[eggdaft]

Exactly. Just need to build a few more sewer networks so we can have competition.

Many fundamental components of society aren’t amenable to market based competition. The public sector can be inefficient, but in many cases the alternative is a form of economic tyranny that is far far worse. In the UK, most of our key infrastructure has been privatised and it has been a disaster for our economy and for the population. One of the likely causes of the UK’s productivity crisis is the lack of investment in infrastructure caused by privatisation, for example.

This is all rather self-evident but I’m so surprised how very intelligent, highly educated people often are unable to see that government is sometimes superior to the private sector. It seems their judgements are clouded by dogmatic ideology, but because that ideology is capitalism they are unaware that their dogmatism is no different from the others that they regularly mock and criticise.