Ask people in the UK how privatizing mail and rail is going. - ThreadSky

davidho.bsky.social • 3 days ago

Ask people in the UK how privatizing mail and rail is going.

Billionaire Elon Musk, who is advising President Donald Trump on plans to radically shrink the US government, said that the US Postal Service and passenger railroad Amtrak should be privatized reut.rs/4iruAxY

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d-le-nen.bsky.social•3 days ago

maddening how ppl do not get that privatization does not work, when there is no proper market and competition. you get the worst of 2 worlds. congrats.

heiz16.bsky.social•3 days ago

I bet it is the opposite of awesome.

queenofnoirs.bsky.social•3 days ago

The Ketamine Jester hasn’t gotten anything right yet. Know why? Because he’s stupid.

fetchstep.bsky.social•3 days ago

Billionaire soon to be Millionaire Musk as his Tesla stocks are crashing.
Does Musk get a bailout?

jcauthor.bsky.social•3 days ago

They don’t care if it WORKS. They care if they can cut workers from the budget and make money on it.

bluebutterflymom.bsky.social•3 days ago

Same reason my county brought in a for-profit company to run our library system. 🤬

secnar.bsky.social•3 days ago

In PR police is private. Good luck getting help when you need it. They show up hours later, if ever.

alphistia.bsky.social•3 days ago

another stupid idea from Elon Musk.

realchefshannon.bsky.social•3 days ago

Lemme guess….

Price goes up.
Service goes down.
A once “good job” becomes a turnover machine.

About right?

babs05.bsky.social•3 days ago

My brother sent me a Christmas card once, the postmark was about mid-December. I received it sometime around Valentine's. Normally, post takes a day or two.

Our media made up nonsense about sandwiches to turn the public against British Rail. Now it's cheaper to fly abroad than catch a train.

babs05.bsky.social•3 days ago

Foreign countries own our services. Our jacked up ticket prices subsidise their much cheaper, much higher standard services. They have air conditioning on trains. We dream of that.

babs05.bsky.social•3 days ago

This was just below your post on my home page. Our privatised trains are awful. Tatty, unreliable, expensive. The public want them renationalised, but govt are wasting time and money on this instead.

https://bsky.app/profile/news.sky.com/post/3ljojxvtnus2u

neveratrueword.bsky.social•3 days ago

I’ve used UK rail and it’s been pretty good. High speed trains though out the country

paul.ofthenorth.ca•3 days ago

Less advising Donald and more just implementing what he thinks is right. This is despite Musk not really being an expert in anything. Hell, he probably isn't very informed about himself.

berniemj.bsky.social•3 days ago

Musk figures he'll do the trains & Bezos will deliver the mail via Amazon.

deeritnihil.bsky.social•3 days ago

Or he'll also want to take over Amazon in time

ladymercy.bsky.social•3 days ago

Is Amtrak not already privatized?? This is a mind blowing revelation for me if so

oliviamlondon.bsky.social•3 days ago

It’s shit. Don’t do it. Prices go way up, service doesn’t improve, no investment in infrastructure because the focus is profit for shareholders. Putting profit before people and planet is a dire business model, especially if the government is keen on “deregulation”.

y2skot.bsky.social•3 days ago

Both disintegrated into second-rate services within a decade. Privatising British Rail was a Tory follow of the first order. Nearly every nation in Europe has a better system.

y2skot.bsky.social•3 days ago

*folly

jtsreborn.bsky.social•3 days ago

Exactly… actually we are trying to reverse it to public

andromedaascendant.bsky.social•3 days ago

Elon always had a thing against railroad. He started the whole hyperloop scam to stop the plans to build a railway linking the big Californian cities.

shenaniganwatcher.bsky.social•3 days ago

Musk loves messing w/ rail (see: Hyperloop). Funny how Musk has an interest in people buying cars (see: Tesla). The U.S. needs a reform party (PLEASE Dems) to push for a constitutional convention now. There are a multitude of updates we need to fix our system. Too many issues for spot amendments.

rosiedekat.bsky.social•3 days ago

and the water ..... rivers now sewers.

dionlisle.bsky.social•3 days ago

Worst idea EVER !

Basically it is a grift.

nancym1.bsky.social•3 days ago

And privatized transit - Omg what a disaster! Expensive, inefficient, convoluted.

jonasnuts.bsky.social•3 days ago

Or people in Portugal.

armstrong1611.bsky.social•3 days ago

The answer to how privatization of rail has gone is: bad. Very bad. Policy is now to re-nationalize the system in total over 5 years, we'll see how quickly they can actually do that.

armstrong1611.bsky.social•3 days ago

Put another way: privatization went so badly that the two largest operators of British rail systems in the mid twenty-teens were the national companies of Belgium (freight), and France (SNCF passenger services). That is very bad.

doctorrubato.bsky.social•3 days ago

Well, we've already privatized the Presidency. How's that going again?

brycecampbell.ca•3 days ago

Just as with Canada, the public rail and postal service are government run Becuase the private sector won't touch it.

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