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The US temporarily became a majority owner of GM as part of their 2009 bankruptcy.
> Through the Troubled Asset Relief Program the US Treasury invested a total $51 billion into the GM bankruptcy.[93] Until December 10, 2013, the U. S. Treasury recovered $39 billion from selling its GM stake. The final direct cost to the Treasury of the GM bailout was $11[94]-12 billion ($10.5 billion for General Motors and $1.5 billion for former GM financing GMAC, now known as Ally).[95] Local tax incentives amounted to $1.7 billion, most of them in Michigan.[96][97] A study by the Center for Automotive Research found that the GM bailout saved 1.2 million jobs and preserved $34.9 billion in tax revenue.[95]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_Chapter_11_reor...
https://jacobin.com/2019/10/general-motors-nationalization-u...
Conrail was a consolidated nationalization of multiple failed or failing railroads. In hindsight it effectively served as a way to consolidate, restructure, and then re-privatize the operation of the railroads.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conrail
It doesn't have to mean that the government continues to operate the company directly indefinitely.
Worked fairly well. The last few decades have seen antitrust regulators asleep at the wheel, though, so we're back to 2-3 biggies again with all the mergers.
The breakup isolated the companies servicing wealthy areas from those servicing more expensive areas, and this has greatly widened disparity.
It's unclear how breaking up Boeing would help, as the people running the company already divested large chunks of the company into other companies, and this is part of the problem.
Sure. That’s not what happened. The cops came in and divided my pile of stuff into different piles. They’re still mine. They’re just not allowed to talk to each other.
AT&T’s shareholders famously did well out the break-up [1].
[1] https://www.spokesman.com/stories/1996/may/25/att-rewards-st...
As a shareholder, you're not permitted to put the piles back together, nor are you permitted to have the same top-level management of the system as before in place. You are under very significant new constraints imposed by the government.
> AT&T’s shareholders famously did well out the break-up.
Nationalization needn't involve a loss for the people losing the control. If the US government nationalizes Boeing for 2x its market cap, it's still a nationalization.
One, literally what happened. And two, you’re describing every company when it seeks merger approval.
> under very significant new constraints imposed by the government
Agreed to between AT&T and the government to settle the government’s case against it.
> If the US government nationalizes Boeing for 2x its market cap, it's still a nationalization
Correct. But that requires the government taking ownership or control of the company. What you’re describing is just regulation.
There are fringe types who regard any government regulation as nationalisation. But this isn’t common usage. (In technical terms, legally, financially and economically, it’s strictly wrong.)
> Nationalize Boeing, split it up, turn the pieces into work-owned and controlled co-ops.
Bell didn't turn into co-ops, but otherwise that's the same play. A forcible breakup by the government is fundamentally a nationalization, even if it's just for an instant.
The government never took any ownership interest in AT&T. You may be thinking of the auto bailouts.
Nationalization can be involve control instead of ownership.
If the President orders Google to switch all efforts to producing nuclear bombs, Google has been nationalized, even if they've still got private shareholders.
Socialism will necessarily involve nationalization. Nationalization doesn't necessarily require a socialist ownership structure for the nationalized asset.
This makes no sense on multiple levels. Socialisation is a system, nationalisation an act.
> Nationalization can be involve control instead of ownership
There are zero legal scholars or historians who consider break-up orders nationalisation. Because at that point, every merger denial or FDA approval is also nationalisation.
Socialism, the system, requires widespread nationalization in the form of both control and ownership of assets.
> There are zero legal scholars or historians who consider break-up orders nationalisation.
Again, nationalization is taking state ownership or control. A forcible government breakup of an organization is clear state control of it, albeit for a brief period.
Thought experiment:
Venezuela, instead of outright confiscation, chooses instead to leave shareholders in possession of their shares in oil production. They install state-selected management and impose a 100% tax on profits. Is this nationalization?
You’re defining control in a way that extends to all regulation.
The AT&T break-up has been heavily cited and written about. Do you have a single expert who agrees with your claim that it constituted nationalisation? (Let’s even assume AT&T was actually ordered to break up, versus voluntarily doing so to settle a lawsuit.)
> instead of outright confiscation, chooses instead to leave shareholders in possession of their shares in oil production. They install state-selected management and impose a 100% tax on profits.
Now remove the confiscation of profits and selection of state-selected management.
Source? Defence production directives don’t change ownership.
No, they were contracts authorised by the War Powers Act of 1941 [1][2].
Management was conserved and largely left to its own decisions. When workers struck, mines and factories were nationalised [3], but that was the exception.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Powers_Act_of_1941
[2] https://www.dcma.mil/News/Article-View/Article/2100501/a-his...
[3] https://thenextsystem.org/sites/default/files/2019-09/A_Hist...
That they were legally required to accept.
"Boeing, you have to make X B-17s for Y dollars" is a nationalization just as much as "Boeing, we're going to use your stuff to make X B-17s".
Again, source? Because to my knowledge, this wasn’t true.
The requirements for public tender were lifted, which just meant contracts could be sole sourced. Those contracts were negotiated and paid for [1].
There was an element of coercion, sure. But I can find no evidence of anyone coming away from their business with the U.S. poorer.
[1] https://blogs.loc.gov/inside_adams/2013/03/wwii-detail-from-...
> Deliveries of material under all orders placed pursuant to the authority of this paragraph and all other naval contracts or orders and deliveries of material under all Army contracts or orders shall, in the discretion of the President, take priority over all deliveries for private account or for export.
