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 but nonprofitable projects. This can be and has been made efficient.
There is no interest in a private prison company to reduce crime. There is also not much reason for a private rail company to invest in infrastructure that not profitable. But as a citizen I have an interest to use a efficient train.
It's not black and white. Private sector is very good at a lot of things. But there are certain other things that are natural monopolies or important for the functioning of the society that in my opinion can be best served by an efficient government.
The private sector and capitalism do not also not always work in your interest - Adam Curtis from the BBC (also government :) did a great documentation about certain effects of free market radicalism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mayfair_Set
> 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 wonder if herein lies the fundamental difference. I would never put it the way you have.
The people form the government and pay them to administer infrastructure and services for them. That is massively different than the "government does for it's people" view. One is almost a royals-and-subjects view while the other says, well, government of the people, by the people and for the people.
In my model we hire the government to serve us. They are nothing more than our employees.
The other data point I have is that as a youngster my family spent quite a number of years in Argentina. Monkeys would govern that country better than nearly any administration they have had to endure. I have followed their politics on and off over the years. To this day they continue to be raped and pillaged by their government. The only way you can characterize them is thugs, thieves and gangsters. It is quite possible that seeing some of the things I saw there planted the seeds for not seeing government as part of the solution as an adult. I mean, look at Cyprus.
I wouldn't look to a private prison company to reduce crime because that's not the need they are pursuing. The commercial war on crime tends to be waged by associations that roughly map to where/how crimes are committed and chambers of commerce. These organizations are the pooled efforts of businesses to fight common problems.
A private rail company might decide to lay down unprofitable track to massively grow demand and habitual preference for rail travel. Or, it might stick to more profitable tracks and in exchange not have to pass on the costs of disparate routes to the customers in the high-density areas.
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 but nonprofitable projects. This can be and has been made efficient.
There is no interest in a private prison company to reduce crime. There is also not much reason for a private rail company to invest in infrastructure that not profitable. But as a citizen I have an interest to use a efficient train.
It's not black and white. Private sector is very good at a lot of things. But there are certain other things that are natural monopolies or important for the functioning of the society that in my opinion can be best served by an efficient government.
The private sector and capitalism do not also not always work in your interest - Adam Curtis from the BBC (also government :) did a great documentation about certain effects of free market radicalism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mayfair_Set