Item — HN Reader

Privatising utilities like this (and electricity etc.) has never made any sense to me. It all happened in the UK well before I was old enough to understand that sort of thing. I have grown up very aware of the failings of privatising public infrastructure.

Can someone explain what the problems were with this stuff being owned and run nationally that privatisation was supposed to fix?

2 comments

In the Netherlands the same happened with the railway and healthcare coverage. The motivation was that market pressure would lead to increased efficiency. In practice, there's a tendency towards monopoly and a forest of product variants leading to more confusion and people buying sub-optimal. The net effect over here is negative, in my opinion.

The thing is there is no market pressure for water/sewage, which is a monopoly and even a natural monopoly.

There are very good argument to have a working market wherever possible but obviously that does not work with natural monopolies. In those cases it makes more sense to make it a state-owned company and to drive investment while keeping costs down for the benefits of all. Nothing new as this has been a recognised issue since the 19th century.

> what the problems were with this stuff being owned

If you're a director of a publicly owned company and you loot it, you go to prison.