Nationalisation of industry

First we must look at what nationalization of an industry is in the plain sense of the term. It's a state owned and state ran industry that is used to promote societal goals. I oppose this on a couple of points. 1) Restricted in price setting: Many nationalized industries can not behave properly to market forces. The government sometimes meddles in price setting, so the industry can't respond properly to shortages for instance. In a shortage you would have to raise prices, because a good is scarce. Nationalized industries really restrict the ability of that industry to set prices. Because price signals aren't being made, there's a huge inefficiency to state run industries. 2) Lack of Capital: Many times, these industries have restricted borrowing, and can't expand and use capital funds to maybe buy new tools for the business. Because they don't have a profit motive, it's really hard to let capital move around. It's much easier to do so if there's less restrictions. 3) Government is politics: Many of these "Social Goals" that industries may pursue, will be controlled by different political parties and ideologies, that people may not agree with. It's best if we have a businesses set their own goals. We could have parties that exploit these industries for political gain, and capital. 4)Poor leadership of these organizations: When you nationalize an industry the idea of merit is downgraded, because decision making is handicapped, and the appointments may be politically motivated or some other means other than the person's actual skill set. One of my favorite real world examples to show these points was the privatization of the Royal Mail, in the United Kingdom recently. We see the issue with limited capital, and that's why the UK privatized them. The nationalized industry of the Royal Mail wasn't responding well to market forces of parcel delivery increased by the internet. The government has trouble with modern things, but I digress. The government invested itself 3 billion dollars, and yet we still saw issues with the royal mail. That money was just to upgrade current facilities, and it wasn't enough. In order for a company or an industry to grow, it needs capital. The only way that the Royal mail could survive was to be publicly traded on the stock market. The economist also notes that Belgium introduced privatization and profit margins were up to 17%. Compare it to DHL who has double the productivity and profits of the Royal Mail. I actually think the U.S postal service would be better off if it was not eliminated, but totally privatized. I'm also aware that USPS is revenue neutral, however congress still retains control over them. We've seen this over and over again as nationalized industries, become private, and they become more sustainable, more efficient, and can expand. They also react to market forces and price signals. If the government is meddling in price signals than it's not going to produce appropriately. Can markets fail? Yes it's possible, a market can collapse, but its not the end of the world. http://www.economist.com... We can look at a ton of things. USPS vs. UPS, British Leyland Cars vs. American Cars of the 1970s, NHS vs. Private Healthcare providers. The market produces things and allocates much better than a nationalized industry.