> I believe the best way to make this work is by keeping the network itself in public hands and then having a competition of contributors to the network - e.g. electricity providers that add energy to the grid.
One area -- in fact, the only area that I can think of -- where privatisation has mostly worked in the UK is the telecommunications market. Here the networks are in private hands, but the providers are forced to offer somewhat equitable access to their competitors, e.g. by sharing masts, poles and underground ducts. That, plus the relatively low cost to entry of setting up as a new player, seems to be enough to keep prices down and service levels up.
This wouldn't work for transport of or on rail, road, water or gas, because there's no realistic way to force different entities to share the same infrastructure; you can't reasonably set up two parallel gas networks, or run two independent sets of rails. In those cases I agree that we have experimentally proven that socialising the infrastructure was/is the most efficient option. Now we need a government with the political chutzpah to accept that.
One area -- in fact, the only area that I can think of -- where privatisation has mostly worked in the UK is the telecommunications market. Here the networks are in private hands, but the providers are forced to offer somewhat equitable access to their competitors, e.g. by sharing masts, poles and underground ducts. That, plus the relatively low cost to entry of setting up as a new player, seems to be enough to keep prices down and service levels up.
This wouldn't work for transport of or on rail, road, water or gas, because there's no realistic way to force different entities to share the same infrastructure; you can't reasonably set up two parallel gas networks, or run two independent sets of rails. In those cases I agree that we have experimentally proven that socialising the infrastructure was/is the most efficient option. Now we need a government with the political chutzpah to accept that.