3 ms·

In the UK the airline and telecom privatisations were largely successful (BA, Rolls Royce, BT, etc). BP did okay too. For some reason things that happen in the

In the UK the airline and telecom privatisations were largely successful (BA, Rolls Royce, BT, etc). BP did okay too. For some reason things that happen in the air seem to privatise much better than things that happen on the ground. MG might be the exception, but it’s a bit of a weird situation in that it went from being owned by a loss making British state owned enterprise (Leyland) to being owned by a loss making Chinese state owned enterprise (SAIC). Still makes popular, cheap and not very reliable cars though.

microtonal 11mo ago
For some reason things that happen in the air seem to privatise much better than things that happen on the ground. I know that there are some nuances to this, but this makes sense right? If you think you can compete on say London-Amsterdam, your airline can in principle decide to compete there (yes, they need slots, etc.). If you want to compete with rail between Amsterdam and Berlin, you are either going to pay an insane amount for extra infrastructure (too expensive) or you have to let companies bid on exploiting a line. But you can never have two companies competing at exactly the same times.
- spacebanana7 11mo ago
  Yeah there’s probably a way in which railways and water are natural monopolies, so are more difficult to privatise.
  - fhennig 11mo ago
    Yes, it's the tracks. Planes don't need tracks.
    - gcanyon 11mo ago
      > Planes don't need tracks. But let's all take a moment to acknowledge that it would be awesome if they had them. Can you imagine the shenanigans you could get up to designing a nationwide 40,000-foot-high rollercoaster system?
- mytailorisrich 11mo ago
  I think that's a factor to explain why air travel can be cheaper than rail. Air travel lends itself better to competition and it needs much, much less infrastructure than rail.
dboreham 11mo ago
These entities are not really the same kind of thing. BA and RR were successful private companies that ran into difficulty for one reason or another and took on the UKG as an investor of last resort. BT was an offshoot of the Post Office, a service that is run by the government even in the USA. BP was government controlled for...geopolitical reasons.
- spacebanana7 11mo ago
  BA was originally stated as a state owned airline, but I agree about RR. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways
  - agurk 11mo ago
    There are some nuances to it. British Airways (not the original British Airways Ltd [0], who merged to form BOAC) was established to manage several existing airlines that had already been nationalised (BOAC, BEA) and two regional carriers (Cambrian Airways and Northeast Airlines). Of course BOAC and BEA had been made my consolidations of many smaller airlines which gets messy quickly when tracing the lineage. Even Cambrian and Northeast had formed British Air Services prior to this which was 70% owned by BEA. So it is technically true that is was started as a state owned airline, but one made from companies that were originally created as private with a mixed history of state ownership. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Ltd https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Ltd
pjc50 11mo ago
The key is competition. BP compete on the global oil market. BA compete freely with other air companies. RR with other turbine manufacturers (not many of those globally!). The semi-successful ones are the "shell company" ones: telecoms, power, and railways. The user gets a choice of who to get customer service on, which feels nicer than a government bureaucracy, but the infrastructure is a natural monopoly so the actual hardware delivering the service is mostly the same. Electricity markets work pretty well as a market and has miraculously managed a lot of carbon transition, but is now horrendously expensive (like trains) in a way that's becoming politically important. The public are going to demand that something be done. AI power use is not helping here. The less successful ones are the actual big capital asset ownership ones: RailTrack PLC, OpenReach, water companies, the nuclear industry.
halo 11mo ago
BT was only successful if you take a very narrow view of success. They dragged their heels on rolling out ADSL to maximise short-term profits from ISDN which has had a hugely negative effect on the country. Government spent decades figuring out how to regulate it and even today OpenReach is far than ideal.

microtonal 11mo ago

For some reason things that happen in the air seem to privatise much better than things that happen on the ground. I know that there are some nuances to this, but this makes sense right? If you think you can compete on say London-Amsterdam, your airline can in principle decide to compete there (yes, they need slots, etc.). If you want to compete with rail between Amsterdam and Berlin, you are either going to pay an insane amount for extra infrastructure (too expensive) or you have to let companies bid on exploiting a line. But you can never have two companies competing at exactly the same times.

spacebanana7 11mo ago
Yeah there’s probably a way in which railways and water are natural monopolies, so are more difficult to privatise.
- fhennig 11mo ago
  Yes, it's the tracks. Planes don't need tracks.
  - gcanyon 11mo ago
    > Planes don't need tracks. But let's all take a moment to acknowledge that it would be awesome if they had them. Can you imagine the shenanigans you could get up to designing a nationwide 40,000-foot-high rollercoaster system?
mytailorisrich 11mo ago
I think that's a factor to explain why air travel can be cheaper than rail. Air travel lends itself better to competition and it needs much, much less infrastructure than rail.

dboreham 11mo ago

These entities are not really the same kind of thing. BA and RR were successful private companies that ran into difficulty for one reason or another and took on the UKG as an investor of last resort. BT was an offshoot of the Post Office, a service that is run by the government even in the USA. BP was government controlled for...geopolitical reasons.

spacebanana7 11mo ago
BA was originally stated as a state owned airline, but I agree about RR. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways
- agurk 11mo ago
  There are some nuances to it. British Airways (not the original British Airways Ltd [0], who merged to form BOAC) was established to manage several existing airlines that had already been nationalised (BOAC, BEA) and two regional carriers (Cambrian Airways and Northeast Airlines). Of course BOAC and BEA had been made my consolidations of many smaller airlines which gets messy quickly when tracing the lineage. Even Cambrian and Northeast had formed British Air Services prior to this which was 70% owned by BEA. So it is technically true that is was started as a state owned airline, but one made from companies that were originally created as private with a mixed history of state ownership. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Ltd https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Ltd

pjc50 11mo ago

The key is competition. BP compete on the global oil market. BA compete freely with other air companies. RR with other turbine manufacturers (not many of those globally!). The semi-successful ones are the "shell company" ones: telecoms, power, and railways. The user gets a choice of who to get customer service on, which feels nicer than a government bureaucracy, but the infrastructure is a natural monopoly so the actual hardware delivering the service is mostly the same. Electricity markets work pretty well as a market and has miraculously managed a lot of carbon transition, but is now horrendously expensive (like trains) in a way that's becoming politically important. The public are going to demand that something be done. AI power use is not helping here. The less successful ones are the actual big capital asset ownership ones: RailTrack PLC, OpenReach, water companies, the nuclear industry.

halo 11mo ago

BT was only successful if you take a very narrow view of success. They dragged their heels on rolling out ADSL to maximise short-term profits from ISDN which has had a hugely negative effect on the country. Government spent decades figuring out how to regulate it and even today OpenReach is far than ideal.