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Maybe you are too young to remember, but they already tried that. The customer service was appalling and the prices were not much better. When you contacted the GPO to request a telephone for your home, the first question they asked was "Why do you need a telephone?". The current system is far from perfect but nationalisation was never wonderful.
Veni, vidi, abiit domum
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When I was at university in the 1970's we visited the only nationalised business in the country that was making a regular profit when it was nationalised - (un)surprisingly it was a brewery[^] (in Carlisle)!
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I'm an optoholic - my glass is always half full of vodka.
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As if the owner of the asset determines whether or not it'll be "great"; one can have mismanagement in both private and non-private organizations. The larger companies are trying hard to prove that they're as ineffective as non-private entities would be.
The only difference is that private corporations tend to maximize profit. Be happy that the price of water is relatively stable.
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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Eddy Vluggen wrote: Be happy that the price of water is relatively stable.
We are fortunate to live in a part of the world where it falls from the sky in reasonably regular and generous quantities. When that changes we are in trouble.
Veni, vidi, abiit domum
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Not for much longer. The word has already been circulated that water and treatment prices will have to rise consistently over the next ten years to pay for upgrades to the infrastructures such as new pipes. The consumers will not protest, only grumble.
Like the rail commuters who every January bitch and moan about the above-inflation ticket hikes. They stamp their feet and I thought they did that to warm their feet up on a cold day. 
If there is one thing more dangerous than getting between a bear and her cubs it's getting between my wife and her chocolate.
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People work for private companies to get as rich as possible for as little investment (of time and energy) as possible.
People work for nationalised companies to pump up their sense of self worth and importance.
The customer cannot win.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Rob Philpott wrote: Why doesn't the Bank of England offer a rival service with profits fed back into the treasury?
Because:
- A national service cannot concurrence private companies, because they would technically have unlimited funding. This is not allowed by international trade conventions.
- Going against Visa and Mastercard, two of the most unethical, corrupted and mafia-driven companies in the world, is a step that nobody would dare. At least nobody who does not want to finish with his head lying a few meters away from the rest of their body.
~RaGE();
I think words like 'destiny' are a way of trying to find order where none exists. - Christian Graus
Do not feed the troll ! - Common proverb
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See also RBS, Lloyds etc. When the private sector elephants up, we pick up the pieces!
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I'm an optoholic - my glass is always half full of vodka.
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Wish I'd typed faster, my post below echo's yours.
Andy B
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The railways have cost more per annum in subsidies since privatisation than they did to run when nationalised. 
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In the UK at least I think it now just a question of ideollogy - even Labour has fallen into the mantra of Nationalised Industry bad, Private Industry good.
We've even got the disaster waiting to happen that is the PFI (private finance initiative) which massages the figures on privately built infrastructure in order that it doesn't appear on the treasury accounts and appears better value than publicy funded alternatives. Every one I've read about has a 'bias for private' built into it. These will come back to haunt us, but probably not in the political lifetime of the %^&*'s that came up with it.
Of course nationalized industries can be made to work, especially in areas that should be run as a service like railways. What would you travel on - SNCF with the fantastic TGV, or any of the various private rail networks in the UK? The French obviously see their rail system as an asset to be invested in and yes, even subsidized or invested in on a long-term basis, rather than a 3 year balance-book to be milked for the duration of a franchise. I believe this is to their credit, accountants and other short-term thinkers may disagree.
Andy B
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LabVIEWstuff wrote: SNCF with the fantastic TGV
And what do we get? HS2 - a railway nobody wants, between places nobody wants to go to, running through places that people want left alone, at a cost that will never be repaid in benefits... 
You have to wonder who is involved who stands to make a fortune on the construction.
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HS2? Point, however we did such a good job of removing Continental Europe Rail System (and some of the surrounding area) in the 1940's it was easier & cheaper to rebuild straight lines going between places than it is here. No one was too bothered by overhead power lines if there roof didn't leak! As said by James Holland (in Cold War, Hot Jets, BBC2 iPlayer it if not seen), post war the UK was shabby, leaky but everything still worked. 
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£160,000,000 per mile for HS2. Somebody will be ![Jig | [Dance]](https://codeproject.global.ssl.fastly.net/script/Forums/Images/jig.gif) while the rest of us are 
The benefits to the economy would be far greater if the HS2 budget was spent on improving existing infrastructure across the country as a whole.
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Allow me to rephrase:
1. The mantra should be: "competition is good, monopolies are bad".
2. Where competition is technically unfeasable, public monopolies are a lesser evil than private monopolies.
3. Public monopolies have the highest tendency to work well in nations with a tradition of using a guillotine.
JM2B.
Pablo.
"Accident: An inevitable occurrence due to the action of immutable natural laws." (Ambrose Bierce, circa 1899).
"You are to act in the light of experience as guided by intelligence" (Rex Stout, "In the Best Families", 1950).
modified 27-Nov-13 6:49am.
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Remember Louis XIV quote: Quote: l'etat c'est moi
What is then the difference between a absolute ruler vs a private company. If everyone is given the same rights in the world, the companies that are competing are nations instead. Not that far fetched in modern Europe at least.
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As a person who lives in a former communist country where almost everything was state owned I can assure you that privately owned companies are way better for general well-being of the country. People tried nationalization in the past (or even currently - like in Venezuela) - it always leads to dismal failure.
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It depends on how you manage them. Unfortunately, there's little incentive to manage a nationalized company well, so it tends to result in epic failure.
However, "managing a private company well" means "screwing people over as efficiently as possible", so that also tends to result in epic failure.
You just can't win.
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harold aptroot wrote: there's little incentive to manage a nationalized company well
Theoretically the same incentive as the manager in a private company; keeping one's job. One can evaluate the work done each year, and replace the manager if he does not deliver. Works for both private and public entities, even though our American friends would like to have us believe that managers of public companies cannot be replaced even if inadequate.
Larger companies have a shareholders-meeting; they determine whether the manager does his job well. If they want a manager that screws their customers and employees (and killing the corporation in the process), then they're free to keep him. Does not mean that large corporations "have" to fail epically.
harold aptroot wrote: You just can't win.
Not with them one-liners from the economics-corner.
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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You appear to have found a nice pair of rose-coloured spectacles.
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harold aptroot wrote: You appear to have found a nice pair of rose-coloured spectacles.
..and you appear to have run out of arguments.
The only technical difference is profit, and only the Anglosaxon model of capitalism would state that (short term) profit is the ultimate goal. Your abstraction is leaky, to quote Joel Spolsky.
Bastard Programmer from Hell
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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I have arguments. I'm not interested in using any of them - they'd just lead to a pointless discussion that would take us from economics to human nature to other stuff, and neither one of us would convince the other.
Waste of time.
Let's just disagree without arguing about it first.
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Our experience in Egypt is that nationalized companies tend to be cesspools of corruption, indifference and colossal failure.
There is simply no incentive for the employees or management to make the public company succeed, as they will get their salaries anyway.
National companies that were privatized in the 1990's became much more successful, especially when it comes to quality and customer service.
To address Rob's point about adding income to the treasury, the best approach would be a hybrid one. Ex: The Egyptian government owns a large chunk of Vodafone Egypt.
Amr Abdel Majeed
Senior Software Developer
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One thing overlooked in the private vs government run, when private organization fail a project is that governments, often, never stop interfering. Also, with government run projects, creative "financing" can often be used to make a project appear successful.
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