How Privatisation Fails: Railways
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 30 ม.ค. 2018
- There ain't no gettin' offa this train we're on.
Jen thumbnails are back! Rejoice
Contact:
/ shaun_vids
/ shaunfromyoutube
Sources:
The Transport Debate, Jon Shaw and Iain Docherty
/ leavesontheline-blog
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-42536159
www.theguardian.com/money/201...
www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/... - บันเทิง
"There is no such thing as a human body. Only individual cells" - Cancer Cell
There is no such thing as Margaret Thatcher.
Let her rot among the weeds
God forgive her her misdeeds
(John Skelton, ca 1550)
@@Rosie6857 Thatcher was saying that you are the problem not soceity and that "the worker" pick up the bill for lifelong dole-dossers not society.
Both of these statements are correct thats why you "Labour" lot never use the full quote.
@@paulcarroll6995 Thatcher did not say that. What you have stated is a lie. Maybe you have been influenced too much by Boris Johnson, a known liar.
@@Rosie6857 Would you like a Direct quote or a link to the interview?
Direct quote:
"I think we've been through a period where too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it's the government's job to cope with it. 'I have a problem, I'll get a grant.' 'I'm homeless, the government must house me.' They're casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It's our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour. People have got the entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations. There's no such thing as entitlement, unless someone has first met an obligation."
The message seems fairly unambiguos to me, but then again if you are talented in mental gymnastics im sure you can call a direct quote a lie.
@@paulcarroll6995 Thank you but no. I don't want to be reminded of even of the existence of Thatcher. I despised her from the word go. The worms can have her.
Govt: *Cuts Train Budget*
Train: *Begins To Lag Behind*
Govt: " *GASP* Privatisation Time!"
Almost like that was their plan all the long!
@@Veloxyll Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm..............
@@MFTQ Cut services, make people dissatisfied, say the private sector can fix it. Sell, rinse, repeat
On Brazil they're trying to do it to public universities. They have always been wholly paid-for by tax money, without tuition fees of any kind whatsoever, and have always been the standard for higher education, except for a select few privately-owned ones (such as the Pontifical Catholic Universities). Our federal unis have always been the target of neolibs, who decry them as "indoctrination centres of our youth", filled with lazy professors and employees only interested in making communist propaganda. Of course, the lobby for privately-owned education (which at the university level collectively enjoys a very poor reputation as far as educational institutions go, and not without good reason) is hot on our public uni's heels. Privatisation policies are never about cutting costs or improving efficiency. They're always about making investors of all sorts (including political campaign inves- I mean, donors) happy and their bank accounts fat. So they always manufacture crises and drive down quality in order to justify selling them.
They trying that with our freaking postal service in the U.S. at the moment.
In Finland, our Postal Service was transformed into a privatized company. A service which no one had any complaints about between the 1600's and 2004, all of a sudden started losing mail/having massive layoffs/reduced wages for workers/became a more expensive service for everyone to use. Another massive thing that changed was the amount of money in the new Postal company's executive branch's pockets.
Not only all that, but the CEO of the now privatized postal service is flashing around the idea of moving the company's operations to Estonia because labor is cheaper there. :I
Yeah. In sweden, we sold our postal service to Denmark. Our section wins money, but Denmark made sure everyone in Denmark had an email. So they started to send government post by mail. Of course, a lot of people were fired, and they still got sallary, for a long time. A regular sallary.
So, the swedish section (often joked about being the slowest and worst thing on earth (one christmas card posted 2004 arrived 2017-2018)) is winning money, and the danish part is losing money.
Very underrated comment. Keep up the good work.
Jaksamisia! Suomi menee myyntikuntoon mutta kansa vielä vaikuttaa :)
The same for Sweden
We are currently fighting that in the US. Our president gave bailouts to many private companies because of the virus, but intentionally removed the subsidy to the postal service, which is dying. This, along with their opposition to mail in voting, we might not have a real election this year
thing is that when a company is national, it can freely lose money because it can always tap into the national budget for funding, but a private company cant lose money. if the post system is laying people off and isnt making enough money to keep the services it once had, it just means that the people dont use the postal system enough anymore.
privatization is an uneasy solution to an invisible problem, that of national debt. almost every country runs a deficit in its national budget, it isnt sustainable, spending has to be cut and that can be done by giving off government functions to private companies, sure its going to lay people off, but less jobs is preferable to a national bankruptcy
I remember when the new privatised trains came in - all of a sudden we had new, clean trains, that ran on time. Which all seemed good, until you remembered the government had deliberately underfunded British Rail for years, just make selling it off look better.
sounds like what they're trying to do to the NHS
@Luís Filipe Andrade alternatively you could realize that if you paid slightly higher taxes for significantly lowered costs for these services you would have more money overall, shocker
@Luís Filipe Andrade
The economics output resulted from a good public transportation system can offset expenditures.
@Luís Filipe Andrade Who says you would have to increase debt or taxes to do that? They could just be reallocating money from subsidies or other forms of government spending.
@Luís Filipe Andrade lemme ask you an honest, straight forward question. What is the purpose of a company? To make a profit right? Its the only reason anyone would work for one. Now, why would a company that wants to make more profit, have any, *any* reason to charge a reasonable price when they have a monopoly on the market. Not out of the good of their hearts, oh no. Investors don't care what needs to happen, they want a return on investment. They want profit. So they cut corners and hike prices. Over and over. And then you end up with a shitty, private service, which you are forced to use.
But muh taxes, you cry! Your taxes mean jack fucking shit when you pay twice that for a worse service that *you* have even less control over than the government controlled service, and you cant "choose not to use it" so voting with your dollar doesnt work either.
And now TH-cam totally thinks I love trains and want to watch live streams of trains.
Why not tell Shaun what you want TH-cam to think you like. Then he can do a video on that and all of your inapropriate suggestion problems will be solved!
It was just a humorous observation.
but you do want to watch live streams of trains. you just don't know it yet. try it. you'll love it.
honestly the best outcome you could have hoped for :D
Who wouldn't?
"We don't live in a society"
- Margaret Thatcher
She was a prick
Margaret Thatcher DIDN'T actually privatise the railways.
Damn. We don't?
bartosz0605
He says that in the video
"We don't live in a society"
-A heavily out of context quote spouted by people who already dislike Thatcher in an attempt to demonize her even further despite how there's already plenty that she did to complain about, but that specific quote is not one of them and is essentially meaningless because of how de-shackled it has become from the context of the conversation it was stated in.
It's almost like privatization of any sufficiently complicated system which society requires in order to progress is actually really really bad for actual progress.
Cause only government is smart amd brilliant enough to do something of this magnitude! 🙏🏼🙏🏼
@@abilnurgaliyev5537 More like community driven development and collaboration is the most effective. The tech industry only got as far as it has in such a short amount of time because of world wide collaboration and sharing of knowledge. Companies make leaps forwards with private projects, but they inspire the greater community to catch up and leap frog past. Anything that is private and proprietary will be replicated and surpassed as it is physically infeasible for a closed group of people to beat the rest of humanity for extended periods of time. The entire industry is built off of a backbone of publicly available works and knowledge with proprietary works sitting on a temporary, constantly shifting layer at the very top. Proprietary works are some of the quickest to become obsolete because the world just moves past them, and companies abandon them in order to keep up and get ahead again.
With all that said, I'd like to see attempts at government programs for sharing of works and intellectual property in a way that rewards creators for innovation and protects them from corporate exploitation, but simultaneously incentivizing sharing in a way that benefits the communities as a whole. They certainly aren't going to beat the community at efficiency for the same reasons I listed above that privatized entities aren't, so why not create better forums for collaboration? Sure as hell wouldn't be easy to make such a forum, but the payoffs would be well worth it.
Japanese privatized railways work though.
@@abilnurgaliyev5537 Not really, the governments still kinda fail as well for these projects, but they at least do not have the extra costs of the profits.
