Chiltern Railways’ services became the latest to transition into public ownership on Sunday, marking the sixth train operator to be nationalised by the Government.
The UK’s largest train operator, Govia Thameslink Railway, alongside c2c, Greater Anglia, South Western Railway, and West Midlands Trains, have already been brought into public ownership by the Government.
From December, the Department for Transport (DfT) confirmed that 25 additional daily Chiltern Railways services will be introduced to help tackle “overcrowding”, delivering 10,000 extra seats during each weekday. This plan incorporates half-hourly weekday trains running along the Chiltern main line between London and Birmingham, as well as an increase in weekend journeys.
I don’t agree with it, but I don’t at all think it’s mad.
Typical profit margins at companies are under 10%. To me it seems perfectly plausible that changing the incentive structure around how a company is operated would have a way bigger impact than that. (There’s also executive pay which is higher in private companies, but is typically chump change compared to profit).
So you’ve got to put yourself in the shoes of someone who fervently believes that there is a lot of waste in the public sector. That is, despite decades of effort at trying to reduce or eliminate it. And, let’s get one thing out in the open: there is a lot of waste in the public sector. (It just so happens that there is also a lot of waste in the private sector, and generally less waste in the public sector than its detractors say) So if you believe that, chucking 10% profit at shareholders - who in the case of the big, trumpeted privatisations of the Thatcher years - were supposed to be ordinary citizens as shares in British Gas were heavily advertised to the public, and many bought them - seems like a potentially great deal. Not madness at all.
This was part of a major rethink not so much about “how to run individual public services” but “what is the role of the state, and what is it best placed to do?” It was felt that we’d already looked into why public services were running badly, and got to the end of the road.
And just to emphasise, the idea of privatisation was not “let some rich people become richer.” It was to sell shares in privatised companies to as many people as possible, and make investors out of all of us. In one way, it worked: millions of people bought shares in British Gas. But it didn’t end up sticking: most people who bought shares later sold them, making some decent money but yielding the longer-term benefits to bigger investors.
I feel confident one can change incentives and operational practices without privatizing.
Some people are delusional but I’m not sure the value of spending a lot of time in their shoes. In the US many people fervently believe the Republicans are “better at the economy” despite evidence pointing otherwise.
This seems like an inefficient way to share public wealth that gives advantage to the wealthy. Let’s say you’re correct and the value of the shares goes from 10 to 100. People who bought more shares profit more. People with more money on hand can buy more shares. It’s a large advantage to the wealthy.
As you said
So it sounds like we agree? Privatizing advantages the bigger, wealthier, investors.
What I disagreed with is that the belief was mad. You’ve just explained a lot of ways that the belief was wrong not that it was mad. We agree that it was wrong, so this didn’t do anything to convince me that it was mad, and I still don’t agree with that.
If I’ve understood this line of argument, you’re raising objections to privatisation, and then concluding “since privatisation is a bad idea, anyone who believes it’s a good idea must be mad.” Do correct me if this is not your logic.
If it is then it’s unsound in a way that I see repeated again and again on Lemmy: people who disagree with you on one thing tend to also disagree with you on other things. Specifically, someone who thinks privatisation is a good idea, does not (or did not) agree that any of the arguments you raised were sufficiently strong. It would be mad to continue to think that privatisation is a good idea if you agree with the arguments you made against it.
But merely disagreeing with your arguments is not mad. Just wrong.
Ah I see. I’m not sure where the line is between “merely wrong” and “mad”.
Like, if you tell me the population of London is 5 million, that’s wrong but plausible. If you tell me it’s twelve people that’s absurd.
So when I look at privatization I can’t see any path where it works out for the majority of people that isn’t entirely wishful thinking. There’s no mechanism where private ownership of public resources and infrastructure works out in the long term. Believing in it seems so egregiously wrong it’s another category. Like someone believing that letting the foxes watch the hens will yield more eggs. There’s no good reasons to believe that, but plenty of Fox written propaganda.
Though I am sort of backed into a corner in that I was sort of firing from the hip. I don’t have the most robust argument for my “maybe written on the toilet” posts. “Mad” might not be the best word. “Foolish and poorly informed” maybe?
I think “foolish and poorly informed” is a lot more sustainable than “mad” for sure. The latter I think is what leads people to believe this cynical stuff that anyone arguing for that kind of stuff is a bad actor.
But I think you can learn a lot by reading the actual opinions of intellectuals - in this case economists - who fervently believe in the effectiveness of free-market capitalism. My own take is that it’s less “foolish and poorly informed” and more “prioritising other evidence/arguments/preconceptions.”