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How is a monopoly good for capitalistic or socialist ideals?
I am an Economist. This is shown as I worked as an econmist for some banks economist department. ;) (Hope you understand the reference)
lynx-
How is a monopoly good for capitalistic or socialist ideals?
There's not really much of an alternative you can do for rail travel. Splitting it up geographically just creates a bunch of separate isolated monopolies.
You can't have 5 different train companies running services between popular destinations (e.g. Guildford <-> Waterloo).
My point is that where monopolies are very hard to avoid is where you need proper oversight/regulation. Most Governments are weak in this respect and corporations often have better lawyers to work around whatever rules are in place.
Greenbank
The problem is that people create a false dichotomy of strict nationalisation vs privatisation, with whatever is currently not working being magically solved by swapping to the opposite extreme, and the detractors of the extreme (quite rightly) claiming that there's no proof that the opposite extreme will be any better.
Both can work, if they have the right oversight/regulation, but this has been sadly lacking for many years.
National Rail worked until the complacency set in. The Tories saw it as ripe for privatisation as "competition and the markets will fix everything" only for the franchises to be bought up by profligate corporations that were free to cream off profits whilst being heavily subsidised and rarely, if ever, being held to account. (See also water companies like Thames Water.)
The hard part (whichever path you take) is getting the oversight/regulation right.
Socialism and capitalism are both equally hard if you've got shit people in charge of things.