These projects would be better done like libre software by individuals and companies alike for no direct profit, but of course, that is impossible.
Basically, there are things that the market is not the right solution, the government doing them is just a band-aid, because the government is still not the right solution
@@mettaursp309 I like a lot of your points, but once you get out of the space of intellectual products and cheap tech, and start to factor in things like heavy capital and infrastructure, it becomes a lot harder to make community based products. Sure the standards for railway systems can be open source and publicly shared, but the actual building and maintaining of the railway requires investment and capital, something best handled by a government or corporation, or other similarly powerful and in all likelihood hierarchical institution. Collaborative efforts and community projects like wikipedia and other open source projects should be rewarded and expanded, but I suspect their application is limited. Privatization works best in some cases, government in others, and community efforts in others. I like the push of your argument, but not a broad application of it. Maybe i'm reading into it too literally though.
In my country, trains are owned nationally. The trains are sometimes quite old, some of them are always late and the train tracks are in horrible condition. But I can travel anywhere I want for FREE, which I greatly appreciate.
Yup, whereas I live in the uk, so I get all that but with the added bonus of 3 figure train fares.
@@Albinojackrussel man and i get my nuts in a twist when i have to pay a toonie to get to the mall hahaha
@@iamcuttlefish Canadian, huh? Wish I was there. You guys have trains that aren't just for transporting goods, at least in my town.
@@strangevol5264 we dont have trains other than big cities (so like 15 places lol) and the bus system is grossly underfunded and insuffecient to be quite frank
@@strangevol5264 I live in Alberta. I would have to drive like 10 hours or pay for 3 figure charter tickets to get to the nearest Via Rail station...
In Germany, when the Bundesbahn (Federal Train Company) was privatized to become the Deutsche Bahn (German Train Company), the newly founded company was made a stock company. Sounds normal, doesn't it? Well, actually the only shareholder of said company is the federal government. So the federal government owns a stock-based company and wants to get a devidend out of its stocks. This forces the DB to generate profit for the government. So prices are high and the service is terrible. "Privatizing" the Bundesbahn was a great idea, huh?
Similar story with the semi-privatisation of the retirement system (Riesterrente), government wanted to save money, it didnt and the results are worse.
A government owning a private company and taking dividends seems such a wacky idea (or maybe it happens all the time and I'm just naive).
@@max3446 It does happen all the time. There are basically three main ways of organising a state-owned enterprise:
(1) It can be a government department/agency, like the General Post Office in the UK until 1969.
(2) It can be a statutory corporation established under its own bespoke legislation - in which case it isn't a company and has no shareholders. This was the model for the old British nationalised industries like British Rail and the National Coal Board.
(3) It can be a company where the shareholding is owned by the government. This is the most common model nowadays.
There are practical advantages and disadvantages of each. One advantage of the state-owned company model is that it doesn't necessarily have to be established by legislation.
That's because it still belongs to the government and there is no real competition. If it were really privatised and deregulated rivalry between companies would drive prices down and quality up.
@@justanordinaryaccount9910 You are. Directly beneath a video. That explains to you. How deregulated competition in rail. Is impossible. IQ of -10.
“There are is no society; there’s individual people. And don’t tell me the definition of society is that of a collection of individual people because I might look ridiculous if you do.”
There are no people. there are only molecules that make up people.
Makes you wonder what she was PM of.
*TOP TEXT*
We don't live in a society
Damn she refused to see the forest for the trees.
@@Muykle you are wrong.
There are no molecules, there are only atoms and their bonds.
You totally nailed the pronounciation of "Nederlandse Spoorwegen". (It's supposed to be pronounced with a sense of doubt and uncertainty.) Well done Shaun!
The UK doing something, having that thing go catastrophically wrong, then the rest of Europe watching so they can avoid the same mistakes is basically a national character trait at this point.
I'm french and our politics are basically " Let's watch our neighbours make mistakes so we can avoid them. Hopefully. Oh wait, I forgot, our president is a neo-liberal who's doing the same things as Tatcher, glad we are in a democracy with strong counter-power right! Right? Oh shi-"
@@anelkia27 This aged perfectly, unfortunately.
They are pioneers of what not to do
I just had to spend £200 plus pounds to travel to Leicester. I resent that, especially since it's cheaper to go to Birmingham- WHICH IS FURTHER AWAY. The privatisation of the railways were... A mistake.
Friend back in the UK said she has to spend close on 50 quid to travel to London from Harwich. Meanwhile, I can travel from Wollongong to Sydney to Bathurst for like $10. Don't worry, though, the LNP are to Sydney's road network as the Tories are to British Rail. Those road tolls are going to be great fun in a few decades, once they reach up towards $50 one-way, as they're contracted to.
rossmum yup! It costs that much to travel half an hour away, without a discount card (WHICH COSTS £30 A YEAR ANYWAY JESUS CHRIST) and most of the time, trains are regularly delayed, cancelled or there are no seats!
The problem was nationalization in the first place.
@@jacobtuell3157 So because it went from national to private, you can blame the problems of the current system on the one from the past?
Can you maybe explain your reasoning,?
I can FLY across Texas (far larger than Britain) for less than that!
Look no further than our wonderful privatized health care here in the USA! Only 36-40k people die from lack of care and, sure, it's the number 1 cause of personal bankruptcy here but... have you seen our guns?!
Murica the Land where owning a gun is a human right but free healthcare isn't
Calvin Strope Good point. People shouldn't choose to be sick if they can't afford it.
Calvin Strope Because you can live without guns. Life is supposed to be a human right and healthcare is part of it's basis.
Calvin Strope Glad we're on the same page. If people can't afford food we should let them starve. We definitely don't have any moral obligation to care for our fellow humans. People who get sick or don't have enough to eat are just lazy. I believe it was Jesus himself who said "Do unto others, and all that, unless they're just lazy, then screw them". I'm not a religious man, but that's a sentiment I can get behind.
Calvin Strope Agreed! As humans we are each definitely in a good position to make rational objective decisions about which other humans deserve to live or die. It is also true that life in countries with strong social welfare systems is terrible and everyone hates it. Mitigating the effects of poverty doesn't in any way make life better for everyone, because as a society we definitely are not interdependent at all.
Reminds me of US healthcare system. There's literally no reason to have the system we do, none, except for corporate profit interests. We have the worst healthcare at the worst cost. tens of millions aren't covered, and a ton are under insured. A socialized structure would be cheaper, cut out insurance bloat, and everyone would be covered. But nope, gotta have that individualistic private system cause, reasons, I guess.
It's so sad to see. While social medical care is naturally expensive (for the state and therefore taxpayers), because of the natural inefficiency of bureaucracy, it's really needed because it keeps private companies in check.
Without a good-faith alternative, there is no competition. Why would a company lower their prices when they can just double them and share the "market" with a "competitor". That's what we see in America; any social healthcare being lobbied against and having propaganda campaigns arise against it, so that the current companies don't get competition.
Meanwhile, in Britain, even private healthcare isn't that expensive. I can get a filling done for like £60, where, in America, it's anywhere from $200 - $600.
Indeed and the Tories, lovely as they are, are throwing Britain's most cherished institution down the shitter by slowly privatizing it and using sneaky accounting to make it look like they're shovelling billions more in, but they are also selling more and more parts of the NHS to private companies so the extra money they shovel in goes towards those companies profits, so the amount of money for actual healthcare doesn't increase, or even goes down
You cannot really privatise natural monopolies or very expensive infrastructure projects that are paid by the public. You can add extra checks and balances and make the whole project very transparent so that money for it don't get spent on bullshit, which is completely reasonable thing to do, but overall there is just no way to privatise them in a way that it would make them profitable and cheap for everyone.
Railways are an obvious example of natural monopolies. There is just no feasible way to privatise them without letting them go under or make the prices completely unpalatable. Healthcare is another obvious example. There are ways to introduce various aspects of capitalism into them that in many cases can improve them, but you still need to keep the system publicly owned.
