[pjc50]

Genuine market competition does work, or at least provides customers with a choice from cheap corner-cut option to expensive high-quality option.

What people forget is the list of prerequisite conditions for good market competition: plenty of buyers and sellers, good information about products, easy comparison, low transaction and switching costs, low cost of entry.

Fake markets for denationalised industries (I've seen this called "playing at shops") do not generally work very well because they're missing one or more of those attributes.