Public vs Private Efficiency

Why is that ok if a private actor can do it better and cheaper? Most cases for public services are not really based on any good justification. On the contrary accepting that they lose money from the get go will drive soviet style inflation of resources and bankruptcy in the long run. Its been tried.

It's not like private enterprise is doing such a great job.

All privatizations of public infrastructur and services are failures, simply due to the discrepancy between the interests:The public wants: Cheap, reliable, quality services.A corporation wants: Maximized Revenue.The two inevitably clash. No matter what business, no matter what country. Don't believe me? Go and find a single instance of a service that used to be provided completely by the government, that got BETTER FOR USERS (that is: The Public, not investors) after being privati

The issue is not necessarily ownership, it is the existence of competition. Unfortunately, for most (all?) government services, there is no competition - hence the inefficiencies. But private companies are prone to the same, if they don;t operate in markets open enough.

In some circumstances> the private sector's legendary efficiency advantageis in fact: the private sector's _mythical_ efficiency advantage

everything in this comment is completely, empirically wrong. public services are more efficient and have been basically forever. where public services are bad, it's generally because they are desperately underfunded and cut into by the private sector and austerity governments, which under capitalism are nearly all governments.https://newint.org&#

> I'd love to understand.In my biased opinion I'd suggest you study western and northern European democracies. The government provides essential services (decentralized up to the district level) like education, water, streets, police, health care, social security for it's citizens.I'd rather have clean water and unbiased police and justice and free education. Every private company needs to maximize their own profit. The government does not need to do this. They can subsidize important

The only thing more inefficient than a purely governmental organization is a private company providing services to the government. There seems to be a persistent belief amonst citizens that governmental services would make them more efficient, more responsive to customers, etc, but following the money suggests different motivations.

The flaw with private companies providing a public service is inevitably the erosion of demand for public goods and standards. The public sector should be held to higher standards considering how large their budgets are and most of it is spent wastefully. Europe and other developed countries have a far superior public goods availability, service and outcomes with similar GDP going to the public sector.In the US one has to compare all taxes including federal, state and city/county levels

I have not seen much evidence that private management is superior to any given civil service. I have seen absurd waste in the private sector in my time. I think that there is little empirical evidence to support either position. The civil service generally is handicapped by the fact that any waste exposed is made very public because they are accountable to, well, everyone. For example, journalists generally do not chase stories about waste or incompetence in private companies but publish such st