Matthew Chenault
I'm not an expert on the exact details regarding Amtrak, but I think one of the things keeping it from making a profit is that the trains are completely inconsistent. The reason for that is they have to share the tracks with other rail companies, and those companies of course always decide to give the freight trains priority over the passenger trains. It makes the service sluggish, reducing the amount of trains they can run, how fast and how often they can run them, and that drives customers away. People would use them a lot more if these issues weren't there and if they serviced more locations.
@@apillow8724 Freight traines are only way to make any profit in railway bussines, while today, passenger railway can not turn any profit because there are other better optiones.
Anything is profitable if it allows competition. Transport is one of those things: if railways fail to profit, other means of transport like roads and planes wil get ahead, since there's nothing inherently monopolistic about moving things from point A to point B. The problem comes when things are privatized but the government still impairs the market from being completely free to compete. By hampering competition, the service is doomed to be bad
@@valtersanches3124 Planes have never really been very profitable. Most airplane companies subsist on various benefits from the government and very cheap credit, that's why half of them close shop each time the economy has a hiccup. Their profitability is also extremely dependent on the price of oil.
Same goes for "roads"... It's a nice idea, but I wonder who builds them. Was it the state again? I dunno. I forgot.
What competition were you talking about again?
Just a quick comment: The German railway company is also not really state-owned (even though it says Deutsche Bahn). It's also not entirely privatised, either, though. It's this weird chimera that doesn't really work and is way too expensive for what it does.
Same thing in Italy
But the german railway network does have private train operating companies
@@markdebruyn1212 Yes, some, but they are few and far between. The Deutsche Bahn is still a quasi-monopole. It feels like the worst of both worlds, even though I'll still take it over the British system any day of the week.
Kinda sounds like the way the US postal system works after Reagan meddled with it
Isn't it descended from the Nazi Reichsbahn or something like that?
We let 'conservatives' get away with claiming that privatisation is economics and nationalisation is ideology. It's pure ideology.
* touches nose *
*schniff*
Imagine him calling conservatives out when in America conservative base calls for privatization while liberal camp calls for socialized. Or so the media and the politicians for each camp talks about.
Well said!
Look at Japan and Italy. There railroads are privatized yet they work great.
On paper: More competition that results in greater innovation and provides better quality goods and services that have lower costs.
In reality: More monopolies that result in increased externalities and provide lower quality goods and services that generate greater profits.
It's almost like they're telling a bold face lie so they can make money. Oh, wait...
*_THEY ARE_*
@Matthew Chenault which is why railroads that do so are either government run or tourist attractions
@Matthew Chenault How is a bus/car necessarily more efficient than passenger rail? Considering current road congestion/climate concerns it makes far more sense to be operating rail services in more urbanised areas.
@@SixteenJacobsCreams Convince everyone to take trains instead of busses and look, you put busses out of business and the train industry is booming with tons of competition that results in lower prices.
@Matthew Chenault Boy competition means you have to fight him non stop, like a businessman, owner of a company of whatever you goal is to get a fucking monopoly so you have the freedom to do your job your way, less stress of losing your position or earnings. Competition AIMS TO GET A MONOPOLY...
Or maybe it depends on the industry
I live in the US, and if you're reading this in the UK you have to fight to keep the NHS, and to outlaw private health insurance. Our health care system is an absolute horror show from top to bottom. Our wait lines consist mostly of uninsured people (and those who cant afford their deductibles) dying without care.
I don't say this lightly, but mild violence is absolutely warranted against anyone trying to privatize any functioning, quality national health system. Like, a swap with a newspaper or a gentle smack in the mouth. Maybe get them with a spray bottle. Fight for your care, people of the world, because nobody deserves the US horror show. Not even the US.
Now if someone's on the privatization wagon and also happens to be any kind of neo nazi or fascist, then you can absolutely break their noses.
Indeed, kick the Tories out. If that bunch win again that will spell death for our most cherished institution
The little Thatcher that couldn't
>:(
She was amazing
@@oliva6352 yha amazingly bad
It was John Major who privatised BR.
The little USSR that couldn't.
I think a worthwhile topic of discussion in terms of capitalism, and one I don't see very often, is about the concept of competition. Two entities compete for your business, and in an ideal scenario, the one who provided you with the best / cheapest service wins (...and let's just, for now, put on a backburner how flawed the idea is that the entity with the best / cheapest service wins. They clearly don't, and for good reason - but the purpose of this argument we will grant this assumption):
...So, now what? The system has worked as intended, delivering just victory for the superior capitalist, and rewarding consumers with cheaper goods of superior quality. But the story doesn't just end here, like it would in a book or film or hypothetical fantasy - the world goes on, with the victor becoming entrenched in their position. Now that their competitor is beaten, what incentive does the winner have for keeping the products inexpensive or maintaining their high quality?
'Well, but a NEW competitor could show-up!'
They could... except that this is obviously no longer going to be an even fight between rivals, and any new start-up company is going to be much better off just attracting attention to itself for a buy-out rather than taking the long term risks involved in attempting to dethrone the king of the market.
This is, to me, a really fundamental flaw with much of capitalist ideology: competition is finite. Sooner or later, someone wins the market battle & becomes so dominant within their domain that they will shape everything that happens within that domain, regardless of how good or bad that is for consumers.
New competition comes up constantly. Once Yahoo was considered king. Once McD reigned supreme. Monopolies wither away.
McDonalds is still overwhelmingly the largest chain restaurant. Yahoo! was never, ever king; it was in competition with other tech companies right up until Google won. And guess what? Google is still winning, with nobody else to compete against.
Unless we end up with an oligopoly which is honestly a really good scenario to be in, extremely cheap goods and lots of choice. Just look at UK supermarkets for a perfect example of this
The company that wins then buys the company that lost and now theres only one company but they have 10 subsidiaries so we think they are different companies and that theres competition
@@brennangum6236 PanAm, Kodak, PaineWebber, Eastern Airlines, Enron
Woolworth's, The Pullman Co, Arthur Andersen, General Foods Corp all went bankrupt.
What happened to this series? I would love to see videos like this about privatized health care and utilities! Privatization is pretty much our entire mindset here in the US, and it’s ruining everything.
Privatization is always just rich people seeing a Public service that they can profit off of. There is literally no other motivation for privatization except to give a company a monopoly in some industry that the government previously dealt with. Its literally just big businesses looking at well-functioning industries and hoping to milk them for every last cent.
No
There is also the case of people close to the power (like oligarch in russia) who get it for their support
There IS a motivation on the other side: You can choose the one, that offers to deliver the job cheapest. Cheaper than a organisation that will never be kicked out. Of course I agree that this will only be cheaper if done worse, like ruining the infrastructure.
As one person once said, "they would privatize breathing and water if they could"
I wouldn't say always. There's a reason why post-communist countries got so much growth after becoming a free-market, part of that involves privatization.
Privatization just doesn't work when it comes to socially needed services, like mail, public transport and etc.
You're wrong. Some people in my country want to privatize the Staropramen beer company or Hotel Thermal. That doesn't mean that they want to create a monopoly in beer-making and hotel services. It doesn't even make sense when they have such little market share.
The reason is simple. The state shouldn't deal in such industries. I don't want my country to brew beer. My country has a communist past so we know just how much of a damage the nationalization of everything did to our country. The state shouldn't own hotels, food manufacturing, movie studios,... The state should only own strategic infrastructure and companies that operate on it whilst allowing the private sector to offer the same services. In that case, there is a competition and state-owned emergency alternative.
But there are industries where the state shouldn't operate.
Sending this video to an assortment of brazillian office holders that want to privatize our subways and trains, bye
Thais Leal Good man, organize too!
Brasileiro conserva é foda, quer privatizar o país inteiro
Socialists have destroyed Brazil.
