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Has privatizing public infrastructure EVER gone well? Is there any indication this will be different from all the many, many, many failed privatizations? What

Has privatizing public infrastructure EVER gone well? Is there any indication this will be different from all the many, many, many failed privatizations? What were they thinking (really, what was the discourse over there? Doesn't Iceland usually tend to do reasonable things?)?

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
capableweb 4y ago
I'd really want to know the same. Also, in similar vein, is there any examples of making something that was private before into public infrastructure, with good success?
- brianwawok 4y ago
  Toll roads in the US for both cases. There were some crazy routes to get from A to B. Toll roads cut an hour or more off some popular routes. And in reverse, some states have bought out some toll roads, after they were deemed not profitable.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  I think the problem with the reverse (private -> public) is that it usually happens after the company has been mismanaged for so long it’s ready to go bankrupt.
- pram 4y ago
  Most commuter rail in the US fits that bill, doesn’t it? Amtrak, Septa etc
6510 4y ago
no
- gsk22 4y ago
  Which question in the parent are you even responding to?
  - 6510 4y ago
    The firstOf, the other 2 are ["no", "yes"]; In the short term businesses can optimize and at times modernize. When this is done the customers/citizen will pay until the end of time.
openfuture 4y ago
The CEO that is being interviewed there was in the panama papers. He bought the house he lives in from the wife of one of the people who was jailed after the financial crysis. The people who were jailed didn't really receive much time at all and the whole thing has been misunderstood abroad. Honestly the country is no longer independent, the biggest joke is that our ruling political party, the independence party, is anything but... But these things are just the slow march to making it clear who rules us. Can't wait to see the identity company (also private) being sold in a similar way. I am doing an uprising (except the icelandic word 'uppreisn' also has the added meaning of 'dignity') - what does that entail? Well I believe that coercion is not a good foundation for anything supposedly legitimate. I want a more persuasive foundation and I guess that starts with making guix a useful OS for non-technical users via my "datalisp" project... I guess I should stop dragging my feet and make the website (datalisp.is) since I am opening this discussion. Whatever. The key idea is; we need to be able to trust our operating system, for that to happen we need a way to receive automatic updates without having a central source of truth, this is the oracle problem in disguise. The solution is to keep track of probabilistic estimates of [contextual] trust and basically do science (we haven't got a better way to do physics so I don't see how we are expecting anything better from "AI") to assess legitimacy... You can see my thing at sr.ht/~ilmu and if you are Icelandic; uppreisn.is (note that this thing is lost in google translation). I've decided I would rather die than earn money doing things I don't believe in and that almost happened recently so everything is a bit scattered. However I have a meetup starting next month and then there will be steady progress on datalisp. Edit for some clarifications, the sale discussed is blocked right now by the 'competition control' agency but I don't think they have enough grounds and the agencies that do are clearly corrupt.
quitit 4y ago
The problem with this approach is that these are entities which were entirely paid for by the population. Tax dollars built the company, and further taxes plus operating fees were paid by the population to keep it running. Unless the business was able to sell services to foreign states (like how electricity is often exported), then the entity exists solely on the backs of the population. A sell off is rarely going to result in more than what the population has already paid towards the business. It turns into a short-sighted budget booster while depriving the population of the unique advantages of state-held entities, such as not needing to turn a profit, having to answer to elected representatives, the power to change the management, or hold priorities that solely benefit the population (such as performing costly upgrades for economic or national security purpose). When looking at utilities there are few avenues that the new owner can take to improve profit other than cost-cutting exercises and increasing fees. Neither of these weren't possible beforehand, but an entity that needs to make profit to justify the purchase price will find ways of generating that profit. This is usually where the problems start - it's the assumption that a private profit driven entity possesses unique market knowledge, efficiencies and access to larger scales of economies that weren't available to prior company management. In most situations these benefits are overstated and don't render any real benefit to the population, instead the business usually increases costs at an outpaced rate (hello inflation) due to having a state granted monopoly and this levies the entire population with a higher cost of doing business for the long term.
lmm 4y ago
My parents talk about how getting a new telephone in the UK went from a month-long process to next day once it was privatized and there was profit to be made.
robocat 4y ago
> Has privatizing public infrastructure EVER gone well? There has been a huge amount of privatisation of infrastructure in New Zealand over the years, and it is hard to find good examples of consumer harm (unlike the harmful examples for private electricity networks in California or Texas). The only real problem appears to be that the public keep buying things back or propping up private enterprise (giving billions to Toll for an uneconomic rail network, or bailing out our national air carrier Air NZ). One counter-example could be our airports which are part private enterprise, and man they gouge consumers with their monopolies. Although I think Wellington and Christchurch airports are private-public partnerships with local government. New Zealand is similar to Oregon in area and population, to give you an idea of how big our problems could get.
danielmarkbruce 4y ago
What are the many failed privatizations?
rglullis 4y ago
Yes. Brazil privatized it almost all of its national telco infra in the mid-90's. We went from being a country where you'd wait years to get a landline installed to one of ubiquitous internet and cellphone coverage in a very short time-frame. Prices have gone down consistently and the companies are continuously investing in improving the infrastructure. The important thing about Brazilian privatization was that there was forced competition. Every major metro region had two have at least two different buyers and they had to compete. This led to ~8 big groups bidding for different regions in the whole country. Nowadays the restrictions on the regions were lifted and some consolidation came up, but overall the whole country still has every region with at least 3-4 different companies competing for the market.
CamperBob2 4y ago
Has privatizing public infrastructure EVER gone well? Of course. It's impossible to make the case that US telephone customers were better off under Ma Bell than we were after deregulation, for instance. If only we could've kept Bell Labs alive! Also, consider the medium you're using at this very moment.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

capableweb 4y ago

I'd really want to know the same. Also, in similar vein, is there any examples of making something that was private before into public infrastructure, with good success?

