Re:UK Rail services to come under unified state control
by OJFord on Thursday May 20, 2021 @01:03PM
(#27223834)
> How are customers on trains supposed to vote with their wallets?
They can't.
> The only way to lower prices is nationalise the entire industry and replace privatisation with direct investment, on the basis that transport infrastructure is a social cost with significant indirect benefits, and cannot possibly be run as a self-sustaining profitable business on a national scale.
Hear hear!
I'm not sure if you realise you're agreeing with me, but yes, exactly, I agree with you, that was my (intended) point too; I wrote:
> bidding for the multi-year contract to operate a line is a poor proxy for (impossible) proper competition where rail users could vote with their feet and wallets.
Note the '(impossible)' - I mean that in the sense that I'm generally pro 'leave it to the free market', but that that only makes sense where you can have effective competition, which as you say, you can't with national (especially physical, electricity for example is fungible and so abstracted that it mostly works being privatised on the consumer/payments end at least) infrastructure like train lines!
In some hypothetical land where there's multiple lines, multiple services by different operators at the same time competing on service and price, great, I'm all for that, let them compete, don't nationalise it, let people vote with their feet and wallets. But we live in the real world; they can't.
They can't.
> The only way to lower prices is nationalise the entire industry and replace privatisation with direct investment, on the basis that transport infrastructure is a social cost with significant indirect benefits, and cannot possibly be run as a self-sustaining profitable business on a national scale.
Hear hear!
I'm not sure if you realise you're agreeing with me, but yes, exactly, I agree with you, that was my (intended) point too; I wrote:
> bidding for the multi-year contract to operate a line is a poor proxy for (impossible) proper competition where rail users could vote with their feet and wallets.
Note the '(impossible)' - I mean that in the sense that I'm generally pro 'leave it to the free market', but that that only makes sense where you can have effective competition, which as you say, you can't with national (especially physical, electricity for example is fungible and so abstracted that it mostly works being privatised on the consumer/payments end at least) infrastructure like train lines!
In some hypothetical land where there's multiple lines, multiple services by different operators at the same time competing on service and price, great, I'm all for that, let them compete, don't nationalise it, let people vote with their feet and wallets. But we live in the real world; they can't.