@@harshitmadan6449 Says topic sentence without giving any other sentences to provide supporting detail. Nobody is going to pay attention to you if you do this.
@@CassidyCope Explanations are for liberals and commulists. Nebulous statements are the future.
I think there is another (contributory) reason for privatisation of the railways. Running the transport system in general is very hard. Almost any decision the transport minister makes will have electoral consequences, and quite often damaging ones. If you want to divert blame for a system that has inherent problems, rising costs, and union disputes, it seems quite natural to let private companies step in and take over. Then, whenever there is a problem with the railways, the sitting minister can point the finger at the private companies and muddy the waters of blame to maintain their position. I think we often overlook self-preservation as a driver of policy.
This is the exact reason that school budgets are falling: it's only going to have an effect ten years down the line when you won't be in power to take the blame that you deserve.
@@murraystenhouse2811 I suppose the opposite is true as well. If you invest in education, it will take years to see any results and they might be difficult to measure. It's sad, because of how necessary good education is.
As someone who has worked in the UK rail industry, pretty much everyone I have spoken to already knows almost all of these things and thinks that we should just renationalise
I work in the transport industry. When I started I worked for the state...it was great. Then it got privatized. Now it sucks, both for the workers and the people who are supposed to use the transportation.
Only people affected by it will feel the pain. To make the majority of people understand, one would need to privatise something which they regularly use and take for granted. E.g. the entire car infrastructure. If people had to directly pay a profit driven business for every mile they drive on the road, they might start appreciating governments taking care of essential things.
Some might say, privatisation of healtcare in the US is already a good example that should teach everybody. However, not everybody is afflicted from it. Many people who have employer payed healthcare don't want to pay taxes so that others can have healthcare as well.
but i want a private room on the train that the public can't come into
You deserve it. You work harder than those _other_ people.
Yeah! There might be... SERIAL KILLERS
Yeah, we all know the capital holders deserve the most defacto!
should anyone have a right to such a thing? that just seems like an idea out of western film
Eat the rich. (Also, nationalised railway systems also have first class tickets =P )
But how is this possible? Isn't organizing a society such that a few privileged people make most of the money always a good idea? I mean, the ruthless pursuit of power and wealth at the expense of everyone else is the cornerstone of an enlightened society, isn't it? Money compels people to be kind, honest, and empathetic. Money makes everything better. How could this have gone wrong?
+woobwoobwoobwoobwoobwoobwoob zoidberg
Did you just fail to realise the obvious sarcasm in the OP?
@@jazz4778 Wealth isn't a fixed pie. It grows. When I sell something you want and you give me something I want, we are both better off. Pie of wealth expands. You didn't get worse off when Zuck launched Facebook. Your life got better, his life got better, jobs were created, everyone got better off. He became a billionaire, but you didn't become a pauper.
Harshit, the "endless growth" model of capitalistic economy is /by definition/ unsustainable. It can only ever lead to continual spikes and crashes, at the cost of the homes, livelihoods, and lives of real, actual people. I don't know how many times this has to happen before capitalists take an honest look at how it's played out and admit that it doesn't fucking work and never will.
@@abbreviatedalex2418 Economic growth in previous 2 centuries has surpassed every other time period in history. Our standards of living have risen dramatically. Much of resources are undiscovered. But even if there are very few resources, wealth can ne generated out of thin air these days(eg. TH-cam videos)
do you know why every socialist country has collapsed? it's inability to account for greed. greed is an innate human emotion. it's found in every person and every person is greedy to some extent. when you introduce greed into communism and socialism (usually from it's leaders), you wind up with an imbalance of wealth. capitalism can account for and use that imbalance to thrive. socialism and communism immediately collapse once some start getting more than another.
In Germany, our privatization of the rail network was an utter shitshow and degraded the train network to a national embarrasment.
Free Markets are great, and they totally do the thing that capitalists hope they do-- drive quality up while driving costs down. Provided two factors are present, that is.
1) the barriers to entry have to be low enough that new competitors can easily enter the market, and
2) the consumer can opt out entirely. Voting with their wallet is great, but one of the options has to be "none of the above."
Most of the privatization efforts I have seen, (rail and power are the two that spring most readily to mind,) fail one or both of these requirements.
.
Privatization is bad
@@joeyknight8272 Privatisation is better than nationalisation by default. Unless the market conditions are such that socially optimal for the industry to by a public good/service, private individuals should have the freedom to operate. That's part of living in a mixed market democracy
> the barriers to entry have to be low enough that new competitors can easily enter the market
And how do you measure that? Because by that metric, private cloud providers, motor companies, tech manufacturers, etc are all failing that. I don't know how an startup can enter such markets.
@@sebastiancarreira5832 you're right, they are failing, their services and manufacturing standards have been reducing in variety and quality whilst remaining or increasing in price for the past 20 years
@Stale Bagelz "Unlimited growth is the ideology of a cancer cell"
"Anybody who believes in constantly accelerating returns on a finite planet is either a madman or an economist"
I dont know what is better, the fact that my 'up next' is an Owen Jones vid or that all the recommendations are Train Simulator videos. I like trains.
You might say you're well chuffed... ;)
If anyone wants to learn a bit more about the ideas here, but not just RE trains, Lenin's "Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism" would also be a good source
Philosophy Tube thank you Ollie.
Thanks for the info!
Definitely! I just read Lenin's "Imperialism" in December and it's a very nice run-through of how Capitalism leads to monopoly Capitalism, which leads to Imperialism as a consequence of the export of Capital (the embryonic fluid of Capitalism).
DID HE SAY LENIN?
If you plan to get Lenin's "Imperialism..." as a book, you can actually get it with 3 of his other prominent works (at reduced cost; thanks capitalism, lol) if you get "Essential Works of Lenin." His work on "State and Revolution" really opens your eyes to his interpretation of Marx/Engels and his thoughts on the Dictatorship of the Proletariat as a non-traditional state apparatus for the transition from Capitalism to Communism by various means, which Lenin says would wither away over time and lead to a stateless commune governed by the principle of "Each according to his ability, each according to his needs."
br before privatisation: fast, sleek smooth, on time and organised
br after privatisation: clear garbage, delay, track issues, shiddy refunds, scams
4:30 Bad assumption. Whoever owns the track would be invested in not having collisions on it, and if a new operator didn't like the track owners' rules, they can just build their own tracks!
Hardcore libertarians don't really care to think about things like geography, physics or even simple aesthetics.. just build another one and another one and another one until everyone who wants to run a train in their own way has their own track to do it on!
I've had libertarians tell me to build my own entire rivers if I didn't want to pay them for the privilege of crossing 'their' land to get to a natural river. Some of them are just right out to lunch in their belief that reality is willing to conform to their ideals of pure economic theory.
Collisions are a real thing. The risk would be higher. Imagine you own the track and are not really that invested in running the trains and now you are supposed to manage telling the 4companies when the other one is having their train on. Can go smooth yeah. Or not.
libertarians have convinced me that economics is a pseudoscience
This reminded me of Shapiro arguing that climate change isn't a big deal “if the sea levels rise” because people will just “sell their homes and move”.
@@justinokraski3796 Being a physics student at university and seeing the train wreck that is the academic discipline of economics I'd be hard pressed to call it science.
It's a pseudoscientific cult if you ask me.
It frequently rejects reality in favour of repeating it's own orthodoxy.
If you question that orthodoxy you get shunned and basically can't do anything anymore...
The models have unbelievably bad predictive power. (if a mathematical model in physics was as bad at predicting an outcome as your average economic model it would be tossed out as being meaningless garbage.)
As someone with scientific training of some degree, the two fields that make me most question how anyone sane can give them the same credibility as the hard sciences are psychology and economics.
They are so flaky in places I'd honestly rather talk to a new age spiritualist.
Their advice is probably better in practice.
