"poor people use buses, not trains" is kinda missing the underlying factor. Poor people tend towards regional transit rather than inter-city transit because they go to and from employment and necessities, not on trips. Buses are disproportionately represented in regional transit because they're cheaper to deploy and regional transit is chronically underfunded. The dichotomy worth analyzing, then, is less buses vs trains, and more regional transit versus intercity transit.
I know he said the video is UK specific for this exact reason, but I think the regional vs interstate distinction is also better because it is more broadly applicable. After all, buses = regional, trains = intercity does not hold true for every country or metro area. To your average person in NYC, for example, trains and buses both refer to forms of regional transport, and are actually both run by the same public-benefit corporation (so kinda nationalized?)
There are a lot of other differences between buses and trains besides the length of the trip. I recommend riding an interstate Greyhound and asking your seatmate why he or she is not on Amtrak.
I agree completely. But there’s also the consideration that train fares are prohibitively expensive such that poor people don’t use them because they *can’t*, not necessarily because they don’t want or need to.
@@mercuryatamolos3687 I'd argue its more often a matter of urban vs rural. Train networks need a certain volume of traffic to justify the cost of the system itself while a bus is more self-contained and works largely just by using regular roads. Trams and Subway stations are also used for short distance travel but those are largely limited to urban centers. Meanwhile, buses are also used instead of trains in places where the geography doesn't work for trains.
Referring to Shaun as Shaun Skull has the same energy as referring to videogame characters by their name and the game's title as a surname, like Sans Undertale
This is the kind of thing we need. Taking down right wingers is important, but actually refining our own solutions and giving constructive criticism is the true state of good discourse.
This kind of thing: Criticism of each other's arguments etc, is at once the 'left's' strength and weakness. While it can create disunity and be perceived as weakness (especially in the US where appearing strong is more important than being correct) it means our approaches to problems are constantly being refined and are not bound by ideology or loyalty to a party/group.
How is that what's happening here at all? This dude literally halts his "serious voice" to make a jab at Sean and argues for privatization the entire video. What. What. Homie you gotta step back. This entire channel was clearly created to leech off 9f the success of channels like Sean and Three Arrows. It's gross.
@@ihaps1117 he straight out says the privatised system is a ripoff 7:17 Tbf he says it specifically for the rail system but a shill wouldn’t admit that even a small portion of the system is bad.
When I went to Japan, the situation was actually the opposite. Most people used trains for intercity travel, and buses took you to more rural areas and villages. Trains are useful because they avoid traffic, have a higher capacity, and are more efficient, if you get a system that is interconnected and affordable enough, there's no reason that they can't be intercity transit. Trams are also an excellent solution too.
Sorry this is an old reply, but in the video I was thinking the whole time about Japan and how it compares to other systems. I know trains there are really good, or at least that's what I've heard from a lot of people. I was supposed to visit but the pandemic happened so no first hand experience. I don't know enough about how they operate though and whether their system has any sort of application for the UK or anywhere else that has issues. But you're right, it's kind of the reverse there with trains and buses.
@@rubys.shibanigans well Japan actually does have a pretty diverse array of privately owned and operated train lines and bus lines. That’s part of the reason they don’t have a trans-modal ticketing system (which is a bit of a bummer) but I think a combination of cultural attitude and government standards drive the independent systems to operate diligently. This of course makes it very appealing as well as the fact that the alternative to public transit would be the car which a lot of Metropolitan areas discourage the use of with road tolls and different ~expensive~ taxes.
I find it really interesting to learn about the british railway system. As a German, here's my two cents about ours': The german national railway company, Deutsche Bahn (DB), is a weird half-assed attempt at privatisation. It is officially a private company but 100% of market share is owned by the government. The company itself has been ordered by the state to be profitable, but still recieves subsidies, somewhat. You see, for long distance trains the company makes all decisions itself but regional lines are ordered and paid for by the state governments (not federally). The state will decide which company takes over a regional line, which is why the Deutsche Bahn has much more competition here than for long distance routes. This also means that lines crossing state borders require cooperations between states without the federal government being able to organize it, which is partially the reason why the Interregio, a type of regional train running long distances while still stopping in smaller towns, has died out. It gets weirder, the DB itself is split up into several divisions, e.g. DB Regio for regional lines, DB Netze for the infrastructure or DB Staion&Service for the train staions and customer support. This creates its own bureaucratic mess. Since the DB needs to be profitable, it has also neglected maintenance of rolling stock and infrastructure for years resulting in an inflexible system that frequently runs at maximum capacity. I could go on, but I think it's clear that this is far from perfect. I'd like to add one more thing about privatisation. IMO, privatisation in railway cannot work because one of the fundamental aspects a free market needs is not guaranteed: customer choice. The passengers simply do not have a choice between companies since every company has a regional monopoly on the lines that it serves. The greatest power a customer has in capitalism, the decision where to spend their money, is practically nonexistant in railway.
A few more weird DB facts: They also buy and sell other european transport companies. They are operating long distance bus company in northern Italy for example. The system of how they get subsidies is completely broken. They get a lot of subsidies for building new infrastructure or rebuilding broken ones, but not for maintaining infrastructure. This results in a situation where it's often more profitable to let Infrastructure break down entirely, instead of repairing it early.
@@DoubLL Yup. Let's see what the upcoming elections in the summer will bring. Depending on how strong the greens are we might hope for deprivatization.
For the record Shaun’s said he will continue the privatisation fails series eventually, and that future videos will be longer and more in depth. It just takes him a long time to make videos.
@Najawin deaths cool is Jen, who is one of Shaun's best friends lol. Remember the old name, Shaun and Jen? Thats her. Imo it's not crazy bad for someone to borrow their friends platform, there's no true pro gamer medal for having a purely solo operation. And paying for people for their labour ie research isn't a bad thing??? It feels like you're trying to insinuate that he's gone down hill because of corruption or whatever but nah that's just not the case. A quick Twitter search will reveal that he freezes patreon payments on months he doesn't release a video (ie most months) he's just painfully slow and if he gotta outsource some work to others that's perfectly fine??? Like how is shAun ruined by capitalism exactly?
@Najawin She also said she didn't want to be credited. For my part, though, I do absolutely agree that a lot of big Lefttubers need to do a better job when it comes to making content on a reasonable timescale. I've become increasingly disappointed looking at how some RUclipsrs put out multiple videos in a yearly quarter slowly fall of that and release one, maybe two a year. I don't blame them for taking their time - well-produced content takes time to make. But at least some transparency and clear indication of what's being worked on would be lovely.
@Najawin lol weird, she seems to be using her experience Shaun here as an example of exploitation in leftist spaces. But she never asked to be credited, she said she was only in it for the money, and she made no mention of it being poor, just that she received a portion of the monthly earnings that time (remember, Shaun freezes patreon payments on months where there's no videos, so it's not like she's missing out on royalties or W/E). Also she said it's a shame that there are leftist creators who work harder than those who release very infrequently and that they deserve recognition. Sorry for the lack of links, I'm lazy lol So uh their relationship is that they were roommates who started collabing on a RUclips channel. And now they're no longer following each other on twitter, with one instance where she made weird passive aggressive subtweets at him that she walks back on when someone asks if she's got him dead to rights. They basically have no interaction with one another outside of random people saying "oh yeah Shaun also used to have Jen in his name, she's neat check her out" This is pretty awkward stuff and we shouldn't be prying into what looks like their falling out lol
I feel like it's easy to get caught up in arguing against capitalism because people wont even be willing to consider socialism until they come to accept that capitalism is flawed.
Capitalism is flawed, every system is. The difference between capitalism and socialism is that capitalism has been proven to succeed where social is so antithetical to human nature that it can't ever be properly implemented. There comes a time when a system fails so often and fails so badly that the body count enters seven digits in less than a century that it's time to give up the ghost.
An argument for socialism is an argument against capitalism by its very fundamental roots. You people sound like such idiots when you comment on economics. There is pretty much nothing going for socialism, the only way to sell it is to refute its opposition since socialism doesn’t actually perform better than any of the other ideas
This channel feels like a breath of fresh air: Economics with a leftist agenda or undertone. I feel at home in the Breadtube, but often think that the economic side of things is underdeveloped or as you say incomplete.
This video was useless. All the points brought up can be discarded as coincidences, incorrect or non-important. He definitely has the best intentions, but misses the point of most of shauns video and does much more bad than good, while doing so. He just doesn't sound very intelligent.
"Nationalization and privatization have good and bad" me:oh my god not this both side argument again "that's why we need worker democracy" me:BASED ECONOMICS???
mutualisation is true libertarian way. if one recognizes state property is illegitimate, it follows that the state has neither right to keep nor sell it's assets. either they should be considered unowned, or the stakeholders (such as workers and customers) should take ownership of them.
We did that here in Ireland. After some initial difficulties, it turned out to be a good decision overall. 😄 It turns out though that they can be good at managing health services, mostly, just as long as you keep it out of the hands of dirty, filthy Tories.
I think it has something to do with speaking English, because the U.S. does less with more resources than countries like Germany, Japan, and the Netherlands, etc.
Only when placed and managed by a bureaucracy that is far removed from the actual realities on the ground. India was run by District Officers in Orwell's day that managed more than a million "colonial subjects" with one or two white British officers and a handful of troops.
Partway through the video I was thinking "why not a co-OP instead of national or private ownership" then was very satisfied to see that's where you were going with this
@@socialistcatdad I'd also think a consumer co-op would be better than a worker co-op. The interests of the workers and passengers don't always align and the workers might try to hinder reforms aiming to benefit the consumers if it's seen to threaten some of the workers. Technically, co-ops are also private though they do differ from the more common joint-stock form company.
@@forstudentpower How would a mix work? In a consumer co-op workers can surely also be members but in practice "normal" consumer members would far outnumber them. I don't see how a mix would differ from a consumer co-op.
I've been on trains in a few countries and I'm starting to think that the real problem is that there's no aspect of society British people won't attempt to sabotage for themselves
We destroy everything good because there is a view that everything new or different is bad and we should return to some old glory. It's dumb and has basically ruined the uk
Oh cool I specifically emailed Shaun about that video/series. A lot of socialist arguments online seem to boil down to anti-capitalist, but I wanted to know how socialist systems actually work and what, if any, flaws they might have. It has felt like being told to climb out of the oven and into the freezer, since I don't actually understand enough about economics to evaluate stuff like this on my own. Cool to see someone's actually making videos like that!
there are many but you have to move past the democratic socialists and towards anarchist/communist ideas. while democratic socialism is preferable to neoliberalism, it cannot fix the fundamental flaws in capitalism. watch non compete’s video series on anarcho-communism and go from there
@@HxH2011DRA hakim is a disingenuous hack. marxism-leninism is so funny to me. something perfectly suited to the material conditions of early 1900s feudal russia trying to be applied to neoliberal capitalism in 2020. lenin wouldve seen the disconnect himself
Coming from a city with an outstanding train and metro system, Madrid, but living abroad It's really reamarkable how important is public transportation and how little we value It. Love your videos mate.
