[mrfumier]

I don't know in which country you live, but here in France, privatization and opening markets has been salutary. - The phone lines state monopoly was broken, it cut the cost by a factor of 10, and made possible high speed internet. - The packages delivery state monopoly was broken, which lead to a much more improved service, which delivery of fresh food or tracking minute by minute where your package is. - The internal flights state monopoly was broken, which leds to low-cost operator who devided flights tickets by factor of 20.

[pydry]

Opening markets != privatization. There's absolutely nothing wrong with breaking a state monopoly if that's possible, but that's not privatization.

The free market cultists pretending that these two things that are very different are equivalent is half of how we got into this mess, in fact.

Whilst participants in the utilites market will often complain that it's "not fair" that they have to compete with a state actor, they're often the best way of exerting market discipline on them.

This is particularly true in utilities space where private actors unhindered by state competition try to bamboozle their customers into giving them fat profit margins with stupidly complex bills. State run companies that provide a bare bones low profit service that matches what most people actually want inhibit this kind of market abuse.