All I know is, I always shudder when anyone in Germany suggest privatising the Deutsche Bahn.
IMHO anything to do with infrastructure belongs in state hand! Roads, Rail, Electricity, Internet, water, gas, ect...
Private companies just have no incentive to get these services to remote areas and people as there is no money to be made there. Sure everyone will love to own the rail between manchester and london, it promisses lots of passengers and riches, but why would anyone volunterily service some shitty village in the back waters of wherever. The state is not out to make a quick buck or profit but is there to server all and everyone.
Just thinking about Water privatisation in France and Violia just makes my blood boil. (watch 'Water Makes Money')
I think for some things, like water, it makes absolutely no sense to privatise it. But for something like telecoms, it absolutely does. When we had a monopoly in the UK it was terrible (in fact, I think we've spoken about it on this thread several times). It would take months and months to get a new phone line installed (and back when you needed a new phone lime in order to open a business bank account, it basically meant you were waiting for British Telecom when you wanted to start a new business etc). The service was awful, the prices were high, there was no incentive for them to fix broken things etc. Now, it's not a 100% free market now because BT (now a private company) still owns all the infrastructure as a relic from when they were nationalised, and regulation defines the manner in which they lease that infrastructure out, but by and large the UK has benefitted hugely from a private market in home phones, mobile phones, mobile internet, home internet, basically every facet of communications. Likewise, can you imagine how many fewer business trips and holidays would be possible if you could only fly with British Airways? I don't even have a problem with private roads with tolls as long as there is a non-private way of getting there too (as per Spain, France etc).
I think it's precisely
because infrastructure is so important that some of it absolutely has to be in private hands - and likewise, some of it has to be in public hands. It's all down to whether it's possible for there to be effective competition or not. With the telecoms market there is, with water supply there isn't. Energy companies are a bit of a grey middle.
You're always going to have the problem of remote areas being less well served but, well, that's part of living in a remote area I guess. If the government wants to subsidise these areas - and obviously in a nationalised industry they basically would - I'd rather they did that via general taxation rather than by hammering the users of that service in better off areas more (for example, when Royal Mail was publically owned it had to offer the same service everywhere, for the same price - this basically meant that people in cities that used post were subsidising those in the sticks that also used it. To me, it makes far more sense if that subsidy comes out of general taxation. Likewise with energy, internet etc. I wouldn't want some centralised, re-nationalised BT charging everyone that wants high-speed internet out of the arse so that Joe McFarmer in Carrot-Cruncher-ville can get his porn quicker. If it comes out of central taxation, it needs to be justified and is accountable to the electorate .When it comes out of some mass BT budget, that's not the case, as per most Quango's).