@@venga3 We don't have political corruption?😆 Relative to what country? ...Our politicians are basically controlled by the campaign donations of the rich.
Sure? Destiny has said in the past that Shaun is a Patreon leech due to his very slow upload cycle. It's not far from the truth tbh, but Shaun is still good nonetheless.
@@camron.w1841 shaun paused patreon charges when he took a break after bell curve and actively tells people not to donate more than five bucks. Destiny is just really fucking salty about Shaun for some reason lol
@@DiddntFindANameLol Can't really blame him tbh. Breadtube is a highly profitable venture, be it in streaming or videos. Why make more when you've already got so much?
@@camron.w1841 idk man, streamers and youtubers are some of the most burn-out prone artists I've ever seen. The whole system needs to be reworked. You shouldn't be obligated to pour your entire essence into your work to be allowed to make a living.
I'm from Germany and I think our case is an interesting one. Our train system used to be completely owned and run by the government (Bundesbahn), but that changed ~25 years ago. Now it's kind of half-private, half-government run: The government is the main investor and takes the big strategic decisions, but otherwise it's run in a private company style with very regional structures. The effects were both negative (half the staff fired, less far distance trains because some connections weren't worth it) and postive (way more regional train passengers because due to local planning, it turned out to be better). However, we still have major problems with our trains, mainly the delays (80% are at least 5 minutes late) and broken infrastructure. The Bundesrechnungshof (federal court of auditors) did point out in a report that there are perverse incentives which explain the bad infrastructure: The private company Deutsche Bahn has to upkeep maintanence of the railway, but if it has to be replaced the government will do it which of course makes waiting until things are broken logical. Why the trains are always late can be explained by infrastructure as well. Other countries like Spain, where the train is almost always on time have an extra railway that goes around train stations so they don't have to go through (important for long distance trains). Because what happens here is that the far distance trains are late so often because they depend on every single regional train in every train station they pass to be on time. I'm not sure what would be the take away from the German experience when it comes to privatisation. It seems to me what you said about it mattering more how it's run and managed than if it's privatised or state-owned is quite true. I mean, I honestly hear noone really wanting the Bundesbahn back, I mostly hear "We need to invest more". I really like your videos by the way, as someone with no backround in economics I hear a lot of things that seem so intuative that I think they just must be true. Your videos help me getting a better understanding :)
Yeah, but not I can't not see the massive similarities between his style and Shaun's. I'd say the whole video is a Shaun impersonation, but that sounds like I'm saying it is a bad thing... which it isn't.
I wish I could like this video twice for bringing up workplace democracy as an alternative to nationalization! Worker co-ops are the future of socialism! This is exactly the kind of economics based content which "breadtube" needs. I hope this channel grows and grows, and it would be pretty cool to see you collaborate with some of the other big lefty content creators on the platform
@@scvnthorpe__ BUT BUT THE WORKERS WOULDN'T ACCEPT IT THEY COULDN'T HANDLE CONTROLLING THEIR OWN WORKPLACE -this is an actual thing an socdem said to me while I was debating him
@@a.n.l.aantineoliberalismas4504 Yep; most people who are genuinely socialists tend to share the goal of eventually devolving power away from the state, even if they believe that State Socialism is a key part of that transition. Personally i think that relying too much on State Socialism is deeply flawed, and is one reason why many Socialist states have fallen into authoritarianism. I think that Market Socialism through worker co-operatives is a better socialist model to aim for and can potentially bring on board a lot of people who consider themselves Capitalists under the mistaken belief that markets = capitalism
Well I think it's more referred to as "mutualisation" rather than just private workplace co-ops, there's not much on the topic but check this link out, interesting read party.coop/2018/06/11/why-cant-it-be-a-co-op/ labourlist.org/2009/10/forget-nationalising-the-railways-we-should-mutualise-them/
I'd like to add that if anyone is interested in learning about railways then go and watch Gareth Dennis he's a railway engineer and really knows what he's talking about. I would also like to say that i think the biggest reason for the poor state of our railways is that there is no long term plan for what they should actually do other than existing. The only big project to improve capacity on the network has been HS2 which leads in to my point on busses the only reason people would take a bus over a train is either because there is no railway line or because it too expensive (I say this as a regular user of both) and one of the best ways to make train tickets cheaper is to run more trains so more people can use them. Also one major point that never seems to get discussed is the decline of rail freight even though throughout our railways history it was the real money maker and that has all but dried up in the time we live in. Overall good video hope this topic is brought up more often.
Thanks for the mention, and well summed up! I think I've covered nationalisation a little bit in my #RailNatter series but it's always worth revisiting...
The podcast Well There's Your Problem also has a lot of good stuff about railways and why it's important to maintain them especially when they happen to also be bridges
If the government doesn't decide to defund it so it can be sold to their pals. I mean, their party donors. Also, the point about "customer satisfaction" is tied to that: we "starve the beast" for twenty years, of course people will complain about the service! And then we "privatize" and subsidize and part of that money is indeed used on improving service but a huge part is also used on customer relations and marketing. Nationalized railway has no need for marketing (not really true but that is considered to be true by people in charge of the money), because where are you going to go? To the competitor?
@@jo1stormlord Government and businesses are the same in that they can just close down their services too. Government markets themselves too. Some businesses receive subsidies from the government.
I feel like Georgism (and Pigovianism) could've solved all sorts of problems if the Cold War hadn't come along and reframed politics into Capitalism versus Communism. "Tax taking, not making."
It’s interesting that you called it “loss” when it was owned by the state (instead of subsidy), and now that it’s in private hands, and government still gives it money (more money according to you), you call it “cost”.
@@unlearningeconomics9021 it does matter what you call it, though. Even if we agree that they're functionally synonymous in context and don't, by themselves, invalidate any of your points, this still reveals an unstated assumption or bias of some sort and it's good to be aware of those.
@@Rissa_1322 the difference is just a technical one. If you run a business and it makes less then it gives out you make a loss. But if your son runs a business and loses money and asks you to chip in in order for his business to survive a bad year you concider it a cost to you, not a loss. Because you arent engaged in operating a business, you are just engaged in giving out money. This is the same. When the government operates it themselves it is an operating loss. If it helps out lossleading operations it is concidered a cost, not a loss.
The story of the railway system in my country? Is that Pinochet destroyed one of the few things my little south american country had, he freaking ruined it all
Singapore attempted to privatized its rail system and failed. The privatized company tried to cut cost by saving on maintenance, resulting in frequent breakdowns. For a country without natural resources, being efficient is everything. Every train delay was multiplied by productivity loss of every worker late for work. The argument for privatization for a national rail system is stupid anyways. There's no competition where's the need for improvement? It's just giving some already rich people more money for profit.
Hoping Shaun gets a chance to see this. Love both of your work, and the idea of you moving to a space of collaboration with the more established folks is a fun thought.
I think the point on busses may be incorrect as, if train fares were lower, most people would opt to get the train over the bus. The correlation of poorer people catching buses is simply because in the current system they tend to be more affordable.
Thanks for all you do, the left should embrace economics and it's a subject matter that very few people in politics seem to understand (on all sides of the aisle).
I'm kind of confused where this notion of "the left doesn't care about economics" comes. Leftism, or rather socialism, is fundamentally about economics, for example Marx's ideas of socialism revolved around criticising the socio-economic inequality capitalism causes and that's what most of his literary work is about. Economic equality is one if the pillars of the socialist/left agenda. While sure, plenty of leftists don't have a great grasp on economics, centrists and conservatives are generally even more clueless about it, that's because understanding all or many aspects of economics is so difficult that most people studying economics barely even get it (mainly because economics is taught under a pro capitalist framework though). So I don't think leftists are more incompetent or disinterested in economics or something. I think it just appears so because leftists generally talk about and criticise economics more than any other group of people so they are equally more often attacked about those criticisms.
@@castor9683 You're right, but also we forget that most leftists tend to not get so in-depth when explaining economics to other non-leftists or baby leftists, for the sake of making easily digestible points that can go across without much risk of confusing the audience.
@@beyond_modernity8554 That's true. Though that's a problem you'll always have in economics I think. You need at least half an hour to properly explain like one aspect of one subcategory of one topic of economics. I could talk an hour just about how collectively owned businesses work and even then I probably wouldn't have got all the information across. But of course if you want to debate economics nowadays and you don't get your point across in a couple minutes people lose interest. That's always a delicate balance you're gonna have to manage.
@@castor9683 I specifically stated "left" because this is a "Breadtube vs Economics" video. Additionally, economics is consistently the thing I find that leftists aren't able to articulate well in debate. The idiotic conservative "catch all" of "Well how are we supposed to pay for this very necessary, very beneficial thing?" are easy to thwart, so it's frustrating listening to the most popular leftists not be able to actually reasonably advocate for the economic systems they claim to support beyond "I like things that help people and this seems like it would help people even though I'm not actually sure how it works". I'm not asking them to have degrees in economics, just to not run into problems this channel has so greatly pointed out.
Another great breakdown! This type of discourse is vital for us to have. As a leftist and person creating finance related content this is amazing work! Edit: It came to my attention that I should add some context. I am a leftist specifically a Classical Marxist. Most of my videos are about personal finance and reforms within capitalism i.e. the minimum wage, CA Prop 22, Corporate Lobbying, the Fed and Bailouts etc. I understand that these as SocDem (yuck) in nature. My goal is to present ideas that are accessible to the average working class person who may otherwise vote for right wing populism and is terrified of Marx, but in a way where I am addressing their material concerns. I personally don't see reforms like these as a solution to fixing our problems and we definitely must abolish capitalism. That being said I believe that through presenting political issues from a materialist framework is what will lead people to the left and that is my goal. I know from growing up in Appalachia that most working class people's woes can be linked back to capitalism and that breaking through propaganda to show them that is what must be done and therefore has to be done by talking about it from a lens they can understand. I want to help build an actionable movement, not a niche. Creators like Philosophy Tube definitely did this for me without being overt and it is far more effective imo. So if you decide to come by and watch just know that is my goal and I will do more overt leftist content as well but my first goal is to help unite the working class.
@Finnian Wolf You ask a very good question that would be far better to discuss verbally due to nuance, but here goes. Obviously, it depends on the particular system however in general socialism doesn't get rid of entrepreneurs, nor does capitalism promote it. These two systems only answer who gets paid or rather how the resources are distributed. A good example I highly suggest is Richard Wolff who talks extensively about worker owned co-ops which are an entrepreneurial endeavor. The difference being that the goal isn't to profit, but instead to share the gains with rather than exploit the workers. In short it depends on your goal. If you want to be the boss, then socialism isn't for you. If you believe that workers are where value comes from and therefore they should be rewarded fully for that labor then it is for you. My counter to the notion of being an entrepreneur in a capitalist system however is that doing so is incredibly hard and the odds are stacked against you unless you have capital already. Therefore, I would argue that starting a business isn't inherently easier in either system and in the US this is merely an illusion. Also, check out Hakim on RUclips as he has a radically different view than Wolff but both together can provide better context than I probably can. Hope that helps.
