[rstuart4133]

> I think this is one of those ideas that has been spouted for so long that we don't really stop to think about whether it is true.

A lot of people with considerable expertise in the area have looked into whether it's true. They almost always come to the same conclusion: overall it's a wash.

If you look closer some industries (like say your corner coffee shop in a big city) are clearly better off private, and others like roads and fire fighting don't work when privately held.

In general a competitive market will out-do public owned, free markets that aren't competitive are worse than public owned.

But there are always exceptions. A fine example is the health system. I don't know why, but as the US demonstrates even with a competitive health market public ownership outperforms a purely private system by a fairly large margin.