Germany ate the captialism/markets/privatization for everything bug. If one wants to be optimistics it is that we are currently figuring out how to construct competitive markets (e.g. Flixtrain/Austrian/French rail is starting to compete on the rail network managed by DB).
In the decades they converted the German rail service (DB) into a stock company (AG) that is 100% owned by the state. The plan was to make it profitable then IPO it. So DB started to stop investing in order to become profitable short term. It never became profitable, so couldn't be floated. Now it also has a large infrastructure neglect debt on top (and is still 100% owned by the state with this weird structure with a CEO).
If it were a startup, one would just let it fail (creative destruction). Since it is obviously critical infrastructure, they should really have thought of this before. But same could be said about banks before 2008.
In the decades they converted the German rail service (DB) into a stock company (AG) that is 100% owned by the state. The plan was to make it profitable then IPO it. So DB started to stop investing in order to become profitable short term. It never became profitable, so couldn't be floated. Now it also has a large infrastructure neglect debt on top (and is still 100% owned by the state with this weird structure with a CEO).
If it were a startup, one would just let it fail (creative destruction). Since it is obviously critical infrastructure, they should really have thought of this before. But same could be said about banks before 2008.