Eh, I'm not fully convinced. Those points you make apply specifically to Britain but when you look at China, they have a fully nationalized public transportation system, and have the most modern, and affordable high-speed network, with good customer service as far as I can tell (from personal experience). And that system is as centralized as it gets. A couple of other points: 1.) How was nationalization in Britain not democratic? The British people voted in the Labour Party which proceeded to nationalize public transport, as they advocated for on their party platform. 2.) Regarding busses, I think most leftists don't overly romanticize trains for the sake of it but would also argue that trains should be affordable for everyone.
I don’t know how I found your channel but you truly are very good at what you do. You provide good economic analysis and constructive criticism on well known political commentators while at the same time providing progressive or alternative solutions to those criticisms and economic problems which I find very helpful. You not only identify the problem but you also find solutions. Also, it is helpful learning about economic concepts while watching your video. It is extremely helpful, especially for left leaning people who are trying to learn about economics :)
Commenting to feed and appease the algorithm. Rather than bitter infighting or purity-testing, this kind of thorough and well-researched discussion and reflection on the ideas and views expressed by Breadtude is far more productive for our long-term success-- the world is a nuanced and difficult place, and good discussion and argument for change should reflect that.
When I think of trains I admit that I think about subways, since I lived most of my life in Singapore. In Singapore, trains and buses act as symbiotic systems that connect the entire city and make cars into a luxury rather than a necessity. It is possible to traverse the entire city with these two public transport systems and both systems make the other better. The train system is a subsidiary of governing institutions while the bus system is not. However, both are pretty much centrally managed. The system is continually improved upon and train stations are continuously being built and improved. I will say that people across all socioeconomic classes use the public transit system. It’s the main way that most people get around.
My biggest critique of the first video was that your thesis wasn't clear until over half way through. You 100% fixed that here. Loved the video and looking forward to the next one, and future ones as well!
After sending this to a few people I wanna also come back and add the question at the end is the type of critical thinking I love to see in videos. Zooming out from issues and looking at them within the meta of what they are. Sometimes you need to be in close examining a topic at it's most nuanced and microscopic level, and that can be good an interesting. Other times you need to step as far back as you can to see if you're even looking at the right topic.
If you do an episode on unionization and worker co-ops, I would love to see an analysis of ocean spray, since it is one of the more interesting examples of this process.
I hate the way people say public services lose money. A service doesn't _lose_ money; it _costs_ money. Saying that a public service loses money is framing it as some sort of failing company that could be made more efficient (expensive) by privatising.
One thing I have always noticed is that you can clearly see where the richer/economic areas are based on their rail system. NYC is a great example; most of their rails are going from the boroughs to downtown and there is very little inter borough travel with the subways. So I do think focusing more on buses is something the left needs to do. But I really like how you pointed out how simply nationalizing something won’t make it better, you have to nationalize it correctly. Great video. Can’t wait for the next one.
There is a world outside of economics. We include economics in our analyses. Buses were deregulated about 1985 and ridership plummeted. So when money was injected into rail systems at the time of privatization they could catch lots of people who had switched to driving which is a large part of the railway boom. And the boom in London region also put lots of demand into the Southeast. On the other hand, Amtrak is a publicly owned corporation and has even higher fares than in the UK and absolutely ignores the needs of the bottom 80 percent.
Wow, great response time, you champion! Have you heard of an economic modeling software called Minsky? It is open-source and made by an Aussie economist named Steve Keen. I've studied economics too but have never seen anything as good including paid softwares. Hope you have a good day Unlearning Economics!
@@unlearningeconomics9021 Holy crap, I didn't see your reply until just now on my second watch-through. It makes sense that you're already familiar with Steve! I'm going to be making some videos about minsky soon so it will be nice that a big channel like yours will be introducing people to it! Have a great week Unlearning Economics :D
In Germany the train system is privatised. Since privatization, manager wages have risen exponentially, but the service is (became?) horrible. Most trains arrive too late, so you have to take 1-2 trains earlier if you have to arrive somewhere on time (for a job interview for example). It is pathetic.
I agree! This engaging entertainment has done many things for me. If I had a poll in front of me to promote my end-user experience, then I would tick the boxes ☑️ *Relaxing* ☑️ *Life-Changing* ☑️ *Educational*
The system we have around where I live have all the public transport systems linked up into a single network. So you don't buy a train ticket and then a bus ticket, you buy a ticket to go between travel zones and you can take whatever transport you need, trains, buses and or even ferries. It seems to run pretty well most of the time.
natural monopolies are "natural" not because capital outlays are large and opex are low or because of high market barriers (from the high investment requirement), but rather because duplicating investments in such is inherently wasteful. take water distribution. it would be incredibly wasteful to have two water distributors investing in pipes going to the same houses where they compete for the same service in which consequently only one of them will only ever be used at any one time.
Just binge-watched all your videos (I saw this one as a related video several days ago but wanted to watch the rest first). They're very well-made and well-researched, and you did a great job presenting all the information clearly.
we need more academics on this site. im getting into my phd in law and so much of breadtube is so frustrating sometimes for their lack of research standards. more of us need to get into the space to help give this sort of in depth info to people outside of academics
Busses are good for the last mile, not mass transportation between large distances. One cannot replace the other, to the contrary, they work well together.
I would theorise that the drop in rail use was precipitated by the Beeching Cuts removing thousands of miles of established rail routes, mostly in rural areas (this would correlate with the biggest drop in use), followed by an uptick in urban rail use when the population flipped over to mostly urban living, and car use on crowded roads became far less practical. Rail subsidies dropped dramatically before the Beeching cuts, which may have impacted on efficiency and user satisfaction, driving down rail use (in tandem with wider availability of cars) and this drop in use was used as a rationale for the cuts. I can see parallels with the planned underfunding and privatisation of other vital services.
The RUclips algorithm, from what I've gathered from other big youtubers saying the same, prefers if you don't number videos. Recommending this because I hope these videos reach more people because they are super insightful :)
12:52 Sorry, what? The graphics clearly show that those accidents were diminishing in intensity and frequency. So suddenly they explode just before the privatization? It's common sense that when the government wants to sell one asset they let it fade in quality, both to convince the citizens about the "selling" and to lower the price, to maximize the private profit. And in 89 Thatcher was already Prime Minister for a long time. In Portuguese we even have a word to this process: "Scrapping" (Or whatever the translation would be). And here in 3° world privatization mean giving it to foreign capital. It means people losing their access to energy in favor of a higher profit margin among shareholders in Wall Street. Gustavo Machado made a good video with inner data in worksheets, comparing the public and private metro companies in Brazil, he shows how the private ones attend less people, by higher prices, wile squeeze the workers more. Private or State owned is a matter of what's more profitable for the bourgeoisie at the moment. If they would benefit from cheap oil or steel, but no one has the capital (or guts) to make it, let the State provide it. In time of de-industrialization, it's more profitable to just assault the public sector. That's why is common that they let the State make the gross initial investment, and then push for privatization for free.
Ai mano, eu acho que o video foi bom, mas pecou em diversos aspectos. Companhias brasileiras de ferrovias são geralmente ou privatizadas para pessoas de fora, até empresas estatais de países um tanto suspeitos, ou então são colocadas a merce de PPPs, eu acredito que o sistema de PPP pode melhorar a situação de nossas ferrovias, levando em conta que é o sistema mais próximo que temos de agradar todos os espectros políticos
As someone who is generally on the side of a having a market as close to being Laissez-faire as possible, i have to say you make really well made and compelling videos. I generally watch videos of people with opposing views in the hope of finding people who present their ideas reasonably, and it is sad how hard it can be to find. I hope this trend continues as i feel i can actually listen to good arguments from an opposing view without being called a devil for disagreeing.
Shaun is outstanding on social issues and debunking the prolific idiots the right celebrates as its thought leaders. But I found his video to be a bit lacking in some areas as well, and I think that if we take more time to create a dialogue like you're doing, we'll be in good shape as a movement ready to make positive changes in the world. Thanks for your contribution and may you have 100,000+ subs in due course.
Nationalising buses is the wrong solution as a central body at a national level wouldn’t be able to deal with all the intricacies of local transport provision. Local systems stewarded by councils are a good idea, as can be seen in Edinburgh with Lothian Buses. This is run like a private company but it’s largely owned by the city. There’s a flat rate for fares, so people don’t get charged more if they live in arbitrary areas, and there’s a somewhat good level of investment in the vehicles themselves. Recently they’ve gone a lot more eco friendly and they accept non cash payment
Really glad to find economic breadtube content. It’s the aspect of the left that I’m most interested in, and yet it’s really hard to find RUclips videos about it.
I thought the usage of data when looking a the benefits of privatisation was a bit uncritical. By his own admission, he can't find an adequate explanation for the massive uptick in usage, so to just shrug and chalk it up as a win for privatisation seems pretty shaky. Likewise, customer satisfaction surveys are a pretty poor way to gauge performance. Many, if not most of the respondents will have not likely made regular use of rail networks in other countries, so have no means of making a reasonable comparison. Add to this that a customer satisfaction survey is almost always a self-selecting sample makes the data pretty dubious. In addition, the conclusion that poorer people use buses 'more' is not a fair comparison. The UK bus network is not nearly interconnected enough to work for long distance travel; similarly, the rail network does not have the granularity to really be used for day-today commuting, such as from a housing estate to town centre. As a result, while a lower income person may use a bus 'more', any kind of long distance journey (such as visiting family, medical appointments, or holiday travel; all just as important as the daily commute) will require services a bus network cannot provide. All forms of public transport need to be considered for an effective improvement to be made for the working class.
@@spacedoohicky fair example, but major cities like New York and London are the exception. The vast majority of UK cities use bus networks for the equivalent forms of travel; Bristol, for example, has only two rail stations. Plus, this disregards the far greater number of smaller cities and medium-small towns, which will generally only have a single train station.
@@RhetoricWalrus Personally I think buses are better. I was just bringing up an exception of something that's used, managed, and affordable. Most people in NY would use a combination of buses, trains, and cabs to get from place to place. They don't exclusively use trains. But buses are the most flexible.
That last point had to be satirical? It's highly dependent in which country transport operates and in some only poor people use trains. Buses have their specific ideal use cases so have trains/other modes of transport but are neither superior nor worse than trains
Now I can't speak for british rail, but I know what a Desaster privatising "deutsche Bahn" was. When it comes to Public Transport, I think it should be nationalised, more Demokratie is always better in every industry, it should be free like here in Luxembourg.
As a socialst I'm actually against free public transport. It just means people who don't use end up paying for it. It's better to have regulations for people who use it often or can't afford it.
@@7th808s and riders of public transit pay for the streets and roads we don't drive on (no, fuel taxes don't cover it, not even close). We consider streets and roads, water and sewer infrastructure, and such-like to be public goods, to be paid for out of the public purse because everything else depends on them. Why not public transportation? Maybe if we fully funded and built it out as a viable option, people would take it, and learn to live without a damn car.
I have one criticism to make: That spike in deaths/injuries on the railway system, just before privatization? There's a very typical trick of politicians to sabotage programs/industries (in order to hurt their performance and damage public support), just so that they can create an argument for privatizing said program/industry. Considering that the trend before that had a very clear downward slope (implying that it started off rough, but got better over time), I'd hazard a guess that such happened for this, too.
