[anothercomment]

"Most privatization efforts come about as an attempt to inject corruption"

Huh - citation needed? I've never heard that claim before. Corruption pretty much needs governments, who else are you going to bribe?

To me competition seems the only surefire way to keep prices fair/low. Yes, motivated governments in theory could do everything. A supercomputer could theoretically compute the perfect prices and allocations for everything. But no such computer exists, and markets are the only approximation available. You can not rely on governments to be motivated to be selfless and good. Even if perhaps some individuals are, in the long run the incentives are just not aligned, and it takes just a few bad apples to ruin the system.