brianwawok 4y ago
Toll roads in the US for both cases. There were some crazy routes to get from A to B. Toll roads cut an hour or more off some popular routes. And in reverse, some states have bought out some toll roads, after they were deemed not profitable.
Aeolun 4y ago
I think the problem with the reverse (private -> public) is that it usually happens after the company has been mismanaged for so long it’s ready to go bankrupt.
pram 4y ago
Most commuter rail in the US fits that bill, doesn’t it? Amtrak, Septa etc

6510 4y ago

gsk22 4y ago
Which question in the parent are you even responding to?
- 6510 4y ago
  The firstOf, the other 2 are ["no", "yes"]; In the short term businesses can optimize and at times modernize. When this is done the customers/citizen will pay until the end of time.

openfuture 4y ago

The CEO that is being interviewed there was in the panama papers. He bought the house he lives in from the wife of one of the people who was jailed after the financial crysis. The people who were jailed didn't really receive much time at all and the whole thing has been misunderstood abroad. Honestly the country is no longer independent, the biggest joke is that our ruling political party, the independence party, is anything but... But these things are just the slow march to making it clear who rules us. Can't wait to see the identity company (also private) being sold in a similar way. I am doing an uprising (except the icelandic word 'uppreisn' also has the added meaning of 'dignity') - what does that entail? Well I believe that coercion is not a good foundation for anything supposedly legitimate. I want a more persuasive foundation and I guess that starts with making guix a useful OS for non-technical users via my "datalisp" project... I guess I should stop dragging my feet and make the website (datalisp.is) since I am opening this discussion. Whatever. The key idea is; we need to be able to trust our operating system, for that to happen we need a way to receive automatic updates without having a central source of truth, this is the oracle problem in disguise. The solution is to keep track of probabilistic estimates of [contextual] trust and basically do science (we haven't got a better way to do physics so I don't see how we are expecting anything better from "AI") to assess legitimacy... You can see my thing at sr.ht/~ilmu and if you are Icelandic; uppreisn.is (note that this thing is lost in google translation). I've decided I would rather die than earn money doing things I don't believe in and that almost happened recently so everything is a bit scattered. However I have a meetup starting next month and then there will be steady progress on datalisp. Edit for some clarifications, the sale discussed is blocked right now by the 'competition control' agency but I don't think they have enough grounds and the agencies that do are clearly corrupt.

quitit 4y ago

The problem with this approach is that these are entities which were entirely paid for by the population. Tax dollars built the company, and further taxes plus operating fees were paid by the population to keep it running. Unless the business was able to sell services to foreign states (like how electricity is often exported), then the entity exists solely on the backs of the population. A sell off is rarely going to result in more than what the population has already paid towards the business. It turns into a short-sighted budget booster while depriving the population of the unique advantages of state-held entities, such as not needing to turn a profit, having to answer to elected representatives, the power to change the management, or hold priorities that solely benefit the population (such as performing costly upgrades for economic or national security purpose). When looking at utilities there are few avenues that the new owner can take to improve profit other than cost-cutting exercises and increasing fees. Neither of these weren't possible beforehand, but an entity that needs to make profit to justify the purchase price will find ways of generating that profit. This is usually where the problems start - it's the assumption that a private profit driven entity possesses unique market knowledge, efficiencies and access to larger scales of economies that weren't available to prior company management. In most situations these benefits are overstated and don't render any real benefit to the population, instead the business usually increases costs at an outpaced rate (hello inflation) due to having a state granted monopoly and this levies the entire population with a higher cost of doing business for the long term.

lmm 4y ago

My parents talk about how getting a new telephone in the UK went from a month-long process to next day once it was privatized and there was profit to be made.

robocat 4y ago

> Has privatizing public infrastructure EVER gone well? There has been a huge amount of privatisation of infrastructure in New Zealand over the years, and it is hard to find good examples of consumer harm (unlike the harmful examples for private electricity networks in California or Texas). The only real problem appears to be that the public keep buying things back or propping up private enterprise (giving billions to Toll for an uneconomic rail network, or bailing out our national air carrier Air NZ). One counter-example could be our airports which are part private enterprise, and man they gouge consumers with their monopolies. Although I think Wellington and Christchurch airports are private-public partnerships with local government. New Zealand is similar to Oregon in area and population, to give you an idea of how big our problems could get.

danielmarkbruce 4y ago

What are the many failed privatizations?

rglullis 4y ago

Yes. Brazil privatized it almost all of its national telco infra in the mid-90's. We went from being a country where you'd wait years to get a landline installed to one of ubiquitous internet and cellphone coverage in a very short time-frame. Prices have gone down consistently and the companies are continuously investing in improving the infrastructure. The important thing about Brazilian privatization was that there was forced competition. Every major metro region had two have at least two different buyers and they had to compete. This led to ~8 big groups bidding for different regions in the whole country. Nowadays the restrictions on the regions were lifted and some consolidation came up, but overall the whole country still has every region with at least 3-4 different companies competing for the market.

CamperBob2 4y ago

Has privatizing public infrastructure EVER gone well? Of course. It's impossible to make the case that US telephone customers were better off under Ma Bell than we were after deregulation, for instance. If only we could've kept Bell Labs alive! Also, consider the medium you're using at this very moment.