I did not in any way imply that a strict top-controlled planned economy system like in the USSR was better. I also did not imply that the current state of chaos in Venezuela is preferable (and that happened due to a bone-headed reliance on a single big export product, which completely collapsed when global oil prices crashed).

I'll amend my statement to "privatization of a functional public system, ostensibly to provide better/cheaper service".

Examples from my own backyard include the Danish State Railways, Ørsted (previously DONG), TDC (previously TeleDanmark, which was previously KTAS, JTAS and Fynsk Telefon) and others.

Were they perfect? No, there was a lot of waste and mismanagement of resources. But as investors came in and demanded rationalization and austerity measures in the name of Holy Profit, customer service and general quality plummeted.

The current state of ISPs/telcos in the US is another good example of privatization gone bad.

The railroad sucks because its an old outdated businessmodel when it comes to personal transport. Only railroadbusiness that make sense is Heave industries and inner city subways. Everything else ist just romantazied waste full bs. So of course these kind if business can only be sustained by wasteful public spending.

What are you even on about? Rail transport is one of the absolute cheapest forms of transport per passenger mile and capacity per hour.

God your socialist are aweful, everytime that fails you guys point it to the random single event that made that whole thing fail and act as if that were some unqie exception. “... single bone headed reliance...”

Please stop posting uncivil, unsubstantive comments. We ban accounts that do that.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: since we warned you before and you didn't stop, I've banned this account. If you don't want to be banned on HN, you're welcome to email [email protected] and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.

Please enlighten us on how the chaos in Venezuela wasn't caused by over-reliance on oil and widespread corruption.