Very straightforward and clear, and a nice balance of a few meme bits just to lighten the tone every so often - and FWIW I found this one easier to follow, at least in terms of the economics itself, than your last video. Would definitely be up for more detail on '21st C nationalisation' / how to do nationalisation properly in future videos.
Super interesting. Thank you. I've often wondered if one way to get around the over-essentializing of privatised versus nationalised might be a hybrid model that addresses some of the issues of both. I came up with this idea (or re-came up with it, if it's already "out there" -- and it probably is) with regard to the electricity sector in the UK, but it would be potentially transferable to trains and other services. In the UK electricity market, there is this thing called a 'supplier of last resort.' This is a company that is assigned to take over from a failing company so that users' power supply is uninterrupted (or rather, so their payment for it is uninterrupted). In at least one instance the moving of users to one supplier over another has caused the new supplier to fail (due to their inability to cover the costs of the unbilled energy usage of their new users). My response to all the cries of horror that arose from the right about Jeremy Corbyn's call for re-nationalisaton is/was to set up a power company that is the default 'supplier of last resort.' In this way the government is taking over where private companies fail, but not by bailing them out or propping them up, but by temporarily re-nationalising the service. The reason for doing so is at least three-fold: 1) It allows for certainty of supply, without artificially propping up failing businesses 2) It enables the government to have a good source of on-the-ground information about the ins and outs of the running of such a concern which will enable far more responsive policy in relation to that service 3) It removes the complacency of businesses that run natural monopolies or that become too big to fail The on-flow from this is that the government can then put these services out to tender whilst they are still being competently run.
Your point about passenger numbers rising post nationalisation and no convincing reason for it. I've a reason that I've heard lots (and as a UK person it makes sense). Throughout the nationalisation period cuts were made (not just Beeching) to many lines, mainly rural routes, dropping passenger numbers towards cars or buses (which failed due following rail routes but slower). Priority was also spent on improving road infrastructure so more journeys were possible (induced demand) which seemed more comfortable/private, if not quicker. However following the introduction of neo-liberal economics, state spending on roads no longer created new stretches at the same rate, and a cut to trains had forced more people onto the roads. What followed was that following re-privstisation is that people had to commute but the roads were no longer as efficient and so people had to go back onto trains, normally set around commuter towns with new housing development because a rail line, as you stated in your video, raises costs of housing.tjis meant more people in areas with trains, where a car to work isn't the option. This goes some way towards it. I grew up in a commuter town (into London from outside), so my biases might be showing.
It's simultaneously self-validating and surprising that the conclusions you reach in these videos are the same conclusions I've reached after large dives into rabbit holes. The future is co-operatives, worker ownership, community wealth and very federalist.
Genuinely learnt something here. I knew about the concept of "negative externalities" where one person's activities incur a cost on another person who wasn't part of the deal, but I hadn't thought about "positive externalities" where one person's activities improve someone else's earnings. The question for me would be, would the cost of administering the positive externalities (someone has to calculate the taxes) be more than the benefit to society in seeing to it that those externalities are accounted for? Although not considered in the video, perhaps going all the way and fully privatising rail could work. It worked before the wars, and that was before there were alternative, cheaper transport methods like cars and coaches to compete with.
Hey there, i had one issue with the way you presented it: The problem that is relevant for all natural monopolies and spillover affected endevours above ownership is the concept of profit. An industry outlined by those 2 defining characteristics should not be run for profit, as the natural monopoly would make it unfair/uncompetitive, and the spillover means that every profit extracted from this venture reduces the actual gains in the other areas of society, its not a win win but a win lose, every pound the ticket costs more reduces access and useability by the society at large. The current subsidies also show that it is not a good idea to expect societal function and profit at the same time. Since you focussed so much on ownership i think this central message of shauns video was lost in yours. Also kudos to the great joke "you might expect a centrist solution" -> 5 minutes later advocating full on communism in form of workers ownership of the means of production :)
No, they're advocating for worker ownership and markets. That's not communism. They're right about needing to have worker ownership to avoid alienation and exploitation, but they leave market forces in place, with all their irrationalities and incentives to self-exploit and pursue profit and growth. Again, that's not communism.
In Spain we used to have a good, cheap and a bit old railway system. Then the neocons decided that we needed the fastest trains in Europe in order to avoid flying between different cities inside the country. It was supposed to be a modernization of the communications but, in the end, many cities were sidelined. Nowadays we have the fastest and one of the most expensive railways in the world, which only benefits the yuppies and the rich people.
This was really good! And I say that as someone who literally has Shaun's video as a wake up alarm lmao. His video was good, but it really benefits from your critique and addenda. Well done!
Why not nationalize the trains and have the workers run it, they can vote for a board that deals with everything like shaun mentions without overbearing levels of bureaucracy.
@@silver4831 if it isn't ultimately controlled by the workers, it isn't a worker co-op. That shouldn't have to spelled out. The workers doesn't have to be in control of the day to day management, but they do set guidelines that the worker elected board and day to day organisers have to follow. Can a worker co-op decide to pay extra to certain functions? Absolutely, but it is the workers decision to do that. The top benefit of a worker co-op is when the elected management doesn't act in line with the guidelines set by the workers, they can be stripped of all managing duties and eventual extra privileges, and returned to the "rank and file" if not kicked out entirely. Do some reading on the benefits of the democratic workplace. The concept isn't nearly as strange as some wants it to be.
hey this is a great video. I think it could have helped if you had looked into the red headed step child of British trains. Translink. Translink is a combined transport service, operating both Ni Railways and Ulsterbus. The entire service is Nationalized. im comparison to the largely privatized rest of the UK. ( there are still some from what I remember.) NIR is also one of the only companies that is responsible for the entire railway, everything from infrastructure to pricing and customer service. The fact that Bus and Train timetables are synced is a godsend.
the drop in passengers after nationalisation was largely due to the car (and just the general under-funding of the network by the Treasury for the DFT). and the rise in passengers after privatisation in the 90s was majorly impacted by the changes in our economy in that period- we became more of a service economy for which point to point commuting demand was increasing rapidly. the treasury does seem to just ignore that principle of spillover economics, seeing the cost of everything and the value of nothing
"poor people use buses, not trains" is kinda missing the underlying factor.
Poor people tend towards regional transit rather than inter-city transit because they go to and from employment and necessities, not on trips. Buses are disproportionately represented in regional transit because they're cheaper to deploy and regional transit is chronically underfunded.
The dichotomy worth analyzing, then, is less buses vs trains, and more regional transit versus intercity transit.
I know he said the video is UK specific for this exact reason, but I think the regional vs interstate distinction is also better because it is more broadly applicable. After all, buses = regional, trains = intercity does not hold true for every country or metro area.
To your average person in NYC, for example, trains and buses both refer to forms of regional transport, and are actually both run by the same public-benefit corporation (so kinda nationalized?)
There are a lot of other differences between buses and trains besides the length of the trip. I recommend riding an interstate Greyhound and asking your seatmate why he or she is not on Amtrak.
@@yrobtsvt yes, my point is that we should be focused on the distance vs being focused on the mode.
I agree completely. But there’s also the consideration that train fares are prohibitively expensive such that poor people don’t use them because they *can’t*, not necessarily because they don’t want or need to.
@@mercuryatamolos3687 I'd argue its more often a matter of urban vs rural. Train networks need a certain volume of traffic to justify the cost of the system itself while a bus is more self-contained and works largely just by using regular roads. Trams and Subway stations are also used for short distance travel but those are largely limited to urban centers. Meanwhile, buses are also used instead of trains in places where the geography doesn't work for trains.
Referring to Shaun as Shaun Skull has the same energy as referring to videogame characters by their name and the game's title as a surname, like Sans Undertale
Steve Minecraft
Shammy Owl
Dunkey afroamerican
@@PanConQueso001 ????💀💀
I thought pelple do that a lot though.
This is the kind of thing we need. Taking down right wingers is important, but actually refining our own solutions and giving constructive criticism is the true state of good discourse.
I loved how he makes a jab at this @1:49
This.
This kind of thing: Criticism of each other's arguments etc, is at once the 'left's' strength and weakness.
While it can create disunity and be perceived as weakness (especially in the US where appearing strong is more important than being correct) it means our approaches to problems are constantly being refined and are not bound by ideology or loyalty to a party/group.
How is that what's happening here at all? This dude literally halts his "serious voice" to make a jab at Sean and argues for privatization the entire video. What. What. Homie you gotta step back. This entire channel was clearly created to leech off 9f the success of channels like Sean and Three Arrows. It's gross.
@@ihaps1117 he straight out says the privatised system is a ripoff 7:17 Tbf he says it specifically for the rail system but a shill wouldn’t admit that even a small portion of the system is bad.
“One local man was attacked with an umbrella” that seems quintessentially British
The Russians also have a history there.
@@iAmTheSquidThing seems like Russians have a history everywhere
"loco" (locomotive) man, surely?
When I went to Japan, the situation was actually the opposite. Most people used trains for intercity travel, and buses took you to more rural areas and villages.
Trains are useful because they avoid traffic, have a higher capacity, and are more efficient, if you get a system that is interconnected and affordable enough, there's no reason that they can't be intercity transit. Trams are also an excellent solution too.
Sorry this is an old reply, but in the video I was thinking the whole time about Japan and how it compares to other systems. I know trains there are really good, or at least that's what I've heard from a lot of people. I was supposed to visit but the pandemic happened so no first hand experience.
I don't know enough about how they operate though and whether their system has any sort of application for the UK or anywhere else that has issues.
But you're right, it's kind of the reverse there with trains and buses.
@@rubys.shibanigans well Japan actually does have a pretty diverse array of privately owned and operated train lines and bus lines. That’s part of the reason they don’t have a trans-modal ticketing system (which is a bit of a bummer) but I think a combination of cultural attitude and government standards drive the independent systems to operate diligently. This of course makes it very appealing as well as the fact that the alternative to public transit would be the car which a lot of Metropolitan areas discourage the use of with road tolls and different ~expensive~ taxes.
I find it really interesting to learn about the british railway system. As a German, here's my two cents about ours':
The german national railway company, Deutsche Bahn (DB), is a weird half-assed attempt at privatisation. It is officially a private company but 100% of market share is owned by the government. The company itself has been ordered by the state to be profitable, but still recieves subsidies, somewhat. You see, for long distance trains the company makes all decisions itself but regional lines are ordered and paid for by the state governments (not federally). The state will decide which company takes over a regional line, which is why the Deutsche Bahn has much more competition here than for long distance routes. This also means that lines crossing state borders require cooperations between states without the federal government being able to organize it, which is partially the reason why the Interregio, a type of regional train running long distances while still stopping in smaller towns, has died out.
It gets weirder, the DB itself is split up into several divisions, e.g. DB Regio for regional lines, DB Netze for the infrastructure or DB Staion&Service for the train staions and customer support. This creates its own bureaucratic mess. Since the DB needs to be profitable, it has also neglected maintenance of rolling stock and infrastructure for years resulting in an inflexible system that frequently runs at maximum capacity. I could go on, but I think it's clear that this is far from perfect.
