Hacker News Reader

Comment by MattGaiser | Hacker News Reader

To be fair, people use these as a reason to privatize Canada Post.

So the same set of reasons is used to argue for the opposite outcome.

That’s called deliberately “running down” a service so it can be sold off on the cheap to your friends. Same thing happened with water and rail privatisation in the UK. When the railways were finally privatised there were several fatal train disasters that lead to the rail network being re-nationalised as Network Rail with the train “operators” now working under a franchise model. These usually make a huge loss that is then subsidised by the government. The franchises are sometimes owned by foreign governments and used as a way to subsidise foreign rail services. Sometimes the franchises are re-nationalised again, such as in the case of services on the East Coast Mainline, and then are suddenly profitable again under public ownership.

It all makes me wonder whether natural monopolies that provide essential public services can ever be run better by a profit making company with little to no democratic oversight.

Privatise the profits, socialise the losses.

It's the Tory way. Though one not opposed by nu-Labour when in power during the 2000's.

And is exactly what’s being done to the NHS now

Saying the only reason why a public service is terrible is because it was “intentional” seems a massive stretch.

You’re ignoring poor management, bad processes, etc.

I wouldn't put it in the same way as the previous poster, but if your argument is "government can't run anything right! They always make a complete mess of things!", then you're not going to actually run these services all that well. You have a strong interest to NOT run these services well, because "see, told you I was right!"

I don't think there's some sort of intentional 4D chess plan going on, or corruption to make a profit, but certainly a lot of conflicted interests and bias to not make it work. That's one cause of "poor management, bad processes, etc."

I'm arguing that government services are susceptible to the same failings, and more, of non-governmental services.

So to argue that the only reason why they fail is a lack of funding is laughable.

Are you saying that Canada mail is being deliberately rundown?

If so, what is your evidence?

If not, why are you replying to this comment about it?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com