[pjc50]

> Investors are not a cartel that lobbies the government.

Investors as a class most certainly lobby the government.

> Government services were privatised in the UK for political reasons.

.. and this politics does not exist in a vacuum. There is a whole mythology about privatisation that is put forward by opaquely-funded think tanks. It has other functions simply than providing assets - it's also an anti-strike measure and a means of avoiding complaints.

[objectivistbrit]

Investors aren't a class. "Investors" includes pension funds, university endowments, hedge funds, banks, sovereign wealth funds, individual savers - the only thing these people have in common is they have funds and want to grow them, but they differ completely on risk preference, time preference, amount to invest, etc, etc. I.e., they all pursue their own individual self-interest, not some collective class interest.

Some of these entities fund lobbyists and some don't.

mythology ... opaquely-funded think tanks

I don't know if you are a Marxist, but this is a Marxist way of looking at the world, where each class pursues its collective interest, and funds propaganda to spread a self-justifying mythology.

[pjc50]

I'm not a Marxist, but I was wondering as I typed that if the class analysis would get pattern-matched that way.

My comment about think tanks was driven by http://whofundsyou.org/ , really. "Funds propaganda to spread a self-justifying mythology" is definitely something that happens to varying extents by various actors - that's effectively how "super-PACs" work in the US. And privatization has the characteristics of a mythology: it's asserted as a cure-all for problems in public services, and implemented even when extremely unpopular. It relies on creating pseudo-markets, often with only one buyer and tiny number of sellers, and the buyer is not the consumer of the service so the quality gets driven down.