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by sensanaty
308 days ago
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Could you list some examples of where public infra hasn't "gone well"? Because from my own view of things it's the exact opposite, whenever anything became privatized that shouldn't have been (rail, water, electricity, public transportation, healthcare) it inevitably follows the same churn as all the other things getting enshittified continuously. The national railway in the Netherlands is a great example of this. They've privatized but with gov't subsidies, yet there's less trains, less people getting moved by the remaining trains, ticket prices skyrocketing YoY, worse service, rail workers getting shafted and basically being forced to go on strike in order to improve conditions. They're (NS) a monopoly too and handle something like 95% of all rail traffic within the Netherlands. I believe the UK is going through a similar issue, where their railways are now privatized and in turn it's lead to increasingly worse service despite there being plenty of competition in the market in the form of many rail companies. This lolbert fantasy of the "free" market being good for literally everything, including critical public infrastructure is a complete farce. |
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The basic problem with the way you are thinking about it with respect to the national railway is that you don't seem to include cost to the government (ie, the people) to run it. Much infrastructure might appear to be "well run" by the government until you see the massive hole in the their budget. Sometimes the service has to get worse. When the government decides some piece of infrastructure must "pay for itself", they often sell it or hand over management to a private entity as a way to shift blame.
There are many private companies/PE firms etc who are competitively bidding to own these assets. It's not some license to print money, they are low return low risk assets.