> Deliveries under any contract or order specified in this subsection (a) may be assigned priority over deliveries under any other contract or order ; and the President may require acceptance of and performance under such contracts or orders in preference to other contracts or orders for the purpose of assuring such priority. Whenever the President is satisfied that the fulfillment of requirements for the defense of the United States will result in a shortage in the supply of any material or of any facilities for defense or for private account or for export, the President may allocate such material or facilities in such manner, upon such conditions and to such extent as he shall deem necessary or appropriate in the public interest and to promote the national defense.
> "The President shall determine the amount of the fair and just compensation to be paid for any property requisitioned and taken over pursuant to this Act and the fair value of any prop- erty returned under section 2 of this Act, but each such determination shall be made as of the time it is requisitioned or returned, as the case may be, in accordance with the provision for just compensation in the fifth amendment to the Constitution of the United States .
All direct quotes from the Second War Powers Act in 1942. https://web.archive.org/web/20151031140130/https://legiswork...
Further formalized post-war in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Production_Act_of_1950.
> There was an element of coercion, sure. But I can find no evidence of anyone coming away from their business with the U.S. poorer.
It's still nationalization if you make out like a bandit in the process.
The condemned property was absolutely nationalised. But this was more the case for land for bases or production facilities that the contracted businesses used.
Businesses were seldom nationalised (or commanded). Raw inputs, e.g. property and mines, were nationalised/condemned.
Again, do you have a single source for this? I could similarly argue everything in America is today nationalised because someone could issue a NSL and make their management’s life miserable.
> Shortly after its creation in 1942, the federal War Production Board (WPB) sharply curtailed or banned the production of nearly 300 items judged "nonessential" to the war effort. The manufacturers of the targeted products could either choose to convert to the production of items deemed to be essential, or try to make do with substitute materials. Some of the banned items were near and dear to American consumers, who would soon learn the importance of conservation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_home_front_durin...
> Production of most durable goods, like new housing, vacuum cleaners, and kitchen appliances, was banned until the war ended.
If you're an appliance maker, and the government bans production of civilian appliances... how much are you going to fight over a contract to make them for the military?
The government then sold off its stake around 2014 and Ally seems to be doing well now.
I’d make the argument that significant ownership by the government means it’s effectively nationalized.
1. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimhenry/2014/12/31/u-s-treasur...
As for the experience with nationalization in other countries, I am hesitant to try to draw lessons from nationalization in socialist countries. Given how much capitalist states meddle whenever a socialist state takes root, I think it’s really hard to disentangle possible perverse outcomes of nationalization (which should be discovered and mitigated against!) from the skullduggery taking place as part of attempts to thwart socialism.
What makes you think such a system would work better than private or state ownership?
> attempts to thwart socialism.
Nobody is better at that than the (so called) socialists themselves. It simply doesn’t work without coercion, restrictive capital controls and other policies which aim to minimize the competitiveness of private enterprises (if they are not banned outright). This almost leads to lack of innovation, poor productivity, extreme corruption and authoritarianism.
> What makes you think such a system would work better than private or state ownership?
Why would private ownership where the majority of shareholders are employees be worse than other types of private ownership?
I can think of a few advantages, like the shareholders being more motivated by long term sustainable business practices instead of squeezing for quarterly profits at the expense of the health of the business, or PE schemes like selling assets and leasing them back to the company to extract temporary value while setting the business up for failure.
How much longer should we stand by and let Boeing crumble? What’s next, put tariffs on Comac planes and force Americans to fly and die on sub-standard Boeing planes?
Or do you mean Boeing is so critical to maintaining the existing commercial fleet that they won't be allowed to fail?
Boeing going bust would leave the world's airlines looking at half as many available new airliners as usual, with any potential competitor taking a decade or more to start up, and Airbus unlikely to be able to double production on a short timeline.
They're not making up the slack any time soon.
Capitalists don’t even like competition. They say they do when it’s convenient as it’s the politically correct thing to say. But behind the scenes they seek monopoly to thwart “ruinous competition”. I wasn’t suggesting nationalization and running Boeing as a conglomerate. I was talking about nationalization as a vehicle to break up the company into work-owned and controlled units. This, combined with consistent application of anti-trust regulations would do more to foster competition than the sclerotic financialized monopoly that Boeing is now.
Wildly successful counterexamples: Suez and Panama canals. Chantiers de l'Atlantique, EDF, Renault in France.
Nationalizing Boeing will only make the problem worse, because guess what: Nationalized companies won't fail, so there is absolutely no incentive to be good which is worse than the situation now.
Then you haven't been paying attention. Most of their problems have been in the military aviation sector, between problems and failures in the KC-46 Pegasus, V-2 Osprey, Air Force One version 2, F-15EX, and F/A-18 Super Hornet programmes among others.
Their failures in civilian aviation and space are all intrinsically linked with their military failures all likely having common causes, it's plaguing their entire company from top to bottom across all their markets.
No doubt the US government will bail out Boeing at least once, but I would expect that to be it. A one last chance point of no return. If Boeing ever gets to that point and still fails further, the US will have no choice but to have them fail.
On the plus side, it's not like Boeing going under is an actual national security threat. There is nothing wrong with relying on Airbus who will no doubt move into the newly vacant market spaces, we are all NATO allies aren't we? To say nothing of Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman who do a better job of military aviation anyway.
https://www.corporatejetinvestor.com/news/us-government-impo...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSeries_dumping_petition_by_Bo...
I'm also not sure "we'll probably only bail you out once" is a great position to take in motivating Boeing and its ownership and governance to make major changes to survive as a company.