They actually can. Nationalization is a thing. And if they do it would also put a nice big dent in any future privatization plans because there is a good chance that the shareholders of those privatized companies would lose money in such a deal. Rightly so, after all they plucked the system.

In NL we had pretty good public transport, good healthcare at low costs and good prices for utilities. Then the privatization wave happened and all of that went out the window whilst a lot of entities (foreign as well as national) lined their pockets. I'm all for clawing it back. And don't get me started on selling KLM to Air France and Hoogovens to - eventually - Tata. Short term thinking with long term massive negative consequences.

> Too much money is required and they can't just seize the assets.

But they can. That's why they are the government.

Are there any examples in modern economies? I know banks were temporarily nationalised but that wasn't a long-term plan.

Absolutely. Recently lots of Russian assets got nationalized in Germany on account of German national security in light of the energy crisis and the war with Ukraine. In NL we nationalized a bank (SNS bank) that failed, and one that would have failed (ABN). In Japan, in the wake of the Fukushima disaster there was an energy company nationalized. The USA (though they don't like to call it that) nationalized a bunch of stuff in the wake of the financial crisis.

Not sure that is a reasonable answer. War time measures, financial crises and earthquakes are exceptional circumstances.

Where has a government gone, woops, that privatisation was a bad idea, let’s buy back our national infra and burn the shareholders.

I don't subscribe to goalpost moving.

The city of Berlin rebought its water supply from the private owner. It will also rebuy district heating and gas network. All this can be done, but it is quite expensive. It would have been better to not sell monopolistic infrastructure in the first place.