State ownership in the context of Private property

A public utility company (usually just utility) is an organization that maintains the infrastructure for a public service (often also providing a service using that infrastructure). Public utilities are subject to forms of public control and regulation ranging from local community-based groups to statewide government monopolies.

Public utilities are meant to supply goods and services that are considered essential; water, gas, electricity, telephone, waste disposal, and other communication systems represent much of the public utility market. The transmission lines used in the transportation of electricity, or natural gas pipelines, have natural monopoly characteristics. A monopoly can occur when it finds the best way to minimize its costs through economies of scale to the point where other companies cannot compete with it. If the infrastructure already exists in a given area, minimal benefit is gained through competing. In other words, these industries are characterized by economies of scale in production. Though it can be mentioned that these natural monopolies are handled or watched by a public utilities commission, or an institution that represents the government.

A treasury is either

• A government department related to finance and taxation, a finance ministry; in a business context, corporate treasury.
• A place or location where treasure, such as currency or precious items are kept. These can be state or royal property, church treasure or in private ownership.

The head of a treasury is typically known as a treasurer. This position may not necessarily have the final control over the actions of the treasury, particularly if they are not an elected representative.

Socialism is an economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. It describes the economic, political, and social theories and movements associated with the implementation of such systems. Social ownership can take various forms, including public, community, collective, cooperative, or employee. As one of the main ideologies on the political spectrum, socialism is the standard left-wing ideology in most countries. Types of socialism vary based on the role of markets and planning in resource allocation, and the structure of management in organizations.

Socialist systems are divided into non-market and market forms. A non-market socialist system seeks to eliminate the perceived inefficiencies, irrationalities, unpredictability, and crises that socialists traditionally associate with capital accumulation and the profit system. Market socialism retains the use of monetary prices, factor markets and sometimes the profit motive. As a political force, socialist parties and ideas exercise varying degrees of power and influence, heading national governments in several countries. Socialist politics have been internationalist and nationalist; organised through political parties and opposed to party politics; at times overlapping with trade unions and other times independent and critical of them, and present in industrialised and developing nations. Social democracy originated within the socialist movement, supporting economic and social interventions to promote social justice. While retaining socialism as a long-term goal, in the post-war period social democracy embraced a mixed economy based on Keynesianism within a predominantly developed capitalist market economy and liberal democratic polity that expands state intervention to include income redistribution, regulation, and a welfare state.

Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their use for the purpose of obtaining profit. This socioeconomic system has developed historically through several stages and is defined by a number of basic constituent elements: private property, profit motive, capital accumulation, competitive markets, commodification, wage labor, and an emphasis on innovation and economic growth. Capitalist economies tend to experience business cycles of economic growth followed by recessions.

Economists, historians, political economists, and sociologists have adopted different perspectives in their analyses of capitalism and have recognized various forms of it in practice. These include laissez-faire or free-market capitalism, state capitalism, and welfare capitalism. Different forms of capitalism feature varying degrees of free markets, public ownership, obstacles to free competition, and state-sanctioned social policies. The degree of competition in markets and the role of intervention and regulation, as well as the scope of state ownership, vary across different models of capitalism. The extent to which different markets are free and the rules defining private property are matters of politics and policy. Most of the existing capitalist economies are mixed economies that combine elements of free markets with state intervention and in some cases economic planning.

The economy of governments covers the systems for setting levels of taxation, government budgets, the money supply and interest rates as well as the labour market, national ownership, and many other areas of government interventions into the economy.

Most factors of economic policy can be divided into either fiscal policy, which deals with government actions regarding taxation and spending, or monetary policy, which deals with central banking actions regarding the money supply and interest rates.

Libertarian socialism is an anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalist political current that emphasises self-governance and workers' self-management. It is contrasted from other forms of socialism by its rejection of state ownership and from other forms of libertarianism by its rejection of private property. Broadly defined, it includes schools of both anarchism and Marxism, as well as other tendencies that oppose the state and capitalism.

With its roots in the Age of Enlightenment, libertarian socialism was first constituted as a tendency by the anti-authoritarian faction of the International Workingmen's Association (IWA), during their conflict with the Marxist faction. Libertarian socialism quickly spread throughout Europe and the American continent, reaching its height during the early stages of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and particularly during the Spanish Revolution of 1936. Its defeat during these revolutions led to its brief decline, before its principles were resurrected by the New Left and new social movements of the late 20th century.

