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Comment by typeCoercion | Hacker News Reader

Maybe nationalization should be an option when a company, say PG&E for example, has poorly maintained equipment that starts forest fires. It seems reasonable that an option like that should be on that table as a deterrent reserved for the worst actors. I don't think that anything like that should have happened here, but the fine of ~$10 a laptop does seem a bit low for MitM.

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> Maybe nationalization should be an option

This turns a problem company into a problem government bureaucracy. Cleaner to fine the company into oblivion, put it into bankruptcy--thereby teaching its shareholders and creditors a hard lesson--and then let the market figure out if it's worth more liquidated, split up into bits, or sold to a new owner.

Why would nationalization ensure that the equipment is well maintained?

This descends pretty quickly into politics, but Nationalised infrastructure should be managed by a government organisation who's goal is to deliver a quality product at (or slightly above) cost.

These organisations in turn report to the executive government of the day, who's interests should be aligned with that of the citizens they were elected to represent.

Nationalized infrastructure is a good way to create poor service, and a long lasting debt. Look at pretty much every country in Europe with national railtracks and rail lines: massively bleeding money, with worse and worse service and low levels of investements because there is no incentive to do so.

Actually the opposite is true. For example the UK was at the forefront of modern railtrack privatization, and it went horribly wrong: https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2012/09/why-britains-...

There are countless examples in Europe were privatized infrastructure actually has been bought back by the public because it has been neglected by the private holder.

It's not because there are failures of the private sector that it dooms the idea completely. But failures of operating train lines under national supervision is rather the rule than the exception. Look at the TGV in France, which is a complete commercial failure that needs constant government intervention to keep it afloat.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-reform-sncf-debt/f...

Same thing for Deutsche Bahn in Germany:

https://www.businesstraveller.com/business-travel/2018/09/11...

Other comments already pointed out counter-examples from the UK etc., so let me give you a German one:

The Berlin public transport system was running perfectly fine until it was privatized. Now the infrastructure is starting to degrade, it's gotten less punctual by objective metrics and it has also gotten much more expensive. The new owners are basically just milking the ever living hell out of it because they know they can.

It's gotten so bad there's now a lot of talk that it should be nationalized again.

Is there a private train company that has good service, regularly invests and is profitable without government assistance?

Yup. Numerous private train companies in Japan.

In Japan the government kept essentially all the companies' debt, and incurred the cost of the 80k employees that were fired. And even now the profitable companies seem to get their profits from shops at the train stations.

And from the 6 companies the public railroad was split into, not all are successful: "JR Hokkaido expects to incur a record pretax loss of ¥23.5 billion in the year that ended in March [2017], with the company’s president likening its loss-making business structure — due to loss of passengers caused by falling local populations and the expansion of expressway networks — to “a bucket with holes in the bottom."

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2017/04/04/editorials/p...

Of course, you can't have successful train operations in low density areas. Hokkaido, Shikoku, and the extreme west of japan is doomed in that regard. I don't even know how you could expect things to turn differently. But in Tokyo, and Kansai, the private train companies are doing very well.

But that's the point - the profitable tracks were probably profitable before privatization, too (no idea about Japan, but it was the case in Germany). Service in low density areas is the crux of the matter: railroad is a necessary infrastructure there, and if a nation wants to keep quality of life high in these areas, the tracks have to be operated at a loss.

It's the same with postal services, broadband access and similar infrastructure.

Of course a society as a whole can decide to stop subsidizing these low density areas, but that discussion is largely orthogonal to the privatization topic.

Your comparison is probably not accurate. The situation now is completely different from 30 years ago. Cars have become much cheaper at the same time, there are low cost options for travelling larger distance like planes and buses, that did not exist as much before. This is not a single variable environment here.

So much this.

On top of that, railroads (the actual rails and public transport lines) also tend to be a somewhat natural monopoly, so even the high profit lines veer towards minimal service and maximal price.

Completely wrong about the monopoly part. In the US most of the road tracks were created and driven by private companies. And they were competing on destinations and cost.

In Japan right now there are multiple lines that you could take to reach the same destination so there is actually a lot of competition going on.

There's a limit on the amount of subway lines you can squeeze under a city. Nobody is going to run a parallel lines.

The most a government can do is figure out beforehand which private company would build and run those cheapest for a certain line, but then you end up with the cheapest solution again, which is not the solution you actually want for infrastructure your economy depends upon.

Also, as the parent pointed out, Japan is a good example for why private companies by themselves aren't enough to run infrastructure like that, since you still need it even if they are unprofitable. And so they need government subsidies. You end up with a company paid for by the tax payer - as if it was nationalized - but with much less control by the government. Basically a money sink that isn't accountable to the tax payer. We have that in Berlin after the public transport was privatized. Can't recommend.

> There's a limit on the amount of subway lines you can squeeze under a city. Nobody is going to run a parallel lines.

Tokyo is a good counter example: you have metro lines and multiple ground lines, and buses, all competing against each other.

> Japan is a good example for why private companies by themselves aren't enough to run infrastructure like that,

What is your point? Japan is exactly the right example here, you have country-wide private companies operating and running an excellent service (world class) at reasonable cost.

> What is your point? Japan...

Only a bunch of them are profitable and some are even incurring record losses this year and relying on government money to keep operating.

Can't let them go bankrupt because they're still important. Honestly I explained this in my earlier post, good job cropping that.

Most of the Japan railway system was built by the state and privatized later.

Building it isn't the difficult part, keeping it running efficiently is. See: Britain.

Ironically most of the railways in Britain were built independently by private companies then nationalised then privatised again.

Not too sure what you're getting at, but the only part of Britain's rail network that runs acceptably is TFL which isn't privatised.

So what? what is expensive on a daily basis is maintenance and operations. That's the killer.

Not everything needs to make a profit. In fact it's better that some things don't.

And using European trains as an example of poor service is mind-boggling.

They are far, far better than the US or UK offerings (which are privatised, offer piss-poor service and are overpriced).

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