries like Finland where you don't worry which school your kids go to because there are no good or bad school districts. Same for hospitals. If you have to pay taxes for public services, then it must be fair and of equal quality for everybody, or you must turn it all into a Friedman-style privatize-everything system, which may or may not work but sounds thought through and might.

[digi_owl]

Norway is turning UK year by year...

[to3m]

Can you elaborate?

[kwhitefoot]

The current government wants to sell off the Flytog (Airport Train). This is a state owned enterprise that even the seriously capitalist Norwegian financial magazine Kapital says is one of the best run companies in the country and should not be privatised. There have been serious suggestions that Statoil should be sold off completely. The electricity system has been privatised even though most of the energy is generated by rain that can hardly be said to be owned by anyone.

[tyfon]

Regarding Statoil. The government currently owns about 1/3 of it. The oil income for the state does not come from the profit of the company but the taxes they put on the companies that extract oil (which is about 80%) and the sale of licenses through Petoro. Selling Statoil (and the other ones) have absolutely no comparison to what Thatcher did in the 80s if that is what you are insinuating.

Regarding the power, the majority of the plants are owned by Statkraft, a 100% government owned company and is most definitely not privatized.

Flytoget runs well because even though it is owned by the government, they have had a very hands off approach and let them operate without interference. The same can be said of Statoil, the only reason it has done so well is that the government has been mostly hands off. My father was in the top management before retirement and has been very clear on this. Whenever the government tried to interfere it just made problems.

In essence, as a fellow Norwegian i disagree with you on these subjects (and some of what you write is simply not true).

[JupiterMoon]

So if companies are well run and profitable in their current state owned but hands off form why not keep them that way?

[kochthesecond]

Why sell off the train if it's earning money? Plenty of government run ventures don't.

[uola]

Because they are jelous they can't make as bad a deal as Stockholm did with Arlanda. Express?

More seriously, to finance populistic reforms to increase the power of their own party.

[e12e]

Liberal economic policy states that profit is the domain of the private enterprise, infrastructure that can't turn a profit is the domain of the state. I think it's a crazy idea, but that's the gist: if there's money to be made the government should leave that to private business and trust the invisible hand to make things right.

[tyfon]

Because the government should run the country and not small companies. If the company is exploiting strategic resources like oil it should be taxed, not owned as far as I am concerned.