You're assuming that whoever owns the track would be invested long-term, but that's not necessarily the case. Private, purely profit-motivated investors can make many decisions that are profitable in the short-term while terrible business in the long term. For example, they could cut corners on safety or maintenance to artificially inflate profits and then cash out their stake in the business.
As long as they pull off the bait-and-switch before they're forced to deal with a crisis they pull out ahead, while creating chaos and even endangering the lives of the public.
This is really going... off the rails
sorry
Death fun ny jok
e
It's fine
That comment was a total train-wreck
Death Oi, get back on track
If you want to get a full picture of the UK rail system throughout its history, read David Henshaw's 'The Great Railway Conspiracy'. Gives you an idea of how the government messes around with the railway system and then privatises it supposedly as a saving grace.
I hope that your proposed series on privatization actually continues tbh
Came here to say this 😢
'Libertarians won't mind the End of the World as long as it is Priced Fairly'
Meanwhile world is already in a turmoil due to bad government policies and regulations
Sorry grandpa for hurting your feelings
@@classonbread5757 Why do you think you might have hurt my feelings? Strange!
@@anahata3478 and what was Soviet union doing when it Invaded Poland ?
Lol governments taking decisions to attack or invade doesn't mean capitalism when capitalists Literally advocate for free Market and stopping government from meddling in the economy.
Free Market has lifted poor out of poverty more than socialism or communism ever did.
Even your china embraces capitalistic policies to Prosper.
@@gabbar51ngh I knooow right ? I mean, why can't people understand government regulation is useless ? Company owners are these very good people who wish to help everyone that works for them(THEY EVEN DO CHARITY OMMGGG). We can clearly see that in countries like Brasil, US, China, South Africa. Everyone lives so well because of the free market, right ??!!
So this is basicly what Russian federation is made out of, in 1990s we privatise all legacy of USSR...
and ~80% of all industry is fall into bunkropcy during 1990~2010
Bread lines. Be happy you don't have them.
To be fair, the owners had probably forgotten how to work well within a capitalist system by then.
80% of soviet industry was useless military stuff. 40% of whole soviet economy was wasted on military
@@bruceharvey200 are you telling me that you've never waited in line at a grocery store
@@m.f.3347 I don't have to wait over half an hour to get some stale-ass bread.
As an American in the UK in 1971 I LOVED the trains!
I had been on one US train in 1965 and it was awful. English trains were great, a bargain, and first class felt like being in the movies to a kid!
Sad to see what has happened there in the years since...shitty American fast food, processed foods and supermarkets.
Another really awful example of what happens under privatized systems is the US's privatized prison industry. A lot of it is rooted more specifically in racism (specifically, slavery, because my country simply couldn't give up cheap/compulsory labor :/ ), but the modern structure of it costs US citizens a lot for subpar care of inmates that leaves them heavily traumatized and oftentimes literally killed by the prison system. If you want to learn more about that, read "American Prison" by Shane Bauer and "Slavery By Another Name" (or alternatively, watch the documentary by PBS) for a good introduction. Bauer borrows a lot of the record from "Slavery By Another Name," while also demonstrating the awful quality of modern privatized prison systems and the sheer disconnect at play between execs and the facilities they exsanguinate for every last drop of coin.
I know, itisn't entirely related to the topic of privatizations in railways, but when I think of the failures of privatization and the consequences that come with it, I tend to think first about privatized prison systems in the US first since I just took a whole class dissecting them as a structure and the way we talk about both prisons and the people they trap. Privatization brings with it the inherent issues of capitalism in that the human no longer becomes part of the equation but for how much you can strip them for worth. In the case of your railways, extortion through ticket prices; in the case of US private prisons, it's mistreating prisoners as much as (and often beyond the point of what's) legally permissible and grossly underpaying and under hiring staff.
Anyways, thanks for the vid!
(Premature edit: I just saw someone else mention US private prisons and I'm glad I'm not the only one that thought of them as a massive exemplary failure of privatization. Seriously, if you have the time look into it.)
I remember losing a load of waiting room space at my local area and getting 5 coffee shops instead. There also seems to be a dearth of waiting room area at every new station built in London. Plenty of space for rent paying shops, but seating for actual fare paying passengers seems anethma to them.
Margret Thatchers line "There is no society, only individuals and their families" could have said by our Liberalist(tm) friend Sargon as well. I wonder if he's gonna make a response to this. Once the dislikes reach 50% we'll know he did it.
The thing is, if you really grind it down, it's true that "society" doesn't really exist in a concrete sense. Society has no agency outside of the individuals that compose it, which is an important concept, because often times we end up excusing all sorts of nasty violations of people's rights and general well-being in the name of some abstract greater good. However, the point stands that the sort of "atomized individual" approach tends to ignore externalities and foolishly excuses or promotes antisocial behavior. This type of person doesn't seem to understand that when someone says "x is bad for society" what they really mean is "x is bad for most or all of the individuals that are cooperating to improve their well-being," but that doesn't roll off the tongue quite as easily.
Objectively speaking, All values can be seen as arbitrary. There is no reason to value individual humans. Some disconnected humans can live and think like that. If one chooses to value the accumulation of money over the well being of other humans. Objectively there is nothing wrong with kidnapping someone and chopping off body parts for the black market unless one values human life.
Subjectively speaking, as a human you should value humans. Don't treat people like shit. We shouldn't let a silly spook like money rob us of our humanity. If a world good for everyone can exist, we must build it.
Shenanigans Well, in a concrete sense lots of things don't exist. Objects like desks don't exist; they're just assemblages of atoms. Species don't exist; they're just a lot of individuals that have some common traits. But it can be useful to resort to concepts that don't have the same sorts of simple existence as atoms, or chairs, or individuals. Even though "species" is not a perfectly defined concept, and species are not "real," in a certain sense, it is nevertheless a very useful concept in biology.
Society does exist because humans are social and not solitary animals. Humans behave differently in groups, and we've come to coordinate our behavior in larger and larger groups. Agency is one way of measuring existence, but it's not the only way, and of course there are different kinds of agency.
Also, everyone's familiar with Adam Smith's famous work, The Wealth of Lots of Individuals.
@L0LWTF1337
I didn't know Thatcher was a society denier and I don't think Sargon is one either ;) Isn't liberalistism™ supposed to be a society - an organization above individualism or family groups?
@Shenanigans
You sound like postmodernist or some other nihilist;) How about the truth? Is it arbitrary?
the line only individuals and families exist must be underlined here. Why except families? Stirner would go on about unions of egoists, why the sudden conservativism after bold "iconoclasm"? oh, so christian in spite of christ xD
That thumbnail is gold
It just makes me sad that humans still believe privatization of essential services is a good idea.
Food production is private and that clearly works. So selectively is key?
@@lmy2366 By clearly works - do you mean for both disadvantaged populations and poor individuals or for people with a job and a home?
@@Val_Emrys Agriculture run as a for profit industry has most clearly led to innovations and the advent and implementation of new technologies which has enabled the production of such commodities as wheat and corn to increase at a faster rate than population growth could satisfy. Walk into any supermarket and you will observe the greatest achievement man ever achieved; food not just for the wealthiest of a society, rather food for even the most poor. Every person in the modern United States can afford food. I see that as clear vindication of private enterprise.
@@lmy2366 So you give no credit to the millions of dollars given to farmers and factory farms in government subsidies? Strange. Guess we can stop all tax payer help to insure efficient food production.
@@Val_Emrys I do not at all support subsidies to the agricultural industry, however such subsidies never make up the bulk of research expenditures on new technologies and indeed are only largely extended to subsidizing the purchase of equipment on behalf of farmers. Without subsidies agriculture would simply move to nations with lower labor costs, however R&D expenditures would not be influenced at all. It is only because of special interests' themselves (those of the farmers) that any subsidies are given out.
With the RMT strike happening right now, this video has become relevant again.
Are cars really individualistic when they're built by foreign multinationals to drive on state-owned ROADS?
