Utilities and transportation should be nationalized, along with healthcare and pretty much anything else that's either strategically important or a key input into a strategically important industry.
"Strategically important" is not a limited principle
It is exactly the kind of phrase that expands until it covers almost everything
Utilities are strategically important, so is transportation, so is healthcare, so is banking, so are payment processors, so is housing, so is food, so is communication, so is computing, so are the industries that supply those industries
At that point you are talking about no less than total political control over the basic skeleton of economic life
And the more essential the service is, the worse that problem becomes. If a restaurant is bad, I can just stop going there. If a bank, payment network, housing provider, healthcare system, transport system, or communications provider is politically controlled, then exit becomes much harder. The customer is in every case a captive funder and in many cases a captive user.
Airlines. I’m sick of bailing these niggers out every couple of years.
This here is pointing in the opposite direction too
If firms keep getting bailed out, then the problem is not that they are "too private", it's that losses are already being socialized. The cure is not to formalize that failure as state ownership. Instead, just stop insulating bad decisions from their consequences
I stand by what I've been saying all throughout this thread. "this is important" does not in any way, shape, or form get you to "the state should own it". Instead, it's just the opposite. The more important something is, the less acceptable it is to put it under coercive political control.
