> Trains in the UK got a lot better after privatisation, I don't expect my point to be landing with free market Regonomists, but seriously? I mean even trains

> Trains in the UK got a lot better after privatisation, I don't expect my point to be landing with free market Regonomists, but seriously? I mean even trains in my native country, which is generally fairly undeveloped are a lot more dependable. Trains in the UK are regularly late, cancelled, broken due to the slightest change in weather that's fairly typical of the UK, overcrowded, slow etc. etc. Maybe it was even worse before, but if this is what 'a lot better' looks like, then the private industry has a long way to go. I think there's plenty of room for private industry, but am not sure essential public transportation is one of them. German trains are a lot better run, (have family there presently, so can speak to that) and while they're technically owned by a private company, the state is the single shareholder there. Perhaps the problem was that in the UK, like in the US, there's a strong desire to underfund and underpower public programs to be able to then point to them and say how they 'don't work' - the same has been the case for the NHS as well, which btw now has huge contracts with private companies like Virgin Health, who sue and waste public funds if they don't get a contract rather than conclude that their offering simply wasn't good enough in the 'free market'. That's besides the point that there's no such thing as a 'free market' for most people, because most of us aren't of means enough to simply pack up and leave if there's no good train/ISP... choices in our area for example, nor do most of us have the ability to start our own.