Let me repeat Ayncaps. ROADS!
@Matthew Chenault Almost all roads are payed by tax payer money. If car infrastructure was built for profit by businesses and you'd have to pay for for using it, you'd finally realize how expensive roads are, especially after those businesses would charge you to make profit, not just to cover the the building and maintanance costs.
@Matthew Chenault Nah. Any time you're enjoying a drive on the road, just realize that you're doing it at society's expense.
@Matthew Chenault Don't pretend that you solely drive on bumpy dirt roads.
Give me a break about how the car is individualistic. You (and I too) drive it with significant societal and environmental cost, which are not factored into the cost of driving that car or using the road.
@Matthew Chenault Yup. That's why I mostly use public transit and bike.
You forgot to mention that competition can only drive down prices so far, and can never reach production cost only, as then it would create no profit for the shareholders. Not to mention advertisement, which is a huge cost that private companies have to handle, and which is of course reflected in the prices.
i forgot, did he mention how the government's handling of things, aka throw money at it, doesn't work either?
How would there be competition for a rail service it's not feasible unless you have companies laying down tracks everywhere, they're not airlines where they could travel without laying out infrastructure but operate out of a existing facility (airports)
@@joshjonson2368 , Like they used to before nationalisation.
@@thomasjenkins7506 privatisation is objectively bad for services like railways and other utilities like delivers because it isn't worth the investment to deliver the product to the outback private mail is infamous for being awfuk if you aren't in a big city while in a country with nationalized delivery u can get anything delivered anywhere in the country
@@thomasjenkins7506 imagine how much of a nightmare it would be if police and firemen were privatised they wouldn't put out your house fire if u didn't pay your premiums and u can't get certain firemen cause they're out of network
the UK has renationalised the rail network, it's only supposed to be temporary but it's looking likely like its going to be permanent
britain is just broken, i think we need to go back to the store and replace it.
py.import france
Mate all of Europe is broken
The year is 2022. Britain has been out of the European Union for only 2 years and already it is flourishing. Within days of gaining its financial independence, Welsh and Scottish Nationalism died; the union has never been stronger. Ireland rejoined in a second act of union. The countries of the Commonwealth flocked to be taken back as crown dominions and colonies, begging for British rule once again. India declares Queen Elizabeth II Empress. Even the original 13 colonies of North America forgo their silly republic and swear loyalty to the Queen, who has been reborn as a gorgeous youthful Goddess with the power to restore Churchill to life. One pound is now worth over 200 dollars. France admits we were better all along. Angela Merkel ends herself as her plan to form the fourth Reich and displace the white populations of Europe is brought low. Rule Britannia the world cries out... Britannia rules the world...
Nigel Farage awakes; his brow wet and his plaid pyjamas slightly sticky...
Have you tried turning it off and on again?
Be glad you’re not the United States.
The only way privatization works is when you impose strict regulations that guarantee that the private system provides the same (or better) guarantees and services than the public one for a comparable overall price. At that point though your average greedy corporation won't participate due to not being able to milk the costumers enough, and you may as well just have a public system...
see, there is a misconception here. the cost to use said resource isn't the only cost that needs to be considered. the cost to operate also needs to be discussed. there is no way a private company is going to cost more to run than a public one. for one, there is less of a bureaucracy to eat up funds. companies keep the overhead down while governments pump that overhead up. so while the private company may cost more to use, it operates much more efficiently than the alternative.
Thomas Jenkins efficient for whom? To the company that operates or the public that use it. Efficient in what? Making the most money with the least amount of cost and service which privatization tends to do or giving most services with the least amount of fee? Most of the time the public services fail due to sabotage by the conversative governments who first destroy the system that is working or don't maintain it, and at the end privatize it saying it didn't work in the first place.
The British railway system was nationalized in 1948. The previous 100-year British railways were financed, built, and operated by private companies.
Here public trains milk customers anyway by taxing citizens to make up for an unprofitable business.
@@tintun8918 keep making up conspiracy theories. If public railways were so good they wouldn't be relying on taxes.
Japanese privatized railways work well and they are the best at it.
Why does all the transport in Merseyside look like bananas?
BadMouseProductions I blame the economy
Economy of scale.
Why dont you make videos anymore?
try watching his video where he talks about why he doesn't make videos at the moment
BadMouseProductions
Because they are bananas. GMO run amok!
“Any other leftuber does a video on trains”
*Donoteat01 wants to know your location*
Train good, car bad.
Train good, Car bad
Horse...
*Untrustworthy*
I really hope you make more of this sort of video. I’ve listened to it for the third time, and it’s finally starting to make sense to me. 🙂
Shaun video! Is that even real?
Me? :-) I don't know. Ask something in Russian. :-)
There is no Shaun
Шона не сушествует. Это все - Джен.
Kings and Generals DO IPSUS YOU NUTTER!
There will be a full series on the Diadochi, Joey-джан.
as much as I hate rising prices in Norway too, I would not trade our NSB for the shit you guys have. When I went on holiday to the UK I was shocked by how gross and old your trains were, and how just...dated everything seemed.
Then don't come to America. It's...sad.
have you seen pictures of Detroit and the midwest of the US in general?
Unlawful_Falafel I live in the Midwest. Nothing but cars
@@justanothersam5708 at least Chicago has an ok public transport system.
@@cageybee7221 We do not talk about Detroit, that is African teritory.
it's been 5 years Shaun... where part 2 at?
Jk you do plenty, also this is xtra relevant today in the U.S. with the recent rail disaster in Ohio.
This is one of my favourite TH-cam videos ever, thank you Shaun
I think another good example you can look at/discuss is the privatisation of the phone and electrical utilities. it's something that is both insidious, and slightly evil when you consider that the majority of the 'profit before service' attitude leads to downgrading maintenance/replacement/upgrades because of how it cuts into the profit margins of the parent company
India has private and public internet service providers. One of them(Jio) provide extremely cheap and quality service, way better than failing government alternative(BSNL)
As a Dutch person, your pronunciation cracked me up! Besides that, good video overall!
The metro system in Singapore (which had been working flawlessly for over 2 decades at this point) was privatised in the late 00’s. Less than a decade later we had a slate of concurrent disruptions and faults that took years along with a half-baked nationalisation plan to fix. And even then, public confidence in the metro hasn’t truly recovered. Oh, newer lines with more modern control systems in place were also facing similar faults and failures. Who woulda thought that privatisation would lead to cost-cutting on essential track-side maintenance? I mean, surely no one could have foreseen how that could have happened, now could they? It’s not like we have a glaring example over in the UK we could learn from, did we?
Privatisation of public utilities and services rarely ever ends well for the consumer, despite what governments would have us believe.
I wonder when the next episode of "How Privatisation Fails" will be...
Starting the new year right with Jen thumbnails!
*ahem* Please Shaun, can I have some more?
MORE?
You came into my stream (life) at a time where I had no more clue whether to turn right or left, or even how to identify which's which.
Thanks Shaun, the voice of reason and irresistible logic
A week ago two trains had a head on collision here in Greece resulting in over 50 deaths and immeasurable amounts of grief. Only 10 years ago the railway was privetized and reports so far reveal a failure on all levels of management.
For us today this video is more relevant than ever.
"semi regular series about the problems of capitalism" YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABOI
The collapse of Carillion and the problems with Capita are just the latest in a litany of failed privatization. In Ireland we have poor rural broadband as a result of the privatization of a national telecom's provider. Other examples include Enron and the Ratings agencies which were private companies who nearly crashed the world economy until nanny state came in and bailed out the entire financial system.
Yeah, that is another problem with the whole idea. In theory it takes some funding choices out of the hands of politicians (so we don't see spending on a particular area slashed when Austerity is fashionable again), but it also leads to basket case companies like Carillion relying on under-bidding their competitors and using accounting tricks to make themselves look financially viable, and then it all goes pear-shaped and the public have to pick up the bill.
