[roenxi]

> Why is it "unfair" for public bodies to compete?

There are two halves to a business - how much value it creates for its customers (which can be roughly estimated from its revenue) and how much drain it places on society (represented by the cost of running the business). There are arguments that revenue doesn't measure the full benefit and costs don't measure the full drain. Disregard them for the moment, because this part of the thread isn't arguing about that and revenue/costs catch a lot of the value/drain.

The government can compete unfairly because they aren't constrained by costs - a government body can provide marginally better service by placing vastly more drain on the community. They have a lazy option which is (1) damaging to the community and (2) unfair because their competition can't legally force taxpayers to cover their inefficiencies. Thus it is unfair, and also bad.

As an example, the Australian government in 2008 decided to roll out fiber-to-the-premise to around 90% of Australia, an expensive undertaking that no private company would attempt in one big push. All the telecom companies cancelled their infrastructure upgrades and rollouts effective immediately and I got to spend 2 years without internet because I was moving to a newly constructed area. The telecom companies couldn't compete fairly (they couldn't justify a gold-plated rollout based on actual projected demand) so they just left the market. Access was prioritised to rebuilding existing infrastructure in swing electorates.

It is possible, but very unclear, that the Australian government offered the best option. I personally as a customer would much rather have spent less on the network and lived with a cheaper, more quickly available product. So I would rather have gone with other providers, but they had left the market because they couldn't fairly compete.