ElectroSoldier wrote on 2026-10-02, 02:59:
After the cuts and on into the 80s in spite of all the problems caused by the government ownership the railways made money
Here is the main flaw of your (and sadly you're anything but alone) way of thinking.
Public services aren't there to make money, are there to provide a service to the community.
No, while its obvious that a big thing, like a national railway, a national mail service a national freshwater provider, are easy target for bribery, which should be avoided with any means, a public service running , technically, at a loss is still something that helps the society to run, to prosper, to make money, to pay taxes because that money, taxes that help the state to run (and eventually to "loss" some money with) the services it provides.
That said, a nationalized service doesn't automagically mean a service run at a loss.
I mentioned British Railways as an extreme example, but here in Italy FS/Trenitalia makes a lot of money and is already expanding in France, Spain now Germany as a competitor of their national services, which in turn will expand in other countries. Poste Italiane makes a lot of money, ENI makes a lot of money.
While the highways (perhaps something invented here) became private in 1999 at the peak of the stupid privatization trend, allowing the new owner (the Benetton family) to make huge amount of money, while keeping high prices and low maintenance, something that ultimately lead to the infamous Morandi Bridge collapse that killed 43 people in 2018.
SIP/Telecom Italia/Tim Used to be in top 5 world telephone providers, their CSELT research center ruled, and had a main role in the MPEG standards creation. Was privatized 1997 and now is the shadow of itself, albeit Telecoms are by design golden egg chickens.
I can continue for a day, but you got the idea. Public services handed by private companies aren't magic wands to solve problems, usually they are their exact opposite.