Sounds like the US!
One thing that occurs to me here is that the idea of a nationalised service not having competition to motivate it is actually a lie as well. In a democracy government is competitive, so those in power have incentive to run public services as well as possible. Mismanaged public services discredit and lower opinion of governments in power when elections come around so as long as you live in a democracy nationalised services have a competitive incentive to innovate and lower costs as well.
As an example ambulance wait times have reached ridiculous levels in some parts of the UK, people should recognise that as a sign that the government is mismanaging or underfunding emergency services. That's an incentive to vote against the current government, and so politicians should be incentivised to run public services better.
It’s a miracle I found your channel, a miracle you exist love your vids thought there was no one else like us
I have yet to watch a video on this channel I didn't enjoy.
Wow Colorado flag is amazing.
that's a stylized version but yeah we got a pretty cool flag. Half the merch in our state is branded with it, probable deep state subliminal messages.
@@j.r.mocksly5996 "Deep state subliminal messages"
It's a fucking "C".
@@CassidyCope that's what they want you to think
@@Kobolds_in_a_trenchcoat Based on my notifications I can assume that you liked my comment. Thank you!
While I'm definitely on the side of being critical of capitalism, I can already see the kind of arguments that are going to be made against you, at least if we're making the assumption you believe the idea of "privatization is generally bad" extends to other industries.
Railways, by nature, are a natural monopoly, just like most infrastructural things like roads, water, electricity, etc. Many advocates of capitalism already recognize that markets don't work as intended in these fields and accept that they might have to be managed differently, but they don't agree that these problems extend to industries that aren't so geographically constrained.
Since you appear to be making a series that might cover this further, and it's probably better to start out with a tangible example that's easier to understand, so I won't worry too much. Probably for the better to avoid opening with the deeper roots of the system's flaws and all of the good philosophical stuff, as to not scare away anyone who's not already on board. I just get a bit eager.
Shenanigans that's what I was thinking as well. Why move to a very well established "privizitation here is bad".
These black and white memes in the comments here seem like a skeptic channel. Like no one is here to learn but to have their beliefs pandered to.
Mixed economies work the best. So when you praise Sweden and other countries like them, know that you are praising private companies as well.
His argument makes it very clear that he is talking about trying to create market conditions in a place where market conditions cannot exist. This applies to services like rail transport and the supply of electricity, but not to things like... well say Healthcare. That's a completely different issue.
11 tw Yeah, it’s kind of a poor argument to say that free markets don’t work whenever you force them into a system that isn’t setup to handle a free market. The private railway industry worked quite a bit better over in the states. Interestingly, the companies that got grants from the government were the ones that went bankrupt and the ones that got entirely private funding tended to thrive. The national railway system that was set up in Britain was designed to service everyone with less regard to the cost so when you plop a bunch of private companies down into this system and restrict what they can do, of course you’re not going to get competition. But over here in the US, we did have railway systems that ended up bettering society through its economic output.
TheRealConservative isn’t all passenger rail travel the US currently controlled by Amtrak, a government corporation? Also, those rail companies were given tons of free land to incentivize building railways.
@@52flyingbicycles Currently, yes, I do believe most, if not, all passenger systems are currently owned by Amtrak. I might have confused you with my going back and forth between the present day and historically speaking. Sometimes that grant money was to encourage rail lines to be built but that probably has more to do with the age old debate between whether or not infrastructure needs to be paid for by the government, so depending on the wants and needs of the current government (which doesn't necessarily always align with the wants and needs of a market) they might want to incentivize railways in certain areas.
Ancaps: Obiously the railroads are not privatized enough!
As a Dutch person I can confirm that your Dutch pronunciation is hilarious. Also, great video as always!
I hear the UK is thinking of following the US example on healthcare. As an American, don't let your equivalent of conservatives privatize your healthcare. In the states the private healthcare is a joke - we still pay as much as most nations in the EU do for your socialized healthcare, even accounting for population size difference, in hospital and pharma subsidies. That is in addition to paying our own hospital bills to boot. Our system will either inevitably collapse in twenty to thirty years or bankrupt our whole country - it is unavoidable.
Ya it's garbage... private healthcare while the federal government has to pick up the slack for millions of citizens insurance. All while the pharmacological companies play stock market with proscription pills.
Don't worry guys, Amazon will fix everything.
What the British government are doing with the NHS is less like privatizaton and more like asset stripping.
It is too big of a meal to be swallowed all in one gulp.
Privatize your healthcare like US? LOL!
US never had a publuc healthcare system to begin with.
Infact, PRIVATE fraternal societies provided affordable care before government regulated them out of existence.
Our equivalent of conservatives - the conservative party
Regrexit 2018 fam
EU is a bourgeoisie institution
So are most implementations of public education. Doesn't mean they're impossible to reform, or that there theoretically exists a possible form of them which could be beneficial after the revolution.
Yes, EU is a good way of securing peace, but except for that it's just there for benefitting the capitalists. What the neoliberal politicains don't succed with through democracy, they fix via EU through undemocratic means.
My point, though, is that it has the potential to be more. A democratic EU of the kind promoted by DiEM25 could lay the groundwork for the international socialist cause and provide decent praxis toward a classless, stateless international society. Yes, at the moment its main benefit to the people is to discourage war, but it could be so much more if it were reformed to become a democratic institution rather than a capitalist one. Totally agreed on the methods of power-hungry neoliberals, though.
Yes I agree, that's a good point. But I'm not sure how possible it is to change the EU from within... Althought I hope it would be.
"tune in next time where we'll be talking about capitalism's growth problem"
pls do this
Meanwhile Norway is going "hold my beer"
Oh no, what did they do????
@@UmarWazir its a bit late, but we are privatizing the railroad since only about 88 or so percent of all trains are on time here, the rest are delayed usually due to problems with the rail lines. The 12 percent failure rate is used to argument for the government to privatize it, completely forgetting that 12 percent failure rate to send the trains on time is actually pretty good for norway, i mean it isn't exactly flat like literally anywhere else, half the rails are up against hills or mountains, so there is quite a few avalanches of snow, stone and other things falling over them. In addition, we have a huge temperature difference, in the summer we can reach 30-40 degrees celcius, in the winter in the same area we could potentially reach -40 but -30 is more likely of course, so say the lesser difference, thats a 60-80 degrees difference which really doesn't bode well for rail lines because its just not meant for that kind of a temperature difference all over, hell, the mountains take damage from that kind of a temperature difference. It certainly doesn't help that the rainy season here is right before winter and we can have days of rain before suddenly getting a day at -10 degrees which is even worse.
In addition to the rails themselves, plenty of lights and electrical systems also take a beating.
Japan's train system is the best run in the world and privatized.
The rules they operate under and the culture of the country matter.
And they brilliantly realized that developing properties(apartments, offices, malls etc) around their stations(+ engineering them to be pedestrian-friendly & synergize with public transport) means that aspects of their passengers' daily economic activities(commuting, working, shopping, even living in apartments) all get into their pockets, thus they don't have to rely on ticket pricing for profit
I think the point here is that privatization has the potential to fail in this way, and it often will. It doesn't necessarily have to, but it's so incentivized and authoritarian that why wouldn't *some* people do it?
Under government run systems, you do technically have the risk of the government doing what Britain did and intentionally underfund the network, but that's not exactly an argument *for* privatization, it's merely an observation that the government has too much control over where the tax dollars go over the will of the people.
So, if your private company doesn't suck ass, your railways will be fine, but no one is stopping them. Under a just government, the network would never fail.
Japan railway company that divided east japan railway company, west japan railway company,central japan railway company,hokkaido railway company and other.
