The German mail rail and track operator (Deutsche Bahn) isn't private but 100% state owned (and control sits with the federal government). They wanted to privatize it a couple of decades ago but abandoned it. There is still some hybridization between supposedly it being a business and also a public service left in the law, though.

Given how good the rail systems are in several Asian cities despite/thanks to being private, you might want to reconsider that opinion.

No, it's not. It's bureacracy, and it exists in every big organisation, private or public. I'd actually suggest that public sector bodies are often worse for this.

Exactly.

Being a bus driver used to be a decent job for semi-retired construction workers, and such.

But then privatization hit, and over the last 20 years, there is no niceness left. They're even trained to disregard customers, and penalized otherwise. It's insanely inhumane.

And the causal effect is very clear, there can be no doubt about it. It's not the bus driver's fault.

> the root of all that? Privatization

Honesty, it's German politics doing precisely this that's part of the problem: flippant diagnoses too broadly applied from afar.

Really?

The more focused a company is (the more reliant it is on its core service) the more accountable it can be. I'd argue many companies are if anything more accountable than the government. It doesn't have to be true, but I'd argue it often is.

Communism is the answer!