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VW, the largest car company in the world, is partly state-owned. Same for Deutsche Bahn, KfW bank and a few others. They don't always work perfectly, but they s
by allendoerfer 9y ago
VW, the largest car company in the world, is partly state-owned. Same for Deutsche Bahn, KfW bank and a few others. They don't always work perfectly, but they sure can compete or are even market leaders.
- qaq 9y agoVW is not run by government appointed managers and gorvernment does not have control of the votes. Now even if it did I doubt we want to use VW as an example of good corp. citizen.
- allendoerfer 9y agoVW basically does what everybody else is doing (see news about Daimler and BMW). The state-owned aspect changes nothing, it just says that 30% of VWs profits go into the pockets of the German state of Niedersachsen instead of the pockets of a private investor. That was the key point of the original discussion about Gates' money and rising inequality, so the example is very valid.
- qaq 9y agoIt's valid in a sense that if government does not control voting rights and plays no role in day to day operations sure there is no difference. If you start taxing the stock and transferring stock to government eventually government will have control of all entities though.
- TomMarius 9y ago>They don't always work perfectly, but they sure can compete or are even market leaders. Most of the time it's because these companies are government-approved monopoly (no other company can enter the market) or because they're heavily subsidised using taxes (no other company can enter the market practically because competing against someone who you fund at the same time is impossible and because the prices are below the actual expenses) and are actually losing huge amounts of money. Typically railways all around Europe are not profitable at all. Volkswagen is a very special case, but you're partially right. I'd say it's an exception to the rule though.