Nationalization or Subsidies: You Decide

I used to be of the mindset that there should be no subsidies, tariffs, etc. Companies should rise and fall on their own merits. If a country wanted a national industry for military reasons, it should just nationalize it outright. I'm not so sure anymore.

Some of the upsides of nationalization vs subsidies:

• Complete control of policy by the government
  
• Impossible for the company to appear to be failing
  
• Maintains the purity of the market. This provides a higher quality information source for investors
  
• A clean separation between government and consumer goods means other corporations could (depending on the details) provide the same good as the nationalized company to the civilian sector.
  

Some of the downsides of nationalization vs subsidies:

• Government pay scale - possibly difficult to attract and keep top talent.
  
• Also, the tendency to attract people more interested in power than money can degrade the functionality of the government in general.
  
• Market pressures and a wider customer base drive more extensive cost cutting and product innovation
  
• It is easier to see how much the (quasi) nationalization is costing the government
  

I can see why a democracy generally prefer nationalization and an autocracy would generally prefer subsidies - many of the benefits of subsidies I have listed are actually liabilities for political actors in a democracy. That being said, I am actually leaning slightly towards subsidies the preferred means of nationalization.