I'd like to add one more thing about privatisation. IMO, privatisation in railway cannot work because one of the fundamental aspects a free market needs is not guaranteed: customer choice. The passengers simply do not have a choice between companies since every company has a regional monopoly on the lines that it serves. The greatest power a customer has in capitalism, the decision where to spend their money, is practically nonexistant in railway.
God the DB has a lot of issues. I have used it a couple of times and missed my connection every single time
@@hesseldekraai The day DB is on time is the day the world ends
A few more weird DB facts:
They also buy and sell other european transport companies. They are operating long distance bus company in northern Italy for example.
The system of how they get subsidies is completely broken. They get a lot of subsidies for building new infrastructure or rebuilding broken ones, but not for maintaining infrastructure. This results in a situation where it's often more profitable to let Infrastructure break down entirely, instead of repairing it early.
@@DoubLL DB apologist spotted
@@DoubLL Yup. Let's see what the upcoming elections in the summer will bring. Depending on how strong the greens are we might hope for deprivatization.
my new favorite "person explains a dull thing in a way that is somehow compelling" channel
omg yes lmao
@Seneca lol
If you like that, check out Donoeat1
Economy Shaun
are you on not just bikes? fuckin' looooove that channel
For the record Shaun’s said he will continue the privatisation fails series eventually, and that future videos will be longer and more in depth. It just takes him a long time to make videos.
given how long its taken him, i dont think he should have private ownership over the series
@@DragoonBoom Ooooooh snap
@Najawin deaths cool is Jen, who is one of Shaun's best friends lol. Remember the old name, Shaun and Jen? Thats her. Imo it's not crazy bad for someone to borrow their friends platform, there's no true pro gamer medal for having a purely solo operation.
And paying for people for their labour ie research isn't a bad thing??? It feels like you're trying to insinuate that he's gone down hill because of corruption or whatever but nah that's just not the case. A quick Twitter search will reveal that he freezes patreon payments on months he doesn't release a video (ie most months) he's just painfully slow and if he gotta outsource some work to others that's perfectly fine??? Like how is shAun ruined by capitalism exactly?
@Najawin She also said she didn't want to be credited. For my part, though, I do absolutely agree that a lot of big Lefttubers need to do a better job when it comes to making content on a reasonable timescale. I've become increasingly disappointed looking at how some RUclipsrs put out multiple videos in a yearly quarter slowly fall of that and release one, maybe two a year. I don't blame them for taking their time - well-produced content takes time to make. But at least some transparency and clear indication of what's being worked on would be lovely.
@Najawin lol weird, she seems to be using her experience Shaun here as an example of exploitation in leftist spaces. But she never asked to be credited, she said she was only in it for the money, and she made no mention of it being poor, just that she received a portion of the monthly earnings that time (remember, Shaun freezes patreon payments on months where there's no videos, so it's not like she's missing out on royalties or W/E). Also she said it's a shame that there are leftist creators who work harder than those who release very infrequently and that they deserve recognition.
Sorry for the lack of links, I'm lazy lol
So uh their relationship is that they were roommates who started collabing on a RUclips channel. And now they're no longer following each other on twitter, with one instance where she made weird passive aggressive subtweets at him that she walks back on when someone asks if she's got him dead to rights. They basically have no interaction with one another outside of random people saying "oh yeah Shaun also used to have Jen in his name, she's neat check her out" This is pretty awkward stuff and we shouldn't be prying into what looks like their falling out lol
These videos are class. It's important to remember an argument for socialism can't just be an argument against capitalism.
I feel like it's easy to get caught up in arguing against capitalism because people wont even be willing to consider socialism until they come to accept that capitalism is flawed.
Sure it can.
Capitalism is flawed, every system is. The difference between capitalism and socialism is that capitalism has been proven to succeed where social is so antithetical to human nature that it can't ever be properly implemented. There comes a time when a system fails so often and fails so badly that the body count enters seven digits in less than a century that it's time to give up the ghost.
Socialism failed, get over it
An argument for socialism is an argument against capitalism by its very fundamental roots. You people sound like such idiots when you comment on economics. There is pretty much nothing going for socialism, the only way to sell it is to refute its opposition since socialism doesn’t actually perform better than any of the other ideas
This channel feels like a breath of fresh air: Economics with a leftist agenda or undertone. I feel at home in the Breadtube, but often think that the economic side of things is underdeveloped or as you say incomplete.
Didn't you mean a BREAD of fresh air?
... I'll see myself out.
This video was useless. All the points brought up can be discarded as coincidences, incorrect or non-important. He definitely has the best intentions, but misses the point of most of shauns video and does much more bad than good, while doing so. He just doesn't sound very intelligent.
@@themage4232 Oh so like Shaun?
BreadTube is a breath of fresh air? Bro nearly all of them are grifters.
@@blacktigerpaw1 compared to very smart people who say very smart things like Ben Shapiro, Candace Owens and Prager U
"That's the standard technique of privatization: defund make sure things don't work, people get angry, you hand it over to private capital"
NC
Very true! The Beeching Report was a BR failure.
NHS
"Nationalization and privatization have good and bad"
me:oh my god not this both side argument again
"that's why we need worker democracy"
me:BASED ECONOMICS???
Virgin private vs Chad national vs Thad worker-owned
@@farenhite4329 haha virign like the trains
Richard Woolf would like a word.
mutualisation is true libertarian way. if one recognizes state property is illegitimate, it follows that the state has neither right to keep nor sell it's assets. either they should be considered unowned, or the stakeholders (such as workers and customers) should take ownership of them.
@@sofia.eris.bauhaus workers and customers are technically represented by the government
Train good. Car bad.
(Horse chaotic neutral)
Train lawful good.
Bus neutral good.
Bicycle chaotic good.
Electric car true neutral.
Ferry lawful neutral.
Horse chaotic neutral.
Gasoline car chaotic evil.
Airplane lawful evil.
Cruise ship neutral evil.
@@falsum2701 absolutely underated this one.
This is true.
@@falsum2701 I kinda want to put trams into chaotic good. Though bikes are a good fit too.
Bus..... necessary?
Inconclusion: the British personnel just naturally suck at managing, we need to replace the British personnel.
We did that here in Ireland. After some initial difficulties, it turned out to be a good decision overall. 😄 It turns out though that they can be good at managing health services, mostly, just as long as you keep it out of the hands of dirty, filthy Tories.
Ironically we actually have in many cases. Transport has been contracted out to companies which are owned by other countries' governments.
I think it has something to do with speaking English, because the U.S. does less with more resources than countries like Germany, Japan, and the Netherlands, etc.
@@TheSpecialJ11
Not necessarily.
Only when placed and managed by a bureaucracy that is far removed from the actual realities on the ground. India was run by District Officers in Orwell's day that managed more than a million "colonial subjects" with one or two white British officers and a handful of troops.
Partway through the video I was thinking "why not a co-OP instead of national or private ownership" then was very satisfied to see that's where you were going with this
Worker co-op or consumer co-op?
@@seneca983 Should be a mix of both, honestly, a Venn diagram of separate and joint decision-making domains.
@@seneca983 preferably consumer, but either would be better than private ownership or some sort of top down solution imo
@@socialistcatdad I'd also think a consumer co-op would be better than a worker co-op. The interests of the workers and passengers don't always align and the workers might try to hinder reforms aiming to benefit the consumers if it's seen to threaten some of the workers.
Technically, co-ops are also private though they do differ from the more common joint-stock form company.
@@forstudentpower How would a mix work? In a consumer co-op workers can surely also be members but in practice "normal" consumer members would far outnumber them. I don't see how a mix would differ from a consumer co-op.
I've been on trains in a few countries and I'm starting to think that the real problem is that there's no aspect of society British people won't attempt to sabotage for themselves
We destroy everything good because there is a view that everything new or different is bad and we should return to some old glory. It's dumb and has basically ruined the uk
Oh cool I specifically emailed Shaun about that video/series. A lot of socialist arguments online seem to boil down to anti-capitalist, but I wanted to know how socialist systems actually work and what, if any, flaws they might have. It has felt like being told to climb out of the oven and into the freezer, since I don't actually understand enough about economics to evaluate stuff like this on my own. Cool to see someone's actually making videos like that!
there are many but you have to move past the democratic socialists and towards anarchist/communist ideas. while democratic socialism is preferable to neoliberalism, it cannot fix the fundamental flaws in capitalism. watch non compete’s video series on anarcho-communism and go from there
Nah don't listen to anarchkiddies, ML 4 life, subscribe to Hakim
@@HxH2011DRA Yeah Hakim is a stand up guy. He really knows his stuff.
@@marscrasher anarchism doesn't really appeal to me so I haven't looked much into it. I suppose I'm willing to try tho, I'll check them out.
@@HxH2011DRA hakim is a disingenuous hack. marxism-leninism is so funny to me. something perfectly suited to the material conditions of early 1900s feudal russia trying to be applied to neoliberal capitalism in 2020. lenin wouldve seen the disconnect himself
Coming from a city with an outstanding train and metro system, Madrid, but living abroad It's really reamarkable how important is public transportation and how little we value It.
Love your videos mate.
We don't have good public transport here.
We do have perpetual road construction, smog, and giant freeways.
@@venga3
We don't have political corruption?😆
Relative to what country?
...Our politicians are basically controlled by the campaign donations of the rich.
@@venga3
Fair enough, I thought about that after I said it.
Remarkable work buddy
wow
god I fucking hate the word buddy
@@TheHenranMan oof lol
@@TheHenranMan ok buddy
@@TheHenranMan thats rough buddy
Destiny got destroyed in this debate
Wrong channel :o
Sure?
Destiny has said in the past that Shaun is a Patreon leech due to his very slow upload cycle.
It's not far from the truth tbh, but Shaun is still good nonetheless.
@@camron.w1841 shaun paused patreon charges when he took a break after bell curve and actively tells people not to donate more than five bucks.
Destiny is just really fucking salty about Shaun for some reason lol
@@DiddntFindANameLol Can't really blame him tbh. Breadtube is a highly profitable venture, be it in streaming or videos. Why make more when you've already got so much?
@@camron.w1841 idk man, streamers and youtubers are some of the most burn-out prone artists I've ever seen. The whole system needs to be reworked. You shouldn't be obligated to pour your entire essence into your work to be allowed to make a living.
I'm from Germany and I think our case is an interesting one. Our train system used to be completely owned and run by the government (Bundesbahn), but that changed ~25 years ago. Now it's kind of half-private, half-government run: The government is the main investor and takes the big strategic decisions, but otherwise it's run in a private company style with very regional structures. The effects were both negative (half the staff fired, less far distance trains because some connections weren't worth it) and postive (way more regional train passengers because due to local planning, it turned out to be better). However, we still have major problems with our trains, mainly the delays (80% are at least 5 minutes late) and broken infrastructure.
