[Bartweiss]

> it tends to produce more change for change's sake, just to a different destination. Same goes for so many private sector takeovers and buyouts. In each instance it rarely delivers.

Nicely put. I do think it's possible that nationalization and even privatization can produce improvements, but they're obviously not deployed on the strength of detailed, domain-specific evidence. Mostly, someone just gets control of a troubled system falls back on doctrinaire arguments that their preferred solution always works, never mind questions like "does the government have any experience here" or "will this immediately become a private monopoly".

More cynically, your description of rail points to the other side of the game. If you've got a working instance of the approach you don't like, pile on challenges (regulation and unprofitable obligations on one side, funding cuts on the other) until it breaks, then declare the need for your preferred solution. And not coincidentally, the long-term outcome is almost always these batty public-private partnerships or private-consultant-run government programs that are profitable for someone but work horribly.

I should learn more about the national-era history of British rail, it's always sounded like the biggest 'flaw' was simply being vulnerable to Tory funding cuts. The privatization approach was truly absurd - at this point I suppose the best hope available is emulating something like not-a-real-market private utilities?

[NeedMoreTea]

Trying to stay away from the party political, I think the experience is that telephony may have been suitable for privatisation - people are happy switching providers, and do so all the time. Water, Post Office and electricity not so much. Thirty odd years later and regulators still haven't figured out how to get people to switch in any appreciable numbers. Maybe those really are natural monopolies, regardless of party dogma - and were often those pre-war city corporations.

> until it breaks, then declare the need for your preferred solution

Equally cynically, that does seem to be the way government and regulation works lately. Just look at the Post Office privatisation - take things away from them year on year from counter services, savings, licence renewals to city mail, so it's no wonder they're declining and "need" privatising. Then they wonder why the electorate doesn't trust politicians. Or BBC licencing deals... The stench of where that's heading is getting overpowering.

They may have got plans wrong many times earlier, but it appears former generations were far more genuinely concerned with actually trying to make the country better - whether one-nation Tory or Labour, or administrations elsewhere. I'm sure there's some age-related rose tinting, but I don't think anywhere near all. Where did that ethos go? :)

> the best hope available is emulating something like not-a-real-market private utilities

Private with stronger service obligations - like to permit other companies to run charters, freight or express on the tracks. Hopefully make them more like a real company - where they own the track, buildings and trains. Needing at least three companies involved to reschedule or add a new service is in the interests of no one at all. Yet that starts to look like going back to LMS, LNER, GWR and SR. That almost admits it was organised better in the 1920s. Not sure that's politically possible. :)