State owned enterprises is not a bad word. The idea of having state owned enterprises is easy, when there aren't much private investment in any country. State-owned enterprises can be a good choice, especially in capital-intense industry. The side effect of state-owned enterprises is that if the enterprises can lose competitiveness (or never gain), which means they are actually very weak when competing in domestic market. And normally the objective of state-owned enterprises in modern government is to support employment and economy. It is less about control. If I think about the future, when robots take over all jobs, people don't need to work for money, there will be either state-owned company distributing the profit amongst all citizens or company-owned state (i don't know how this is going to work)