The Bundesrechnungshof (federal court of auditors) did point out in a report that there are perverse incentives which explain the bad infrastructure: The private company Deutsche Bahn has to upkeep maintanence of the railway, but if it has to be replaced the government will do it which of course makes waiting until things are broken logical. Why the trains are always late can be explained by infrastructure as well. Other countries like Spain, where the train is almost always on time have an extra railway that goes around train stations so they don't have to go through (important for long distance trains). Because what happens here is that the far distance trains are late so often because they depend on every single regional train in every train station they pass to be on time.
I'm not sure what would be the take away from the German experience when it comes to privatisation. It seems to me what you said about it mattering more how it's run and managed than if it's privatised or state-owned is quite true. I mean, I honestly hear noone really wanting the Bundesbahn back, I mostly hear "We need to invest more".
I really like your videos by the way, as someone with no backround in economics I hear a lot of things that seem so intuative that I think they just must be true. Your videos help me getting a better understanding :)
That Shaun impersonation was spot on 😂
+
Yeah, but not I can't not see the massive similarities between his style and Shaun's. I'd say the whole video is a Shaun impersonation, but that sounds like I'm saying it is a bad thing... which it isn't.
@@travcollier it's not a bad thing, I like Shaun. The chud dunking is fabulous
@@nothingslost9586 Agreed. Just saying that his whole video presentation is very similar to the way Shaun does it... which is good.
I spent too much time practicing this.
I wish I could like this video twice for bringing up workplace democracy as an alternative to nationalization! Worker co-ops are the future of socialism!
This is exactly the kind of economics based content which "breadtube" needs. I hope this channel grows and grows, and it would be pretty cool to see you collaborate with some of the other big lefty content creators on the platform
Coops:
- Match the actual broad definition of socialism
- Have reams of data to show they work
Hell yeah
Most leftists actually want that like I know a lot of breadtubers prefer
@@scvnthorpe__ BUT BUT THE WORKERS WOULDN'T ACCEPT IT THEY COULDN'T HANDLE CONTROLLING THEIR OWN WORKPLACE
-this is an actual thing an socdem said to me while I was debating him
@@a.n.l.aantineoliberalismas4504 Yep; most people who are genuinely socialists tend to share the goal of eventually devolving power away from the state, even if they believe that State Socialism is a key part of that transition. Personally i think that relying too much on State Socialism is deeply flawed, and is one reason why many Socialist states have fallen into authoritarianism. I think that Market Socialism through worker co-operatives is a better socialist model to aim for and can potentially bring on board a lot of people who consider themselves Capitalists under the mistaken belief that markets = capitalism
Well I think it's more referred to as "mutualisation" rather than just private workplace co-ops, there's not much on the topic but check this link out, interesting read
party.coop/2018/06/11/why-cant-it-be-a-co-op/
labourlist.org/2009/10/forget-nationalising-the-railways-we-should-mutualise-them/
I'd like to add that if anyone is interested in learning about railways then go and watch Gareth Dennis he's a railway engineer and really knows what he's talking about.
I would also like to say that i think the biggest reason for the poor state of our railways is that there is no long term plan for what they should actually do other than existing.
The only big project to improve capacity on the network has been HS2 which leads in to my point on busses the only reason people would take a bus over a train is either because there is no railway line or because it too expensive (I say this as a regular user of both) and one of the best ways to make train tickets cheaper is to run more trains so more people can use them.
Also one major point that never seems to get discussed is the decline of rail freight even though throughout our railways history it was the real money maker and that has all but dried up in the time we live in.
Overall good video hope this topic is brought up more often.
Thanks for the mention, and well summed up! I think I've covered nationalisation a little bit in my #RailNatter series but it's always worth revisiting...
Yes! Donoteat01's Franklin episode on trains is also great
The podcast Well There's Your Problem also has a lot of good stuff about railways and why it's important to maintain them especially when they happen to also be bridges
Nationalisation is superior, IF the government cares and maintains it.
If the government doesn't decide to defund it so it can be sold to their pals. I mean, their party donors. Also, the point about "customer satisfaction" is tied to that: we "starve the beast" for twenty years, of course people will complain about the service! And then we "privatize" and subsidize and part of that money is indeed used on improving service but a huge part is also used on customer relations and marketing. Nationalized railway has no need for marketing (not really true but that is considered to be true by people in charge of the money), because where are you going to go? To the competitor?
@@jo1stormlord Government and businesses are the same in that they can just close down their services too.
Government markets themselves too. Some businesses receive subsidies from the government.
As a Georgist I really appreciate the shoutout at 4:18 :)
Dozens of us!
@@PlaylistWatching1234 I feel like its an ideology that is slowly but surely gaining som traction.
I'm pretty sure that at least land taxes are widely supported among economists whether left or right. Not sure about the general public.
I feel like Georgism (and Pigovianism) could've solved all sorts of problems if the Cold War hadn't come along and reframed politics into Capitalism versus Communism. "Tax taking, not making."
I'll tell ya, if I had a train to get me to the other end of my state. I could have gotten that job I wanted.
I reckon physical mobility is one of the main factors in social mobility.
North America and commuter rail just don't play nice together.
@@wolfwolf354They used to. Car companies have spent a lot of time and money lobbying
It’s interesting that you called it “loss” when it was owned by the state (instead of subsidy), and now that it’s in private hands, and government still gives it money (more money according to you), you call it “cost”.
I think the key issue is that whatever you call it, it's been higher under privatisation.
@@unlearningeconomics9021 it does matter what you call it, though. Even if we agree that they're functionally synonymous in context and don't, by themselves, invalidate any of your points, this still reveals an unstated assumption or bias of some sort and it's good to be aware of those.
@@Rissa_1322 the difference is just a technical one.
If you run a business and it makes less then it gives out you make a loss.
But if your son runs a business and loses money and asks you to chip in in order for his business to survive a bad year you concider it a cost to you, not a loss. Because you arent engaged in operating a business, you are just engaged in giving out money.
This is the same. When the government operates it themselves it is an operating loss. If it helps out lossleading operations it is concidered a cost, not a loss.
The story of the railway system in my country? Is that Pinochet destroyed one of the few things my little south american country had, he freaking ruined it all
Pinocho reql
U can say all you want about pinochet... But you can't say he damaged the economy of Chile...
@@freedomordeath89 what???
@@joshuajames6481 The economy of chile...was pretty good in the last decades when compared to the bordering countries
@@freedomordeath89 yeah I checked it out
I love how you got your Phd in economics and now you make RUclips videos on politics and economics for us peasants. Love it.
your shaun impression would be spot on if you'd play it at 0,25 speed
More like around 0.5 to 0.75 speed.
Singapore attempted to privatized its rail system and failed. The privatized company tried to cut cost by saving on maintenance, resulting in frequent breakdowns. For a country without natural resources, being efficient is everything. Every train delay was multiplied by productivity loss of every worker late for work.
The argument for privatization for a national rail system is stupid anyways. There's no competition where's the need for improvement? It's just giving some already rich people more money for profit.
Did you watch the video? He isn't pro privatization. He is not pro nationalization. He is pro worker democracy
Aw, yes. This scratches that itch of having questions answered that you weren't quite sure how to put into words.
Hoping Shaun gets a chance to see this. Love both of your work, and the idea of you moving to a space of collaboration with the more established folks is a fun thought.
I think the point on busses may be incorrect as, if train fares were lower, most people would opt to get the train over the bus.
The correlation of poorer people catching buses is simply because in the current system they tend to be more affordable.
Thanks for all you do, the left should embrace economics and it's a subject matter that very few people in politics seem to understand (on all sides of the aisle).
I'm kind of confused where this notion of "the left doesn't care about economics" comes. Leftism, or rather socialism, is fundamentally about economics, for example Marx's ideas of socialism revolved around criticising the socio-economic inequality capitalism causes and that's what most of his literary work is about. Economic equality is one if the pillars of the socialist/left agenda. While sure, plenty of leftists don't have a great grasp on economics, centrists and conservatives are generally even more clueless about it, that's because understanding all or many aspects of economics is so difficult that most people studying economics barely even get it (mainly because economics is taught under a pro capitalist framework though).
So I don't think leftists are more incompetent or disinterested in economics or something. I think it just appears so because leftists generally talk about and criticise economics more than any other group of people so they are equally more often attacked about those criticisms.
@@castor9683 You're right, but also we forget that most leftists tend to not get so in-depth when explaining economics to other non-leftists or baby leftists, for the sake of making easily digestible points that can go across without much risk of confusing the audience.
@@beyond_modernity8554 That's true. Though that's a problem you'll always have in economics I think. You need at least half an hour to properly explain like one aspect of one subcategory of one topic of economics. I could talk an hour just about how collectively owned businesses work and even then I probably wouldn't have got all the information across. But of course if you want to debate economics nowadays and you don't get your point across in a couple minutes people lose interest. That's always a delicate balance you're gonna have to manage.
@@castor9683 I specifically stated "left" because this is a "Breadtube vs Economics" video. Additionally, economics is consistently the thing I find that leftists aren't able to articulate well in debate. The idiotic conservative "catch all" of "Well how are we supposed to pay for this very necessary, very beneficial thing?" are easy to thwart, so it's frustrating listening to the most popular leftists not be able to actually reasonably advocate for the economic systems they claim to support beyond "I like things that help people and this seems like it would help people even though I'm not actually sure how it works". I'm not asking them to have degrees in economics, just to not run into problems this channel has so greatly pointed out.
@Brandon Tran Oh how I wish libertarians understood anything.
I've been so pumped for this
donating a comment to the algorithm
comment for the algorithm god!
subscription for the monetization throne!
Based
@@alexantone5532 Based
@@mastervule1844 Based
and kekpilled
Another great breakdown! This type of discourse is vital for us to have. As a leftist and person creating finance related content this is amazing work!
Edit: It came to my attention that I should add some context. I am a leftist specifically a Classical Marxist. Most of my videos are about personal finance and reforms within capitalism i.e. the minimum wage, CA Prop 22, Corporate Lobbying, the Fed and Bailouts etc. I understand that these as SocDem (yuck) in nature. My goal is to present ideas that are accessible to the average working class person who may otherwise vote for right wing populism and is terrified of Marx, but in a way where I am addressing their material concerns. I personally don't see reforms like these as a solution to fixing our problems and we definitely must abolish capitalism.
That being said I believe that through presenting political issues from a materialist framework is what will lead people to the left and that is my goal. I know from growing up in Appalachia that most working class people's woes can be linked back to capitalism and that breaking through propaganda to show them that is what must be done and therefore has to be done by talking about it from a lens they can understand. I want to help build an actionable movement, not a niche. Creators like Philosophy Tube definitely did this for me without being overt and it is far more effective imo.
So if you decide to come by and watch just know that is my goal and I will do more overt leftist content as well but my first goal is to help unite the working class.
Leftist finance content, you say? Well, I thought I'd met the quota with TFD but I suppose I could squeeze in another
@@supernova622 TFD is also great!
@Finnian Wolf You ask a very good question that would be far better to discuss verbally due to nuance, but here goes. Obviously, it depends on the particular system however in general socialism doesn't get rid of entrepreneurs, nor does capitalism promote it. These two systems only answer who gets paid or rather how the resources are distributed. A good example I highly suggest is Richard Wolff who talks extensively about worker owned co-ops which are an entrepreneurial endeavor. The difference being that the goal isn't to profit, but instead to share the gains with rather than exploit the workers.
