What was wrong with it, and can anyone give me a list and some good articles about it? I know it's an industry running on a deficit only supported by the state but I'd like some articles.
Thanks guys. Pic unrelated.
British Rail Privatization
Josiah Stewart
Daniel Howard
To TL;DR it, my father taught me a new saying: The trains now are shit and they are expensive, under british rail they were shit and cheap.
When the trains were sold off, basically it was quick and cheap to everyone they
could find: now the way it works is the UK gov has a franchise with a set of rules, and the companies big for it either by being cheaper or offering more services per pound. Now what happened is either these companies were shit, or they got swallowed up by big porkies: like Richard branson.
This was until 2000 or so, a massive train crash forced the blair government to renationalise infrastructure. Still, he did nothing on the franchises.
Carter Green
youtube.com
youtube.com
British railway privatization was an incredibly clear-cut example of a capitalist State, under administration of a rightwing party no less, using the government apparatus to transfer wealth upwards. It brought plenty of cons and virtually no positives whatsoever, altho some survey or other says British rail passengers are more satisfied with the frequency of trains, which is a subjective measure. Basically, it was a legal way to flat-out scam the people, and if tax records were public, I have no doubt you'd see considerable sums being deposited in the accounts of high-ranking Tories in the months leading up to the privatization.
There really ought to be a name for this sort of scheme, it's the bread-and-butter of upwards transfer of wealth all over the world.
James Moore
public-private partnershits don't get enough flak from the left
privatized natural monopolies (energy, mail, rail) have the state still covering the costs, meaning the shareholders can get their profits by not having to spend too much
this is not just a UK thing either
Noah Bailey
If anyone ever tells you capitalism is rational and efficient, give them this to read.
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
An absolutely hilarious tale of childlike incompetence, culminating in the renationalisation of railway tracks (but not trains) because it was essentially impossible to save the private company (the Blair government tried desperately to do so, afraid of looking like some sort of socialists or socdems by - god forbid - nationalising something.), and attempts to save it with injections of state cash tended to just go on giving shareholders huge dividends.
Lucas Morgan
Honestly now's the time. HS2 has become such a fucking mess under the Tories where PM Corbyn should just take that project over and have that be the basis for a new British (high speed) Rail. This wouldn't even disrupt existing capitalist operations that much, since the government would make so much money they'd just gradually buy them all out anyway.
Also it's my dream for the BBC to be replaced with a new London Central Station, like it's done in America. Londoners shouldn't have to settle for an eighteenth century subway, I want air conditioning and I'm willing to smash my blairite mum's head in with a cricket bat to get my way.
Gabriel Brooks
As an American I don't have much to add however I find this situation extremely amusing. Here in America Amtrak's primary job is serving the shitheaps Holla Forums lives in, to the point where 9/10ths of Amtrak's money is spent on services that get maybe 200-400 riders per day. Amtrak is also ordered every now and then to study ways they can expand their rural services, in particular new routes across the inland west (where Ben Garrison lives). Meanwhile their intercity service is severely lacking because Republicans obviously don't want to siphon money away from their districts.
This website might interest you for future reference: narprail.org
Gavin Wood
What’s wrong with rural areas having train. Would you rather have them be completely isolated. Also rural areas aren’t inherently right-wing. There’s plenty of left-wing rural areas. The left’s biggest problem is the high levels of urban ideology within it.
Aaron Wilson
Amtrak seems to be working pretty good, I don’t see any problems with it.
t Burger
Mason Hughes
You could say it was…
a
trainwreck
Grayson Kelly
Not the guy you're responding to but train is pretty pointless when Greyhound and other bus services exist. In a compact country like Spain or between dense urban belts like the Northeast or San Francisco to LA it makes sense, rural areas 4 stated away are better served by buses.
John Wright
Without trains that connect to the rural areas how would you import grain into the cities.
Chase Sanchez
Buses don't like the snow.
Caleb Flores
Amtrack is passenger rail, not freight, that's all privately handled. Sacks of potatoes don't need seats and they don't complain about lying around for 30 hours, so the economics are completely different.
Thomas Hall
As a bemusing aside to this: one of the reasons why Amtrak doesn't carry mail anymore is because in the late 90s the freight RRs lobbied the government into considering it "freight" and therefore not a thing Amtrak can service. They gave it up without a fight. This is why you never see Amtrak trains with box cars, as can be seen in older photographs.
Jaxon Price
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Josiah Morales
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Joshua Lopez
it's a years old reaction image gimmie a break
Brayden Fisher
You want me to make you a better one?
Chase Robinson
if you feel like it, sure.
Ian Wright
didnt actually make this, just found on google
Nathan Diaz
tanks user
Tyler Nguyen
You mean rural areas with poor rural people? It's odd for people living in capitalist urban zoos to call these places "shitheaps".
Jayden Thompson
retarded
Robert Nguyen
access to transportation is a right.
making ure those places in the middle of nowhere dont go completly userved is important
Henry Hall
UPHOLD MARXISM-GEOFFTECHISM
Jayden Brooks
It's funnier in the context that the Republicans elected by those rural areas semi-regularly suggest Amtrak should be defunded or privatised and use it as an example of wasteful government excess, while also fighting as strongly as possible to keep their own rural services going.
Jacob Lewis
Most of the Republicans that want to ax Amtrak are House Republicans who represent suburban areas not served by Amtrak. Few Senators are against it, since 46 states have Amtrak service. But even of those eight most want to "reform" Amtrak with "public private partnerships" like Pence did with Iowa Pacific (a quaint but functional service in Indiana). However this does not happen because the American railroad industry is largely against it, Amtrak was created so the Federal government would not longer have to subsidize private passenger services directly (pics related were the last holdouts in the early 1980s) because RRs were no longer interested in providing it. So things remain largely unchanged despite everything else happening.