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Originally Posted by freddie
European public services? Yeiks. That reminds me of Soviet style People's Steel factories. I think mail delivery and railroad companies in particular are much too developed in a private sector to enforce a continental reign over it (huge US corporate players in the package delivery service who'd surely file a complaint with the WTO.) I still firmly believe there's nothing wrong with competition since it's been know to lower prices and raise quality of service.
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I think many former communist countries have "thrown the baby with the bath water" as we say in French, many are now engaged on an ultra-capitalistic road where everything must be private and competition absolute. Good for them, but i don't agree with that socio-economic model based on the American one.
For me "public service" is not an insult or an archaism, offering an equal and affordable service to everybody whether they live in a large city or a small town is something Europe should strive for. I don't believe that competition and profits always make things better (Paris subway is not profitable and never will be, and yet it's a great public service that nobody would want to see closed because it's not profitable), and i certainly don't believe that competition is the best answer to everything.
Mail delivery. You can't have several post offices owned by different companies in every city, town and village. You can't have several mailmen competing every morning to deliver mail in your mailbox. Mail delivery is for me an area where a public service is logical and more efficent.
Electricity. Look at California, electricity production is completely private there and competition has led to a total lack of investment and long term planning, resulting in a worn-out network and frequent blackouts (to the point that many businesses have built their own in-house power generators, which is an environmental nightmare).
In France, the state-owned EDF has been able to plan over decades and has built an efficient modern network, and electricity is cheaper than in most neighboring countries. Also, i support nuclear energy because i think it's a good way to limit global warming, but i wouldn't want private nuclear plants.
Railroad. Look at Britain and its completely private railroad, it's a total disaster, private companies have been solely focused on maximizing profits, the result is a decaying network with no long-term investment and planning. The only high speed lane has been built because of the Channel tunnel and it has taken *15 years* to build only *120km* of tracks between the tunnel and London.
In France, the state-owned SNCF has built close to 2000km of high speed lanes in 25 years and we have now high speed trains linking all major cities. If the French railroad had been privatized like in Britain, we wouldn't have a high speed network today.
I do support full competition in most areas (i'm against public funding of French cinema for example, if it's not good enough to compete, then it should disappear), but there are a few areas that require long-term planning and don't generate immediate profits even though it's useful to millions of people (like a high speed rail network or an electricity grid) and private companies are simply not interested in doing things that would benefit millions of people if it doesn't generate immediately huge profits for their shareholders.