>>which makes one wonder how effective competition really is.
Depends at what you think it should be effective.
>>The efficiency gains have not reduced real cost, which has increased faster than inflation
I'd wonder about how real the 'efficiency' is, or at least how it is rewarded.
As a sort of aside, people seem to look at nationalised and regulated companies in the utility space that are limited to a profit of n% as a good thing.
It isn't. It is a bad thing.
A regulated profit of n% essentially means two things;
1) a guaranteed profit of n%
2) increasing spend will increase profit
Hardly encourages any good behaviour.
Nationalisation/regulation is a tricky thing and is not the be all and end all. And privatising them certainly isn't.
Regulated goal, performance and metric setting with penalties, which are not necessarily purely financial, typically is the answer.
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