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Comment by cjk2 | Hacker News Reader

I think the free market is probably a better outcome as long as there is oversight and regulation. The problem is weak regulation.

I say that because I remember the nationalised services in the UK in the 70s and 80s and they were a complete mess. My mother spent 1/4 of her life arguing with the gas board, the council and British Rail after things went to crap. It definitely improved when privatised even if it’s not perfect.

The public services were not accountable and were completely untouchable to the end user and any legal recourse.

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The issue is that the most likely way forward now is forced nationalization and the taxpayer will end up paying for fixing this mess anyway. So if the taxpayer is going to pay for fixing it, it might as well have been a public service in the first place, in the last 30 years it just served enriching foreign investment funds and now when the things are dire the taxpayer will foot the bill anyway.

The other option is forcing these private companies to fix those issues through legislation, but they will just take the easy route of going bankrupt or they will lobby the government to either give them money or allow them to increase the bills 2-3x so taxpayers will pay for it either way, and shareholders can keep their billions in payouts.

That doesn't always happen. Look at TFL in London...

i prefer the boil the frog variant where the regulators turn the screws by applying financial and criminal sanctions until the private firms are persuaded to play ball … there will be some threats of bankruptcy… that is the game but owners in any guise share / bond /loan holders must be held to account eg force the private firm to default their loan or go to jail

> I think the free market is probably a better outcome as long as there is oversight and regulation. The problem is weak regulation.

Public services can be regulated and have oversight, too. What properties do private services have that make them more amenable to being regulated?

Well as not part of the government they are a hell of a lot easier to sue.

Nationalised industries can be (and often are) structured as ordinary companies where the government owns all the shares.

The ability to sue thing also depends a lot on where you are. The Crown Proceedings Act 1947[0] waived most of the special protections government operations got, especially in "commercial" areas. So in practice it's not worse here than suing any other large organisation.

[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_Proceedings_Act_1947

So energy retailers, yep for sure, you can change to another one if the one you're with is bad, and there are new rules on just how easy that has to be.

But how are the distributors being privatised a good thing? I don't get to choose if Cadent serves my gas, or whoever my DNO is re: electricity, or if Thames water serves my water, so they have no motivating reason to give a shit about me. Their goal is aimed directly at a) lobbying regulation down, b) working around regulation as much as they can, to make as much money as they can.

This has resulted in distributors for electricity and gas being the #1 and #2 highest profit businesses in the UK (~40% profit IIRC), with water being at #6.

I mean these private services are not really accountable either. Sure you can (maybe) sue them, but the damage they've caused is already done and the people responsible have long left and never held liable. The bandits have already stripped everything valuable and then the government (and by definition, you) are left to foot the bill.

This isn't to say a corrupt government can't do the same thing, but there's more incentives for officials at smaller leaner agencies to operate in the public benefit.

there needs to be application of conspiracy laws (or similar) to force eg MacQuarie to play ball or have their international banking licence terminated

I'm not pretending I know the best policy. I'm just saying that privatisation is marketed without the regulation part.

If you start with a government that cannot run sewers and then expect the same government to be competent in regulating profit-motivated companies then maybe you solved the wrong problem.

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