Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

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Most of the best public infrastructure is state owned but privately operated, like Sweden and Singapore’s transit systems. But the ownership model is less important than other things. Japan’s world leading training infrastructure is privately owned and operated. By contrast, almost all of the United States’s terrible transit systems are publicly owned and operated. Water is a public utility and almost all the United States and the water systems are in terrible disrepair.

The problem with public ownership is that it drives price is too low because it allows people to vote on prices. Your average age 60+ voter doesn’t care if lowering the water bill now means that the system will be in bad repair 30 or 50 years from now.

At the end of the day, there is no magic policy bullet to fix problems with the people. Public infrastructure in the US sucks whether it’s publicly owned or privately owned. But I bet if the Japanese trains were publicly owned instead of privately owned, they would still be pretty good.

My state deregulated natural gas which meant that despite the city owning the delivery and turning on and off the gas each for profit company had to have their own HQ, marketing budget, customer service, sales team, and C-suite.

The fixed service fee cost $40/month which was more than the natural gas consumed every month but Jan/Feb. They also make cancelling difficult, I was put on hold for 40 minutes without an music so I didn't know if I had been disconnected or was just on hold.

Electric is run by one company and their service fee is $15/mo. Their customer service is also much better.

I paid $48 for $0.97 worth of gas last month. About $40 to the public gas company for the hookup, $5.95 in a service fee to the private supplier and the balance tax.

I think at this point, the counter argument to private enterprise is "Hey, China did it".

(I am aware that this is a facetious statement, and the main point you are aiming to make is that there are other factors that matter.)

It’s not a counter-argument for two reasons. First, China doesn’t have voters. The problem with publicly owned utilities specifically is the pressure from voters to lower prices now at the expense of maintenance for the future. Not having voters eliminates that problem. More generally, the lack of voters means that China’s public sector operates completely differently than the public sector in democracies.

Separately, China has been moving more and more of its economy to the private sector for decades, ever since Deng Xiaoping visited Singapore: https://www.fairobserver.com/economics/china-and-its-mentor-....

Do read the second part of my statement, since arguing this further puts me in the awkward position of romanticizing China, which I do not want to do.

I will disagree by stating that China's private sector isn't the same as a western or typical market economy private firm. The degree of state ownership is and central control are hard enough to make comps easy. State support in other ways other than ownership is another topic as well.

I will also say that the Chinese government is receptive to its constituents. Not to the degree that we can expect in a democracy, but its not oblivious either.

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