Public property is property that is dedicated to public use. The term may be used either to describe the use to which the property is put, or to describe the character of its ownership (owned collectively by the population of a state). State ownership, also called public ownership, government ownership or state property, are property interests that are vested in the state, rather than an individual or communities.

Social ownership is a type of property where an asset is recognized to be in the possession of society as a whole rather than individual members or groups within it. Social ownership of the means of production is the defining characteristic of a socialist economy, and can take the form of community ownership, state ownership, common ownership, employee ownership, cooperative ownership, and citizen ownership of equity. Within the context of socialist economics it refers particularly to the appropriation of the surplus product produced by the means of production (or the wealth that comes from it) to society at large or the workers themselves. Traditionally, social ownership implied that capital and factor markets would cease to exist under the assumption that market exchanges within the production process would be made redundant if capital goods were owned and integrated by a single entity or network of entities representing society. However, the articulation of models of market socialism where factor markets are utilized for allocating capital goods between socially owned enterprises broadened the definition to include autonomous entities within a market economy.

The two major forms of social ownership are society-wide public ownership and cooperative ownership. The distinction between these two forms lies in the distribution of the surplus product. With society-wide public ownership, the surplus is distributed to all members of the public through a social dividend whereas with co-operative ownership the economic surplus of an enterprise is controlled by all the worker-members of that specific enterprise.

Market socialism is a type of economic system involving social ownership of the means of production within the framework of a market economy. Various models for such a system exist, usually involving cooperative enterprises and sometimes a mix that includes public or private enterprises. In contrast to the majority of historic self-described socialist economies, which have substituted some form of economic planning for the market mechanism, market socialists wish to retain the use of supply and demand signals to guide the allocation of capital goods and the means of production. Under such a system, depending on whether socially owned firms are state-owned or operated as worker cooperatives, profits may variously be used to directly remunerate employees, accrue to society at large as the source of public finance, or be distributed amongst the population in a social dividend.

Market socialism can be distinguished from the concept of the mixed economy because most models of market socialism propose complete and self-regulating systems, unlike the mixed economy. While social democracy aims to achieve greater economic stability and equality through policy measures such as taxes, subsidies, and social welfare programs, market socialism aims to achieve similar goals through changing patterns of enterprise ownership and management.

A public university, state university, or public college is a university or college that is owned by the state or receives significant funding from a government. Whether a national university is considered public varies from one country (or region) to another, largely depending on the specific education landscape. In contrast a private university is usually owned and operated by a private corporation (not-for-profit or for profit). Both types are often regulated, but to varying degrees, by the government.

Economic liberalization, or economic liberalisation, is the lessening of government regulations and restrictions in an economy in exchange for greater participation by private entities. In politics, the doctrine is associated with classical liberalism and neoliberalism. Liberalization in short is "the removal of controls" to encourage economic development.

Many countries have pursued and followed the path of economic liberalization in the 1980s, 1990s and in the 21st century, with the stated goal of maintaining or increasing their competitiveness as business environments. Liberalization policies may or often include the partial or complete privatization of government institutions and state-owned assets, greater labour market flexibility, lower tax rates for businesses, less restrictions on both domestic and foreign capital, open markets, etc. In support of liberalization, former British prime minister Tony Blair wrote: "Success will go to those companies and countries which are swift to adapt, slow to complain, open and willing to change. The task of modern governments is to ensure that our countries can rise to this challenge."

The economy of the Soviet Union was based on state ownership of the means of production, collective farming, and industrial manufacturing. An administrative-command system managed a distinctive form of central planning. The Soviet economy was second only to the United States and was characterized by state control of investment, prices, a dependence on natural resources, lack of consumer goods, little foreign trade, public ownership of industrial assets, macroeconomic stability, low unemployment and high job security.

Beginning in 1930, the course of the economy of the Soviet Union was guided by a series of five-year plans. By the 1950s, the Soviet Union had rapidly evolved from a mainly agrarian society into a major industrial power. Its transformative capacity meant communism consistently appealed to the intellectuals of developing countries in Asia. In fact, Soviet economic authors like Lev Gatovsky (who participated in the elaboration of the first and second five-year plans) frequently used their economic analysis of this period to praise the effectiveness of the October Revolution. The impressive growth rates during the first three five-year plans (1928–1940) are particularly notable given that this period is nearly congruent with the Great Depression. During this period, the Soviet Union saw rapid industrial growth while other regions were suffering from crisis. The White House National Security Council of the United States described the continuing growth as a "proven ability to carry backward countries speedily through the crisis of modernization and industrialization", but the impoverished base upon which the five-year plans sought to build meant that at the commencement of Operation Barbarossa on 22 June 1941 the country was still poor.

