"They", who they? They are the neolibs. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
What can governments advised by neoliberals/adhering to neoliberalism do?
With this practice, a merely loss-making state company can be run down into a ghost of its former self in a few years.
No. Of course, when you do public service, making profit is not the main goal. But those who made a more or less functioning public company into a dysfunctional mess are neolibs. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Another obvious thing to emphasize again is that what the job needs is not 'a good manager', but a good railway manager. Railways (at least properly run ones that serve both freight and passengers) are very complex systems, with lots of interdependencies, which a manager should know or his cost-benefit analysis isn't worth anything. Only the command structure of the workforce is hierarchic, but not 'production'. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
then why don't they hire some good managers rather than neolibs. some managers that understand how to manage people, improve productivity, set a vision, etc. why are they hiring these neolibs?
That's what the French State used to do (hire good managers). It was prestigious to work for the government, and a good career for ambitious people. Now that government is systematicaly denigrated ("bureaucrats", "lazy", "inefficient", "the cause of all problems", etc...), it's not so prestigious. Plus, in order to avoid "unnecessaty waste of taxpayer money", the government is not allowed to pay as much as banks offer for bright young engineers, thus they go to work in banks, where they are properly "valued".
And it's a self-reinforcing cycle, of course. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
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.