In short it depends on your goal. If you want to be the boss, then socialism isn't for you. If you believe that workers are where value comes from and therefore they should be rewarded fully for that labor then it is for you.
My counter to the notion of being an entrepreneur in a capitalist system however is that doing so is incredibly hard and the odds are stacked against you unless you have capital already. Therefore, I would argue that starting a business isn't inherently easier in either system and in the US this is merely an illusion. Also, check out Hakim on RUclips as he has a radically different view than Wolff but both together can provide better context than I probably can. Hope that helps.
@Finnian Wolf Anytime and good luck to you! I would love to start a Co-op someday as well.
Really digestible stuff. I’d love to see more of a look into co-operatives from you.
Goddamn so much of breadtube doesn’t understand economics. Everything sounds good until you provide the economics.
Watch Thought Slime's video on raising the minimum wage.
Eh, I'm not fully convinced. Those points you make apply specifically to Britain but when you look at China, they have a fully nationalized public transportation system, and have the most modern, and affordable high-speed network, with good customer service as far as I can tell (from personal experience). And that system is as centralized as it gets.
A couple of other points:
1.) How was nationalization in Britain not democratic? The British people voted in the Labour Party which proceeded to nationalize public transport, as they advocated for on their party platform.
2.) Regarding busses, I think most leftists don't overly romanticize trains for the sake of it but would also argue that trains should be affordable for everyone.
"There are dozens of us, dozens" It's hilarious to me how popular Henry George was in his day but how he has fallen into relative obscurity.
Georgism: too radical/obscure for the Overton window, too “boring” for radicals
I don’t know how I found your channel but you truly are very good at what you do. You provide good economic analysis and constructive criticism on well known political commentators while at the same time providing progressive or alternative solutions to those criticisms and economic problems which I find very helpful. You not only identify the problem but you also find solutions. Also, it is helpful learning about economic concepts while watching your video. It is extremely helpful, especially for left leaning people who are trying to learn about economics :)
Commenting to feed and appease the algorithm. Rather than bitter infighting or purity-testing, this kind of thorough and well-researched discussion and reflection on the ideas and views expressed by Breadtude is far more productive for our long-term success-- the world is a nuanced and difficult place, and good discussion and argument for change should reflect that.
Replying to other comments also feed the algorithm
When I think of trains I admit that I think about subways, since I lived most of my life in Singapore. In Singapore, trains and buses act as symbiotic systems that connect the entire city and make cars into a luxury rather than a necessity. It is possible to traverse the entire city with these two public transport systems and both systems make the other better. The train system is a subsidiary of governing institutions while the bus system is not. However, both are pretty much centrally managed. The system is continually improved upon and train stations are continuously being built and improved.
I will say that people across all socioeconomic classes use the public transit system. It’s the main way that most people get around.
My biggest critique of the first video was that your thesis wasn't clear until over half way through. You 100% fixed that here. Loved the video and looking forward to the next one, and future ones as well!
After sending this to a few people I wanna also come back and add the question at the end is the type of critical thinking I love to see in videos. Zooming out from issues and looking at them within the meta of what they are. Sometimes you need to be in close examining a topic at it's most nuanced and microscopic level, and that can be good an interesting. Other times you need to step as far back as you can to see if you're even looking at the right topic.
"beyond nationalization" I love you
If you do an episode on unionization and worker co-ops, I would love to see an analysis of ocean spray, since it is one of the more interesting examples of this process.
I hate the way people say public services lose money. A service doesn't _lose_ money; it _costs_ money. Saying that a public service loses money is framing it as some sort of failing company that could be made more efficient (expensive) by privatising.
One thing I have always noticed is that you can clearly see where the richer/economic areas are based on their rail system. NYC is a great example; most of their rails are going from the boroughs to downtown and there is very little inter borough travel with the subways. So I do think focusing more on buses is something the left needs to do. But I really like how you pointed out how simply nationalizing something won’t make it better, you have to nationalize it correctly. Great video. Can’t wait for the next one.
There is a world outside of economics. We include economics in our analyses. Buses were deregulated about 1985 and ridership plummeted. So when money was injected into rail systems at the time of privatization they could catch lots of people who had switched to driving which is a large part of the railway boom. And the boom in London region also put lots of demand into the Southeast. On the other hand, Amtrak is a publicly owned corporation and has even higher fares than in the UK and absolutely ignores the needs of the bottom 80 percent.
I look forward to seeing more of these videos! Keep up the good work, Unlearning Economics!
:)
Wow, great response time, you champion! Have you heard of an economic modeling software called Minsky? It is open-source and made by an Aussie economist named Steve Keen. I've studied economics too but have never seen anything as good including paid softwares. Hope you have a good day Unlearning Economics!
@@DancingSoldiersOfRa yes me and Steve go way back! I'm sure I will cover Minsky and private debt in a Keensian way at some point soon!
@@unlearningeconomics9021 Holy crap, I didn't see your reply until just now on my second watch-through. It makes sense that you're already familiar with Steve! I'm going to be making some videos about minsky soon so it will be nice that a big channel like yours will be introducing people to it! Have a great week Unlearning Economics :D
In Germany the train system is privatised. Since privatization, manager wages have risen exponentially, but the service is (became?) horrible. Most trains arrive too late, so you have to take 1-2 trains earlier if you have to arrive somewhere on time (for a job interview for example). It is pathetic.
Really hope the final episode extensively covers the labour theory of value and alternatives!
18:23 if this means that there'll be a video on co-ops then I'm hyped af
I'm entergaged by your content, that is engaged and entertained. promote this more, algorithm
ptsd from garfield eats intensifies
I agree! This engaging entertainment has done many things for me. If I had a poll in front of me to promote my end-user experience, then I would tick the boxes
☑️ *Relaxing*
☑️ *Life-Changing*
☑️ *Educational*
Hmmm. Borgor king.
@@chaosvii same
nice pfp, where's it from
As a Welsh person sick of bad pronunciations, hats off to you on your pronunciation of Glas Cymru.
"Response to Hobbie Stuart on >>Buses are for the poorer
Response to me? I’m not saying anything bro I’m just the man on the buttons
wat
I wish I could save comments because I have neither the time nor the mental capacity to read this atm
@@HobbieStuartMusic how do you play into this, if I may ask. And why do you have the gray thing around your name
The system we have around where I live have all the public transport systems linked up into a single network. So you don't buy a train ticket and then a bus ticket, you buy a ticket to go between travel zones and you can take whatever transport you need, trains, buses and or even ferries. It seems to run pretty well most of the time.
Neat, may I ask what area this is?
@@Kobolds_in_a_trenchcoat Sorry don't want to dox myself.
This is quickly becoming one of my favorite channels
natural monopolies are "natural" not because capital outlays are large and opex are low or because of high market barriers (from the high investment requirement), but rather because duplicating investments in such is inherently wasteful. take water distribution. it would be incredibly wasteful to have two water distributors investing in pipes going to the same houses where they compete for the same service in which consequently only one of them will only ever be used at any one time.
Just binge-watched all your videos (I saw this one as a related video several days ago but wanted to watch the rest first). They're very well-made and well-researched, and you did a great job presenting all the information clearly.
Thank you, comments like this really mean a lot.
we need more academics on this site. im getting into my phd in law and so much of breadtube is so frustrating sometimes for their lack of research standards. more of us need to get into the space to help give this sort of in depth info to people outside of academics
The BreadTubers have only interpreted the trains, in various ways. The point however is take the bus.
The practicality of busses will become more and more overshadowed by the efficiency of trains as energy production becomes greener and more efficient
Busses are good for the last mile, not mass transportation between large distances. One cannot replace the other, to the contrary, they work well together.
I would theorise that the drop in rail use was precipitated by the Beeching Cuts removing thousands of miles of established rail routes, mostly in rural areas (this would correlate with the biggest drop in use), followed by an uptick in urban rail use when the population flipped over to mostly urban living, and car use on crowded roads became far less practical. Rail subsidies dropped dramatically before the Beeching cuts, which may have impacted on efficiency and user satisfaction, driving down rail use (in tandem with wider availability of cars) and this drop in use was used as a rationale for the cuts.
I can see parallels with the planned underfunding and privatisation of other vital services.
The RUclips algorithm, from what I've gathered from other big youtubers saying the same, prefers if you don't number videos. Recommending this because I hope these videos reach more people because they are super insightful :)
Thank you, that is helpful advice!
Want to do one on the water industry? I've got all the inside dirty secrets if you want them 😂
Let me guess, Nestle is involved?
@@bachpham6862 nope just UK water company related things
@@tomsan91 Aw, and here I thought Nestle is going to have one of their greedy little fingers up in another human rights abuse issue.
12:52
Sorry, what?
The graphics clearly show that those accidents were diminishing in intensity and frequency. So suddenly they explode just before the privatization? It's common sense that when the government wants to sell one asset they let it fade in quality, both to convince the citizens about the "selling" and to lower the price, to maximize the private profit. And in 89 Thatcher was already Prime Minister for a long time. In Portuguese we even have a word to this process: "Scrapping" (Or whatever the translation would be).
And here in 3° world privatization mean giving it to foreign capital. It means people losing their access to energy in favor of a higher profit margin among shareholders in Wall Street. Gustavo Machado made a good video with inner data in worksheets, comparing the public and private metro companies in Brazil, he shows how the private ones attend less people, by higher prices, wile squeeze the workers more.
Private or State owned is a matter of what's more profitable for the bourgeoisie at the moment. If they would benefit from cheap oil or steel, but no one has the capital (or guts) to make it, let the State provide it. In time of de-industrialization, it's more profitable to just assault the public sector. That's why is common that they let the State make the gross initial investment, and then push for privatization for free.
Ai mano, eu acho que o video foi bom, mas pecou em diversos aspectos. Companhias brasileiras de ferrovias são geralmente ou privatizadas para pessoas de fora, até empresas estatais de países um tanto suspeitos, ou então são colocadas a merce de PPPs, eu acredito que o sistema de PPP pode melhorar a situação de nossas ferrovias, levando em conta que é o sistema mais próximo que temos de agradar todos os espectros políticos
Thanks for having closed captions on your videos
As someone who is generally on the side of a having a market as close to being Laissez-faire as possible, i have to say you make really well made and compelling videos. I generally watch videos of people with opposing views in the hope of finding people who present their ideas reasonably, and it is sad how hard it can be to find. I hope this trend continues as i feel i can actually listen to good arguments from an opposing view without being called a devil for disagreeing.
TRUE. The uneducated pundits on both sides make politics and economics unbearable
Go away, devil.
@@rodrigorebolledo9918 shhhhh don't scare away potential converts lmao
@@rodrigorebolledo9918 dont do it
I am extremely disappointed that you don’t have more videos. We need more! We need to unlearn economics!