In economics, a government-granted monopoly (also called a "de jure monopoly" or "regulated monopoly") is a form of coercive monopoly by which a government grants exclusive privilege to a private individual or firm to be the sole provider of a good or service; potential competitors are excluded from the market by law, regulation, or other mechanisms of government enforcement. As a form of coercive monopoly, government-granted monopoly is contrasted with an unregulated monopoly, wherein there is no competition but it is not forcibly excluded.

Amongst forms of coercive monopoly it is distinguished from government monopoly or state monopoly (in which government agencies hold the legally enforced monopoly rather than private individuals or firms) and from government-sponsored cartels (in which the government forces several independent producers to partially coordinate their decisions through a centralized organization). Advocates for government-granted monopolies often claim that they ensure a degree of public control over essential industries, without having those industries actually run by the state. Opponents often criticize them as political favors to corporations. Government-granted monopolies may be opposed by those who would prefer free markets as well as by those who would prefer to replace private corporations with public ownership.

Nationalization (nationalisation in British English) is the process of transforming privately owned assets into public assets by bringing them under the public ownership of a national government or state. Nationalization contrasts with privatization and with demutualization. When previously nationalized assets are privatized and subsequently returned to public ownership at a later stage, they are said to have undergone renationalization (or deprivatization). Industries often subject to nationalization include telephones, electric power, fossil fuels, iron ore, railways, airlines, media, postal services, banks, and water (sometimes called the commanding heights of the economy), and in many jurisdictions such entities have no history of private ownership.

Nationalization may occur with or without financial compensation to the former owners. Nationalization is distinguished from property redistribution in that the government retains control of nationalized property. Some nationalizations take place when a government seizes property acquired illegally. For example, in 1945 the French government seized the car-maker Renault because its owners had collaborated with the 1940–1944 Nazi occupiers of France.

The Nordic model comprises the economic and social policies as well as typical cultural practices common in the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden). This includes a comprehensive welfare state and multi-level collective bargaining based on the economic foundations of social corporatism, and a commitment to private ownership within a market-based mixed economy – with Norway being a partial exception due to a large number of state-owned enterprises and state ownership in publicly listed firms.

Although there are significant differences among the Nordic countries, they all have some common traits. The three Scandinavian countries are constitutional monarchies, while Finland and Iceland have been republics since the 20th century. All the Nordic countries are however described as being highly democratic and all have a unicameral legislature and use proportional representation in their electoral systems. They all support a free market and universalist welfare state aimed specifically at enhancing individual autonomy and promoting social mobility, with a sizable percentage of the population employed by the public sector (roughly 30% of the work force in areas such as healthcare, education, and government), and a corporatist system with a high percentage of the workforce unionized and involving a tripartite arrangement, where representatives of labour and employers negotiate wages and labour market policy is mediated by the government. As of 2020, all of the Nordic countries rank highly on the inequality-adjusted HDI and the Global Peace Index as well as being ranked in the top 10 on the World Happiness Report.

Types of socialism include a range of economic and social systems characterised by social ownership and democratic control of the means of production and organizational self-management of enterprises as well as the political theories and movements associated with socialism. Social ownership may refer to forms of public, collective or cooperative ownership, or to citizen ownership of equity in which surplus value goes to the working class and hence society as a whole. There are many varieties of socialism and no single definition encapsulates all of them, but social ownership is a common element shared by its various forms. Socialists disagree about the degree to which social control or regulation of the economy is necessary, how far society should intervene, and whether government, particularly existing government, is the correct vehicle for change.

As a term, socialism represents a broad range of theoretical and historical socioeconomic systems and has also been used by many political movements throughout history to describe themselves and their goals, generating a variety of socialism types. Socialist economic systems can be further divided into market and non-market forms. The first type of socialism utilizes markets for allocating inputs and capital goods among economic units. In the second type of socialism, planning is utilized and include a system of accounting based on calculation-in-kind to value resources and goods wherein production is carried out directly for use.