Comment by andy12_
14 hours ago
> worth maintaining publicly via an actual government agency rather than a government-owned for-profit corporation required to compete in a market in which it is at the inherent disadvantage of public scrutiny.
The rail infrastructure is already publicly maintained via a government agency, ADIF. ADIF is not a goverment-owned for-profit corporation, its primary mandate is public service, not profit maximization, and ADIF doesn't compete with anyone, it's a state monopoly.
That's a sweet excuse until you understand that even state-owned nonprofits these days are run the way a harsh capitalist / neoliberal blood-sucking private-sector manager would run it. Because there very probably is a harsh capitalist / neoliberal blood-sucking public-sector manager running it.
They are very bad capitalists then, because ADIF high speed lost 200 million dollars last year.
By the way, don't act as if the Japanese high speed network is not the best on the planet. It's much more liberalized than the Spanish one.