In the UK the Labour Party is (or at least was) big on nationalisation of industry. It seem to me that this was one of their many downfalls in the midlands.
Is there any proven benefits to nationalisation of industry?
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in the UK, past governments have sold off (privatised) most of the formerly government run and operated utilities. (power, water, rail, etc).
in the past few years, it’s become very very obvious that the “capitalist america” model doesn’t work for utilities, as several train operators have gone bankrupt, and the ones that haven’t have totally failed to operate their services to anything like the levels that they actually need to in order to provide a “service”.
that’s because, before privatisation, money from ticket fares went into maintaining the lines, saving up for new rolling stock, paying wages, and everything that went into the business of actually running a rail service.
Since privatisation, the railway lines themselves (the iron rails) are owned and maintained by railtrack, who, in order to operate have to charge rail companies (who own the rolling stock) an amount for every tonne/mile, the companies who own the rolling stock are finding that they cant charge customers enough to a) buy new rolling stock, b) maintain the stock they have, and c) pay their shareholders.
the only solution that makes any sense is to re-nationalise all of the various parts of what used to be british rail, so that all of them can work together for the ultimate goal of running a rail service, not the ultimate goal of making shareholders richer.
Similarly, when the various regional electricity companies were privatised, the goal was to provide electricity to customers for less, by promoting competition. instead, prices have skyrocketed, and the various companies that now exist are functionally working as an oligopoly. despite legislation requiring/allowing small companies to buy and sell electricity, all of the small providers that exist have noted that they’re being priced out of the market by companies controlling both the price they can buy at, and the price of transmitting/maintaining the last mile. ..
Similarly, the first thing that most companies did after making a hostile takeover on the newly privatised electricity companies, was to immediately sell off the electricity generation arms (ie, the parts of the electricity companies that actually operated the actual power stations), and to sell off the transmission lines, to companies that now charge significantly more, per unit. again, the only way to get back to pre-privatisiation levels will be to re-nationalise all the various parts.
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