Privatization can, and has, worked well in several monopoly utilities, where the privatization is structured appropriately. Forced percentages to be set out for

Privatization can, and has, worked well in several monopoly utilities, where the privatization is structured appropriately. Forced percentages to be set out for infrastructure improvements, profits capped by regulation, debt cannot be piled on willy nilly but has to be approved by a regulatory body, and finally common access allowing for competition. Even then it can be a challenge to structure this correctly, but if a government and populace are willing to tolerate an iterative approach an optimal solution can be reached. I'm not entirely convinced it's better than the public alternative, especially since most of the public failures were prior to the internet and the increasing popularity of freedom of information acts, which have allowed the public to gain knowledge and influence the operations of public agencies in a way they, for better or worse, couldn't before. But at the very least such a solution could come functionally close enough to operating optimally. But none of this is true in the way the UK privatized its water networks. The water privatization is an embarrassment of how to do privatization as wrong as possible. Alternatively, considering a primary goal of the Thatcher govt was to transfer public wealth to private purses, one could argue this privatization was done as efficiently to achieve that goal as possible.