On 02/07/2012 16:19, allantracy wrote:

Friedmanite dogma is a good example of Einstein's statement that
insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a
different result.


Err... wasn't it Friedmanite insanity that built our railway network,
in the first place, and wasn't it Stalinist insanity, as applied to
the burgeoning road network, that did so much to undermine the
finances of some otherwise very sound private railway operations?

There is something to what you say. The railways were saved first by
compulsory amalgamation in 1925, then by nationalization in 1947, by
which time three of the four companies were going out of business. Even
Margaret Thatcher stopped short of privatization, being a somewhat
cannier Friedmanite than her epigones (I'll give her that much).

--
Myth, after all, is what we believe naturally. History is what we must
painfully learn and struggle to remember. -Albert Goldman