| > Roads bridges See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public%E2%80%93private_partner... > healthcare The large healthcare providers are already run like private businesses, because they are private businesses. > education Please no. This is a favorite pet issue of the rich and powerful. Their ranks are littered with failed school reform activists. Sometimes those folks even have the self-awareness to realize they failed, e.g., the Gates Foundation. More often, they keep on proposing the same old ideas that are continuously tried and fail, while sending their own kinds to expensive private schools or public schools in the priciest zip codes in the country. Schools that are, aside from their wealth, operated in a quite traditional fashion. If you look at education outcomes by country, there's really only two things that stand out as invariants that separate education systems that work from those that don't: 1. degree of heterogeneity in schooling (school choice without some strong equalizing effect on quality just rearranges the deck chairs on the titanic), and 2. level of respect for educators (pay != respect). The "rich people can fix this" attitude is truly both a symptom and a cause of the biggest issue with America's education system: teaching is a low-status job (even places where it's well-paid). When it comes to education, Americans respect literally anyone's opinion more than the opinion of educational professionals. Hell, even random people who were literally born into wealth get more voice than the professionals who spend their lives in the classroom. If that doesn't change, nothing else will. |