"The Navigators" (IMDB) is in detail about the privitisation of British Rail in particular the track maintenance. But really it's looking at the effects of privitisation of "government jobs", particularly on the working class. In the short term there's lots of "fat" to be trimmed, but it's very easy to be excessive about the trimming in ways which aren't noticed until later.

It's also a movie about the risks of work done by the lowest bidder. Given a fixed set of things to be done, and a desire to reduce costs, it can easily result in Safety Last (itself a 1923 silent film with daring stunts, that the Film Society showed a couple of years back).

New Zealand went through the same privitisation of Rail in the 1990s (after a lot of downsizing in the 1980s; also Treasury Report) which was fairly unpopular at the time. That ultimately led to the Government buying back the rail system last year over the last couple of years for $1, plus taking on a lot of debt.

In New Zealand, and it appears Britian if the movie can be trusted, some of the reforms were necessary. Many decades of "always winning more concessions, never giving up any" leads to fairly high base costs on doing anything. But "cutting costs" done by people who don't understand the industry in detail tends to lead to cutting the wrong things for the longer term. (Short term profitability is easy to measure, long term sustainability -- or the lack thereof -- isn't usually noticed until you're long gone. Hence the large amount of money needed to be spent on rebuilding rail infrastructure in New Zealand since the Government bought it back.)

Like many things, this appears to a centralisation/decentralisation pendulumn that swings back and forth past the ideal. Short of a wise benevolant dictator, it seems tricky to stay in the middle ground. (The "dictator" part is easy to find; arranging "benevolant" and/or "wise" is non-trivial.)

Sir Winston Churchill observed "it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried." (More quotes.) It appears the same could be said about capitalism.