Especially not the railways or the water supply.

I think the railways are risky, especially if you don't also privatize transport in general (airports, highways)

You could specify the countries in question since "mostly public" differs a lot across the world.

In Britain, since the railways were privatised, rail fares have increased by 22% above inflation, and the annual cost to the *taxpayer* is now £1.2 BILLION more, every year, than it was when the state owned the railways. A disgrace.

I'm from Holland. Where are you from, ulytau?

Transit (specifically, the operation of public transit such as buses, subways, light rail) is something that can, and should, be privatized.

The Czech Republic.

Jamiet, are the rails privately owned or only privately operated?

As a rule of thumb, any service that is deemed as vital and in case of shitty supply would probably receive government cash because of people rumbling is pretty risky to privatize without legal making sure the private owner can't shirk its obligations. Game theory isn't very nice to treasury in those situations. Too big to fail and stuff. Privatization of revenues and socialization of losses.

How about student loans? Banks can ask for high school papers to determine which students get a loan. If you were particularly strong in biology, they'll give you a loan to study medicine. If the economy needs lots of architects, the rent on architecture loans goes down a bit. That kind of stuff.

Everything but defence, courtrooms and police.

I don't mind public-private partnerships for transportation, healthcare and education

Aren't student loans private by definition?

student loans are subsidized by the US government.

Not in Holland, we borrow money from a state-run institution called DUO, IB-GROEP, or whatever it is they call it today.

Up here in Ontario, Canada, we have the Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP) which is government-run. I don’t think most people would agree that a system of student loans (where currently administered publicly) could be “safely” privatized. Yes, banks would probably consider things like an applicant’s aptitude in a specific field or the job market outlook, but a further consideration would probably be the income and net worth of the applicant (or even their family) and thus the fear would be that applicants could be denied based on personal economic factors, challenging the well-entrenched notion of ‘equality of opportunity’ in liberal democratic societies.

But @ryanrogers, what if you regulate it? Oblige banks to list the conditions they set, for example, and that these conditions can only be study-related?

Pretty much anything but the armed forces and police can be privatised sucessfully with a bit of thought. Although having said that Sir Francis Drake did a pretty fine effort with a largely privately owned fleet against the Spanish. It all depends on how well the privatisation is executed.

The railway in Britain is a fine example. Back in its prime it was a private enterprise and the best in the world. After nationalisation in 1948 it struggled from underinvestment and poor management typical of government run business. It was then sold to private companies, but without any thought given to competition, resulting in the private firms not being much of an improvement on government.

The UK government has made a lot of progress with privatisation, with the Tote being a recent example (why it owned a betting company I have no idea). More progress needs to be made (cough Channel Four cough) but with things such as hospitals a debate with the public needs to be won before proceeding.

In what way are publicly subsidized student loans cheaper for the country than keeping some schools public and free and cut all student loan subsidies?

The cost to banks, private businesses, of conducting themselves under such a legislative framework would probably result in: (a) extremely high interest rates because of the risks they would be 'forced' to take (i.e. lending money for a student to complete a B.A., M.A. and PhD in a field with few prospects for future income); (b) banks setting extremely restrictive conditions (i.e. only giving out money to straight-A students entering a field expecting super high job growth in the next decade); (c) both; or, (d) a lack of interest from banks in even being involved in this loan market (especially if they were compelled to lend at artificially low interest rates, or lend out money under non-restrictive conditions).

@ulytau

Community and State Colleges are already pretty cheap. State Universities, however, are getting rather expensive (especially for out-of-state students). It would be much more expensive to drop the price of attending these Universities rather than giving loans because 1) Not everyone needs a loan and 2) loans get paid back (sometimes).

@Octavious: I think Dick Cheney of Halliburton would agree.

@ abgemacht

Yes, loans (as you humorously point out, sometimes) get repaid, however at least here in Canada, the government is lending out money for education at very low interest rates under very preferential conditions (such as not having to start paying it back until several years after graduation). In many cases, the government could have been *earning* a lot more with that money (i.e. generating a much higher ROI elsewhere) had it not been tied up in a subsidized student loan.

Isn't it interesting for a bank to fund a future doctor? Doctors make more than enough money to pay back pretty much any loan..

@ redhouse

No bank would willingly "fund" them absent the government forcing them to do so. They would, however, LEND to them if it was a winning proposition for the bank.

Stupid question. What does "safely privatized" even mean?

ALL of it "can" be privatized. "Safely" meaning what? We will die if it is or is not? what is the question?

Honestly, you shouldn't be taking out loans for school, especially not for a private school

If your family doesn't have enough money to go to Harvard and you aren't good enough to get a scholarship from Harvard, then don't go to Harvard.

