re: #342 iossarian

By the way, DF, I’m certainly not an absolutist on public/private ownership of industry. There’s definitely a place for private ownership.

On the other hand, in the case of natural monopolies (like rail transport), private ownership makes very little sense. There are other industries where different issues arise with private (for-profit) ownership - education is an obvious one.

If you read the history railroads are not any sort of natural monopoly. In a fully developed industrial complex where the capital needed to break into the market is semi-astronomical it becomes a lot more entrenched. And rail transport is very heavily regulated and rate restrained as it is.

And as a reading of the history of the Transcontinental Railroad indicates perhaps there is some leeway to give the owners of the SP (and the UP to some degree) to charge high rates given the capital risks they took to get the railways initially built.