Japan railway company that was privatized on 1980 have their own technician & development agency
affiliated non-profit that developing residential area for intergrating to the JR main station since even before it was privatized
or from 1965 and thats why you
see a crazy and superstation like
shinjuku station that have 20 line,
36 tracks,bus station,connecting
to high building residential & office, Elevated/tunnel expressway
& normal street
and even mall in their own station
so they created which railway station became creative and superintergrated beetween expressway,public transport,
urban & suburban rail transit,
long distance railway system
started construction or first development on 1965 and entirely was completed on 2005,
Shinjuku station was the only station on earth that generated
or handling 3.5 milion passenger transfer/day or almost 2 bilion per annual per year and worth over
$16.4 bilion for economic impact.
Other station same like tokyo,ikebukuro,Osaka and most
of central station was developed
urbanized superintergrated.
If entirely combine Japan with
just 100 milion passenger produce over 25 milion passenger per year
for JR only & 17 milion passenger
per year for other urban rail transit
or small private operator.
Things you can do its tourism can rent several small electrified train
track for 5-7 days under Goverment regulations
So totally JR have total $65.5 bilion revenue more than DB with $46-47 bilion, RZD $32 bilion,
SNCF $30 bilion.
Unfortunaly JR are not one super company. It divided into JR east,
JR west and other and not subsidiaries corporate
But actually the largest was CR
or China Railway, Chinese state owned railway operator company
with $150 bilion revenue but since it was goverment staturory it not have annual report
@@Madhatter1781
the railway network in Japan
probably the only privatized railroad that would never failed,
Why ??
Because Japan have their own
train culture and almost 50%
of Rest japanese population
majority used train,
The railroad its privatized in
Japan Railways Group but
Goverment still take the regulation of urban & intercity passenger rail
transportation system.
Even in Japan there is some
train that cost little bit expensive,
A lot of people still used the train.
Japan Railway Group almost
handle 25 milion passenger/day
and they have own culture and
law about train such as never
late or always on time and
keep maintaining the quality
& reliability by Goverment
Support,
so for the expansion probably
are will be long term because
it was privatized but Japan
train network probably never
fails,dying,or bankrupt
China in other hands,
Have succesful building
38,000 km of high speed railway
& 7,500 km of urban rail transit
system across 45 cities.
Entire national rail transport
in china was under
China State Railway or China
Railway,
Same like south korea under
Korail, and also Taiwan under
Taiwan Railroad administration
& Taiwan High Speed Rail
Corporation
Japan handle over
9 bilion passenger/year,
China handle over
5 bilion passenger/year
It's all about criteria --- which is cheaper: Providing best service possible as cheaply as possible for citizens - or providing the exact same service for profit.
You don't improve government services via privatization. You improve them via systems analysis and implementing upgrades using a long-term view. You can allow private corporations to compete with the government service at the same time. Maybe they can provide a slightly better service at a much higher markup for those who can afford it.
Please, make more of these videos. Can't wait 'till next one.
Great video, I love how you can paint illustrations of systems with your words!!
What people forget about companies is that they arent here to make your life or humanity better, theyre here to make money and are perfectly willing to take away every right that protects you just to make a few more pennies.
Exactly. Companies and businesses should serve society, not leech from it. The moment you let private companies min-max job roles for profit is the time when the state has to intervene to cover the cost. A cost that is spread over everyone in tax. And who's affected the least by tax? The people who are min-maxing the job roles for profit.
Yup. Companies and businesses are not your friends. They only want your money, and given the opportunity, will abuse every loophole and exploit possibly to take more of it. They will not govern themselves, they will attempt to govern _others._ Business ethics is an oxymoron, there is only regulation.
I do not know what is more ridiculous about the thumbnail. Thomas the train portrayed as not evil or the fact that Thatcherain isn't afraid of him.
PS: THE THANK YOU SKULL IS THE CUTEST SHIT THAT'S HAPPENED!
Looking forward to seeing more from this series
This is one of my favorite videos ever.
I like the short politics videos, but I do also really like the hour long history monstrosities.
Since the politics videos have to be less work than all that, maybe go with them? I’d love a Roman history video every once in a while though.
Caitlin Erickson Roman history is awesome.
YES! Back again with another video. Good subject Shaun 😀
Ciara Majesty "Guess who's back again?" - Bruno Mars
jblue1622
Eminem?
I would love more videos like this, Shaun, thx
Great video! Cannot wait to see more. 👌
Shaun, I hope you bring up more economic subjects in which you take a stance against neoliberal/conservative/libertarian dogmas. Most left-wing youtubers get too bogged down in culture war against the right instead of challenging them on economic issues.
Oscar van der Hooft We already won on economic issues. Just read Cockshott. The last conflict is to get enough people interested in it.
Libertarians always win on economic issues so there's no point.
yeah I noticed how neoliberal capitalism has been working for the last 40 years
@@mesomelas1467 I sincerely hope you're joking
@@mesomelas1467 The Austrian School of Economics is economics for people who failed Calculus. Fight me.
Anyone who's taken the first year of microeconomics should be aware that privitisation of industries with high barriers to entry naturally leads to loss for society. IDK how anyone who pretends to understand econ can argue for the privitisation of important public goods like the internet or railways.
The British railway system was nationalized in 1948. The previous 100-year British railways were financed, built, and operated by private companies.
Japanese privatized railway work
@@gabbar51ngh IIRC they don't rely on ticket sales though, property development around the stations makes up about half of the profits, and said property is engineered to be pedestrian-friendly & thus synergize with the rail service
@@revimfadli4666 so more capitalism and privatization where private railway companies try to profit of customers walking around those areas and doing a better job than government.
This completely destroys Nicholas's BS macro-economics suggested above where he says privatization of railways is bad when japanese have not only privatized railways but much better ones.
@@gabbar51ngh perhaps, but isn't the Japanese approach/solution more macro-oriented than Western ones that only manage the rail transport itself? Designing cities for pedestrians & mass transit means less transportation expenses for property inhabitants, which means more expendable income, which means more money into the transportation & property company. Reducing ticket prices while still profiting from properties means passenger/inhabitant expenses reduce even further. By making passengers more "prosperous", they increase their own prosperity. They actually benefit the passengers instead of simply milking dry the monopoly/oligopoly + dependence like those examples Nicholas gave
Maybe whether nationalized or Japan-style privatized, it's the macro orientation that matters? But yeah, private companies that wanna keep their profit would likely do better than politicians who only use it as a tool, but would that be applicable to the UK(which is culturally different fron Japan)? Or would nationalization work better?
And seems like the Japanese way only works due to the property profits enabling lower ticket prices(while still generating overall profit for the company, even if the trains operate at a slight loss), thus keeping the value of the properties high
Thanks for the vid. Always great.
shaun you are the best I share this video with everyone I know
I always knew that privatising public transport is a terrible idea, and I heard about how bad it was, but I only truly realised how terrible it is when I was in Cambridge for a week. Not only rail, but also busses are extremely different from where I live (Austria). They're double decker busses, that's cool I guess, but they're uncomfortable, loud and old. And because there is only one door and everyone always has to show their ticket, people entering and exiting takes ages, so that the bus is almost always pretty late. Additionally, the tickets are more expensive. (Though the guided busway thing is pretty cool, but I'm not sure how efficient that is, compared to a tram or something)
I only took the train 4 times, and the trains are, again, really old and uncomfortable. If the train I normally take for my commute in Austria has a problem and it's replaced by one of the old 80s trains still in stock, it's still better than the trains I took in Cambridge. Also, it's really annoying to have to check which company your ticket works for, and which train belongs to which company. And, again, it's expensive.
Just came across your videos and saw this one. It's interesting to watch this a year after the Welsh Government nationalised the services in Wales, due to the private company that ran TfW not being able to meet their legal requirements during the pandemic.
Good job 👏🏻 i am experiencing this incredibly high price of tickets everyday
Omg thank you for this video! Unbelievably helpful in my exam preparation - felt like I was losing my mind (my books are pretty solidly neoliberally biased) and I didn't understand why they keep pushing the idea that privatizing rail was a great idea when it's pretty obviously not.