The only reason colleges can charge such crazy rates is because people are willing to pay them (often through loans).

There are very few people who can't afford to go to CC for two years and then finish their degree at a College/University. Honestly, their education won't have suffered for it.

If you need to take out a small loan to help mitigate the cost, that's fine. But putting a $40k/year school on credit is just foolish.

I would interpret "safely" to mean that it could be privatized and still offer the same level and distribution of service at a lower price. Or, that you could privatize it without the left completely freaking out.

@abgemacht "But putting a $40k/year school on credit is just foolish."

Not if you're trying to become a doctor or lawyer and your future income will more than allow for you to pay it back. In that case $40K/year for school is perhaps one of the best 'investments' out there for someone who has the brains but whose family doesn't have the cash.

@ryan

If you truly have the brains, then a school will give you a scholarship.

Furthermore, there's a difference between undergrad and grad school. If you're going to be a doctor then, yes, you probably need to go to a decent medical school (although there are many that are good a cheap even in medicine). But, there's still no reason to pay that type of money for undergrad when your education will be almost indistinguishable from a public school.

In fact, if someone wanted to be a doctor, I would particularly urge them not to go to an expensive school for undergrad as many, many people who go into college wanting to be a doctor don't actually make it. If you go into a private school, you may have huge debt *and* no way of paying it off.

@abgemacht

What if you need that prestigious undergrad degree to get to grad school? And so every student from a family that isn't rich should have to vie for a limited number of scholarships (most of which don't cover anywhere near full tuition, let alone residence, etc.)? This is problematic in that it's placing students from a low-income background on a very different footing quite early on in life (and exasperating those which already exist) and will most certainly cause all of us - society - to not benefit from the potential contributions of some of our best and brightest. What if the person who cures cancer can't get into Med School because someone else happened to take the scholarship that year?

Please show me some data showing the price of undergrad correlates to acceptance into medical school.

I'll work on that. In the meantime, I'll assume your lack of addressing any other questions and issues posed in my last post means you otherwise agree with me, however.

Keep it classy guys. Thinks flowers.

What other questions?

If there's no link between undergrad attended and med school acceptance, then your other questions are completely moot.

Don't think you read it. The other questions I asked were with respect to graduate schooling and its affordability. Even if there's no link between students from more expensive schools being admitted more frequently to med school (and I still believe there is), and all undergraduate education is free, it doesn't mean the problem of paying for graduate school (absent a system of student loans) is going to have very real implications for low-income students, and I would argue, for society as well in the same of the best and brightest are going to be denied the opportunity to make potentially great contributions to society, should a scholarship that meets their particular academic profile not be available.

@ Ulytau: "Jamiet, are the rails privately owned or only privately operated?"

They initially privatised the rail infrastructure itself, as well as the trains, but in the form of a seperate company to the private train operators. Unfortunately the infrastructure company, "Railtrack" tried to please shareholders by massive cost-cutting, resulting in serious compromises on safety, which culminated in several fatal rail crashes for which Railtrack was found liable. The government, realising what a disaster the privatised, profit-motivated rail infrastructure was, forced Railtrack into administration, set up a new arms-length, not-for-profit company called Network Rail which now looks after the rails, and does a much better job of it. Technically it's still a limited company but it has no shareholders and isn't allowed to pay dividends - any surplus must be re-invested in the railway, and the final legal control over it's actions rests with the government - what's technically known as a "stautory corporation".

bump

@ryan

Grad school is completely different. I'm talking about expensive undergrad.

The railways are still a very interesting example. The question is whether there can be real competition on the railways? I think the honest answer is no. There may be different companies operating on the railway-network, but they'll work in different areas of a country (like in The Netherlands) and not on the same track. If they do start competing on the same track, they'll probably be inefficient and thus more expansive for it.

However, that does not mean there is no competition in transportation. Here is a list of companies that can compete with the Railways:

1. Highways
2. Other public transportation companies (bus, light rail)
3. Airlines (obviously not for going to work in the morning, but airlines definitely compete with the Railways for longer distance traveling, that can be done both by train and by plane)
4. The Internet (you can choose to have a meeting by Skype if you think the costs of assembling the people you'd like to meet with are too high)

All in all, there should be some form of competition, but I think all of the above should be privatized, if one of the above is privatized!

Also, security: why not privatize that? I'd gladly organize the security in my neighborhood with my neighbors. Patrolling and stuff. You obviously can't privatize the police force, but people can do an awful lot about security themselves.

If there is a decent, well-funded police force why do you and your neighbours need "private security" in your neighbourhood? I don't need private security patrols in my street because, y'know, there's the police.

Yeah but, y'know, cars still get stolen every now and then.