Shaun is outstanding on social issues and debunking the prolific idiots the right celebrates as its thought leaders. But I found his video to be a bit lacking in some areas as well, and I think that if we take more time to create a dialogue like you're doing, we'll be in good shape as a movement ready to make positive changes in the world. Thanks for your contribution and may you have 100,000+ subs in due course.
Nationalising buses is the wrong solution as a central body at a national level wouldn’t be able to deal with all the intricacies of local transport provision. Local systems stewarded by councils are a good idea, as can be seen in Edinburgh with Lothian Buses. This is run like a private company but it’s largely owned by the city. There’s a flat rate for fares, so people don’t get charged more if they live in arbitrary areas, and there’s a somewhat good level of investment in the vehicles themselves. Recently they’ve gone a lot more eco friendly and they accept non cash payment
Really glad to find economic breadtube content. It’s the aspect of the left that I’m most interested in, and yet it’s really hard to find RUclips videos about it.
I thought the usage of data when looking a the benefits of privatisation was a bit uncritical. By his own admission, he can't find an adequate explanation for the massive uptick in usage, so to just shrug and chalk it up as a win for privatisation seems pretty shaky. Likewise, customer satisfaction surveys are a pretty poor way to gauge performance. Many, if not most of the respondents will have not likely made regular use of rail networks in other countries, so have no means of making a reasonable comparison. Add to this that a customer satisfaction survey is almost always a self-selecting sample makes the data pretty dubious.
In addition, the conclusion that poorer people use buses 'more' is not a fair comparison. The UK bus network is not nearly interconnected enough to work for long distance travel; similarly, the rail network does not have the granularity to really be used for day-today commuting, such as from a housing estate to town centre. As a result, while a lower income person may use a bus 'more', any kind of long distance journey (such as visiting family, medical appointments, or holiday travel; all just as important as the daily commute) will require services a bus network cannot provide. All forms of public transport need to be considered for an effective improvement to be made for the working class.
The subway in New York is used for daily commutes for the purposes just like you listed. It's an underground train so maybe that's the difference.
@@spacedoohicky fair example, but major cities like New York and London are the exception. The vast majority of UK cities use bus networks for the equivalent forms of travel; Bristol, for example, has only two rail stations. Plus, this disregards the far greater number of smaller cities and medium-small towns, which will generally only have a single train station.
@@RhetoricWalrus Personally I think buses are better. I was just bringing up an exception of something that's used, managed, and affordable. Most people in NY would use a combination of buses, trains, and cabs to get from place to place. They don't exclusively use trains. But buses are the most flexible.
Please break down Marxist economics and how we could incorporate into 21st century
Richard wolff type stuff
That last point had to be satirical? It's highly dependent in which country transport operates and in some only poor people use trains. Buses have their specific ideal use cases so have trains/other modes of transport but are neither superior nor worse than trains
Now I can't speak for british rail, but I know what a Desaster privatising "deutsche Bahn" was. When it comes to Public Transport, I think it should be nationalised, more Demokratie is always better in every industry, it should be free like here in Luxembourg.
As a socialst I'm actually against free public transport. It just means people who don't use end up paying for it. It's better to have regulations for people who use it often or can't afford it.
@@7th808s and riders of public transit pay for the streets and roads we don't drive on (no, fuel taxes don't cover it, not even close). We consider streets and roads, water and sewer infrastructure, and such-like to be public goods, to be paid for out of the public purse because everything else depends on them. Why not public transportation? Maybe if we fully funded and built it out as a viable option, people would take it, and learn to live without a damn car.
I have one criticism to make:
That spike in deaths/injuries on the railway system, just before privatization? There's a very typical trick of politicians to sabotage programs/industries (in order to hurt their performance and damage public support), just so that they can create an argument for privatizing said program/industry. Considering that the trend before that had a very clear downward slope (implying that it started off rough, but got better over time), I'd hazard a guess that such happened for this, too.
Exact same thing happened to the NHS, the Tories are attempting to kill as many people as possible to break the NHS to make privatisation seem good.
Very straightforward and clear, and a nice balance of a few meme bits just to lighten the tone every so often - and FWIW I found this one easier to follow, at least in terms of the economics itself, than your last video. Would definitely be up for more detail on '21st C nationalisation' / how to do nationalisation properly in future videos.
Super interesting. Thank you.
I've often wondered if one way to get around the over-essentializing of privatised versus nationalised might be a hybrid model that addresses some of the issues of both. I came up with this idea (or re-came up with it, if it's already "out there" -- and it probably is) with regard to the electricity sector in the UK, but it would be potentially transferable to trains and other services.
In the UK electricity market, there is this thing called a 'supplier of last resort.' This is a company that is assigned to take over from a failing company so that users' power supply is uninterrupted (or rather, so their payment for it is uninterrupted). In at least one instance the moving of users to one supplier over another has caused the new supplier to fail (due to their inability to cover the costs of the unbilled energy usage of their new users). My response to all the cries of horror that arose from the right about Jeremy Corbyn's call for re-nationalisaton is/was to set up a power company that is the default 'supplier of last resort.' In this way the government is taking over where private companies fail, but not by bailing them out or propping them up, but by temporarily re-nationalising the service.
The reason for doing so is at least three-fold:
1) It allows for certainty of supply, without artificially propping up failing businesses
2) It enables the government to have a good source of on-the-ground information about the ins and outs of the running of such a concern which will enable far more responsive policy in relation to that service
3) It removes the complacency of businesses that run natural monopolies or that become too big to fail
The on-flow from this is that the government can then put these services out to tender whilst they are still being competently run.
The Scottish socialist party have really interesting ideas on nationalising buses and making it a free service
Your point about passenger numbers rising post nationalisation and no convincing reason for it.
I've a reason that I've heard lots (and as a UK person it makes sense).
Throughout the nationalisation period cuts were made (not just Beeching) to many lines, mainly rural routes, dropping passenger numbers towards cars or buses (which failed due following rail routes but slower).
Priority was also spent on improving road infrastructure so more journeys were possible (induced demand) which seemed more comfortable/private, if not quicker.
However following the introduction of neo-liberal economics, state spending on roads no longer created new stretches at the same rate, and a cut to trains had forced more people onto the roads.
What followed was that following re-privstisation is that people had to commute but the roads were no longer as efficient and so people had to go back onto trains, normally set around commuter towns with new housing development because a rail line, as you stated in your video, raises costs of housing.tjis meant more people in areas with trains, where a car to work isn't the option.
This goes some way towards it. I grew up in a commuter town (into London from outside), so my biases might be showing.
It's simultaneously self-validating and surprising that the conclusions you reach in these videos are the same conclusions I've reached after large dives into rabbit holes.
The future is co-operatives, worker ownership, community wealth and very federalist.
Genuinely learnt something here. I knew about the concept of "negative externalities" where one person's activities incur a cost on another person who wasn't part of the deal, but I hadn't thought about "positive externalities" where one person's activities improve someone else's earnings.
The question for me would be, would the cost of administering the positive externalities (someone has to calculate the taxes) be more than the benefit to society in seeing to it that those externalities are accounted for?
Although not considered in the video, perhaps going all the way and fully privatising rail could work. It worked before the wars, and that was before there were alternative, cheaper transport methods like cars and coaches to compete with.
Hey there, i had one issue with the way you presented it:
The problem that is relevant for all natural monopolies and spillover affected endevours above ownership is the concept of profit.
An industry outlined by those 2 defining characteristics should not be run for profit, as the natural monopoly would make it unfair/uncompetitive, and the spillover means that every profit extracted from this venture reduces the actual gains in the other areas of society, its not a win win but a win lose, every pound the ticket costs more reduces access and useability by the society at large.
The current subsidies also show that it is not a good idea to expect societal function and profit at the same time.
Since you focussed so much on ownership i think this central message of shauns video was lost in yours.
Also kudos to the great joke "you might expect a centrist solution" -> 5 minutes later advocating full on communism in form of workers ownership of the means of production :)
No, they're advocating for worker ownership and markets. That's not communism. They're right about needing to have worker ownership to avoid alienation and exploitation, but they leave market forces in place, with all their irrationalities and incentives to self-exploit and pursue profit and growth. Again, that's not communism.
Communize public transit. Nationalization and privatization both lead to different forms of authoritarian control and worker alienation.
This is such an under appreciated channel. Fantastic videos!
Yeah, normal people don't want to listen to economic advice from a leftists. That didn't work out very well in the past.
9:50 - uncanny “Hello, everyone”! for a second, i thought you got Shaun to do a read!
the fucking shaun impression midway through the video killed me
In Spain we used to have a good, cheap and a bit old railway system. Then the neocons decided that we needed the fastest trains in Europe in order to avoid flying between different cities inside the country. It was supposed to be a modernization of the communications but, in the end, many cities were sidelined. Nowadays we have the fastest and one of the most expensive railways in the world, which only benefits the yuppies and the rich people.
So your telling me decentralized systems with some markets and centralisation would be a really good system to have
This was really good! And I say that as someone who literally has Shaun's video as a wake up alarm lmao. His video was good, but it really benefits from your critique and addenda. Well done!
Why not nationalize the trains and have the workers run it, they can vote for a board that deals with everything like shaun mentions without overbearing levels of bureaucracy.
Worker run "collectives" never work.
Way to infantilize the masses.
@@silver4831are you sure? Around 3 million worker co-ops around the would tend to disagree I would think.
@@Anarchist_Black_Sheep And how many of them are actually run by someone whos paid more and has more control?
@@silver4831 if it isn't ultimately controlled by the workers, it isn't a worker co-op. That shouldn't have to spelled out.
The workers doesn't have to be in control of the day to day management, but they do set guidelines that the worker elected board and day to day organisers have to follow.
Can a worker co-op decide to pay extra to certain functions? Absolutely, but it is the workers decision to do that.
The top benefit of a worker co-op is when the elected management doesn't act in line with the guidelines set by the workers, they can be stripped of all managing duties and eventual extra privileges, and returned to the "rank and file" if not kicked out entirely.
Do some reading on the benefits of the democratic workplace. The concept isn't nearly as strange as some wants it to be.
hey this is a great video.
I think it could have helped if you had looked into the red headed step child of British trains. Translink.
Translink is a combined transport service, operating both Ni Railways and Ulsterbus. The entire service is Nationalized. im comparison to the largely privatized rest of the UK. ( there are still some from what I remember.) NIR is also one of the only companies that is responsible for the entire railway, everything from infrastructure to pricing and customer service.
The fact that Bus and Train timetables are synced is a godsend.
I’m here just to boost you in the algorithm. Great work needs to be appreciated.
the drop in passengers after nationalisation was largely due to the car (and just the general under-funding of the network by the Treasury for the DFT). and the rise in passengers after privatisation in the 90s was majorly impacted by the changes in our economy in that period- we became more of a service economy for which point to point commuting demand was increasing rapidly. the treasury does seem to just ignore that principle of spillover economics, seeing the cost of everything and the value of nothing
You should email Vaush and try and get a conversation with him, you agree on a lot and it'd be a big boost for your channel 💖
Fucking vaush hahahahaha
The main question in the rise in passengers is how many of them actually got to ride a train and how many were on a replacement bus service?