[BoxOfRain]

I think it's a 'large bureaucracies in general' problem, there seems to be a critical mass in any kind of organisation beyond which dealing with them in any capacity becomes like pulling teeth. I don't think public services are necessarily flawed because it's the state providing them, I think it's more that the state is also an enormous bureaucratic organisation and subject to the same issues. When the state creates groups that are enpowered to cut through the internal politicking it can be very effective, for example the gov.uk site that's been praised a lot on HN.

Just look at rail in the UK, it was the butt of contemporary comedy when it was nationalised and it's still a dog's breakfast thirty years after privatisation. It's not the ownership that's the problem, it's the nature of the organisations responsible for providing that particular service. I think the public/private dichotomy is a bit of a false one when it comes to quality of service a lot of the time.