I see a lot of comments are proposing for the nationalization of whole industries, which is somewhat concerning. There needs to be some balance, not to fatten the checks of those billionaires, and not to make the government too powerful.
For example, instead of (re-)nationalizing CN, nationalize the tracks themselves. The government can lay down tracks for places that need to be reached, and companies can then run their trains on them. It’s no different from how roads are public really. Companies can then focus on serving section of the tracks for areas that they understand best. Of course, there will be cases where there’s a need to consider if the investment from the government is worth it, cause what if they laid the tracks but no one’s willing to take advantage of that? Well, they can let companies bid, and there’s no bidder, they can choose to not take on the project. Of course, there’s always the option for the government to have its own train company to serve certain areas.
For telcos, instead of nationalizing the entire vertical, nationalize cell towers and cable paths. Allow companies to build their own towers if they so desire, but the main draw is that different providers can rely on shared infrastructure, and none of this Robelus bullshit that we have right now. Cable paths is probably odd, but these sorts of technology get changed quite often. The government can still own some cables, allowing smaller players to take advantage of those, but it would level out the playing field by a lot.
For the Internet and whole businesses within it, having our own cloud infrastructure, or AWS alternative, would be best. People can then run whatever on those. There is, of course, a concern of the government not respecting people’s privacies, and so it needs to be run somewhat independent of the government, allowing the government to set directions but not what exactly to do; sort of Crown-corp-y if you will.
In all my examples, the idea is simply this: nationalize the stuff that serve as the basis for a particular service. Think roads instead of cars.