[rjzzleep]

The mess of DB isn't that much different from how the oligarchs in a lot of eastern European countries came to be. Privatization without real plan. Privatize the profits and socialize the losses.

The rails near Hamburg Altona are rotting, but the Bahn didn't want to foot the bill. So they came up with a horrible new station somewhere else. As a result the city chipped in to make a better one and pay of it from tax money.

I'm the last person to favour the government institutions in Germany. They're slow, lazy and full of old lazy hierarchies that must have been productive 30 years ago, but what is the point of privatizing something when the structure itself doesn't change and the privatization does nothing but siphon money out of the system and pump tax money in anyway? Half the ICE fleet is out of commission nowadays.

[tpmx]

So, echoing what eisstrom wrote: Deutsche Bahn is fully state owned. That phrase about "privatizing the profits and socializing the losses" is a common but still mindless form of dross in this case. I do understand why it gets a particular group of uninformed people to upvote your comment out of reflex though. You use it as click-bait, sort of, while building a convoluted argument that presumably very few of those upvoters actually grok.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Bahn

Deutsche Bahn AG is the national railway company of Germany. Headquartered in the Bahntower in Berlin, it is a private joint-stock company (AG), with the Federal Republic of Germany being its single shareholder.

[rjzzleep]

It was privatized in 1994. It's actually interesting that to the outside world people believe that it wasn't privatized because of the weird holding structure that it has.

They actually brag about how the privatization in 1994 was a huge success. The history of the privatisation of the Staatsbahn is so convoluted that it's hard to tell what actually happened.

https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/erfolgreiche-weichenstellung-...

EDIT: just because privatization isn't the kind of privatization you like doesn't mean it didn't happen. especially since the people here have no idea about the actual internal structure of the institution and who the leadership answers to.

[tpmx]

That article describes Deutsche Bahn being converted from a government agency to a fully state-owned "private" (public) company.

The word "private" as used here does not mean what you think it means.

("Mit der Bahnreform entstand ein Wirtschaftsunternehmen in privatrechtlicher Form. Der Bund blieb zwar alleiniger Eigentümer der neuen Bahn AG, er sollte allerdings nur noch bei strategischen Entscheidungen mitreden dürfen.")

[josefx]

The problem is probably more the EU directive that caused the privatization, because it requires that all European rail services compete commercially. Which means they are all required to make a profit even if it is a net negative to society. I can't wait for an EU directive that requires our firefighters to compete commercially, following the example of Marcus Licinius Crassus this would seem quite doable.

[tpmx]

Wait, what problem? Do you also believe that Deutsche Bahn was privatized, as in the ownership being transferred from the government to private citizens? If not, can you please clarify for the benefit of other readers of the thread?

[josefx]

The problem that it __acts__ like a for profit privately owned company.

[wink]

It's more nuanced than looking at this 'who owns it and is it really a privatization'. Back when the people working at DB were government officials there weren't so many problems, trains were on time and money was spent on the infra. Then they sent them all into early retirement and I guess everything is now more focused on profits (are there even any?) but the outcome is that it's badly managed and dysfunctional.

[eisstrom]

DB is not privatized, it is 100% state-owned. As far as I know, all ICE power cars are still in use today, except for the one destroyed in the Eschede accident.

[serial_dev]

> what is the point of privatizing something when the structure itself doesn't change and the privatization does nothing but siphon money out of the system and pump tax money in anyway?

That is the point.

Gigantic projects like nuclear reactors, stadiums, high ways, bridges, airports (hallo Berlin) trains (and big software projects and wars, too) are just different ways of funneling a significant percentage of the tax payer money funding the project into the politicians' and decision makers' circle's wallet.

[ChuckNorris89]

In summary: because corruption.