alt Hacker NewsDB is only in its current state (company organization, leadership failures, organizational failures, underfunding for decades, etc) because of previous governments' failed attempts at privatization decades ago. Full actual privatization would not likely have yielded any better results - especially regarding the actual infrastructure itself. (There's enough examples worldwide)
It's also been used for cushy post-politics jobs and lots of other incompetent meddling - such as requiring and extracting profits, etc.
You're right that it's not privatized, but the root causes of current misery still are the privatization attempts and a significant neoliberal/conservative political force that caused decay and blocked progress/improvements.
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For all its existence it has been 100% state-owned and state-controlled, yet because it's a failure, it's still somehow "not state, but actually privatized", even though not "full actual privatization" (but only imagined privatization).
I understand the desire to have a scapegoat for failure, and to externalize it in some abstract capitalists/neoliberals/conservatives, but abandoning reality to create your own world has no predictive power and is not a long-term strategy.
You are contradicting yourself.
On the on hand you claim that a government-run railway company is better off than a privately run (Japan tends to disagree here).
On the other hand you admit that the problems of Deutsche Bahn stem from the fact that politicians have had too much influence on it.
Guess how you can keep politicians out of companies? By keeping them private.
I will never understand why so many people think that companies are magically doing better because the government is running them. That’s just a myth.
Both the government and private entities can be good or bad at running companies. However, the huge advantage with private companies is that customers have options thanks to competition.
Anyone who still has memories of telephone companies run by the government knows what I’m talking about.
As for Deutsche Bahn, the government has full control over it meaning the company is run by the government. Whether it’s officially a German Aktiengesellschaft or not, doesn’t matter at all.
Your argument is often brought up by proponents of a government-run railway so that they don’t have to admit that Deutsche Bahn isn’t doing well despite being run by the government.