I love trains. Freight haulage in US is now I believe, totally privatised (Conrail poof), and a theft-privitaztion pool has been trying to wreck-break up Amtrack(passenger rail) for 35 years.
These thieves(the neolibs) are much more rapacious and parisitic than the railroad guys of old. At least Hill, Harriman,Gould, and the like were attempting to build something.
Course we here, save one, can recognize a metatasizing parasite when we see it. "When the abyss stares at me, it wets its pants." Brian Hopkins
What is needed to run a complicated public service continuously? It takes much more than just profitability. Profitablity optimization can be irrelevent to public service functioning, or worse. That's why purely commercial management is not a panacea.
The main purpose of public srevice is long term function - short periods of mild financial losses can be acceptable, but surely, the service ought to be self-supporting (and even better) most of the time. The imperative of maximal short-term profits can often tighten the public service "organism" unnecessary, increasing the risk of dysfunctioning.
Besides, large scale buisinesses do not like the grey are of low profits. Privatisation of telephone service worked because it coincided with a technology breakthough, and you can normally make millions here. In many cases, public servises like postal or transportation, can make modest profits regurlarly, but it is not a very effective investment for the buisiness point of view. Once the "last" generation of dedicated supervisors and specialists will be gone, most public service companies will fall into the problematic category and be taken over by "rescue" capitalists. Frequently, a service will be minimized to a "most effective" scale, taking a one-time maximal profit from the assests and functionality.
