I find your water pipe scenario hilarious.
What about telephone service?
What about power service?
Where I live, we have 3-4 power companies that offer service, yet only 1 power line. You are able to choose your provider, and they attempt to offer better rates and service. The lines are shared, but the service is not. Depending on what they offer (green energy, cheaper rates, better services, more products, ect), you are free to select them. If you do not like your service, a new company can come in and route the box for you.
Likewise, look at phone companies and also internet companies. Both require the usage of data trunks (similar to a water line), and sometimes share connections to offset costs to ensure customers get what's needed.
Also, where I live for water production, some cities have stopped offering the service because businesses are doing a BETTER and CHEAPER job of managing services. EMS service too.
Yes, a bad businessman can become head of a company that doesn't know what he's doing. If that happens there are multiple options:
1) Vote out the CEO or head of the company
2) Let him run it into the ground, destroying the company
We've seen this happen time and time again with many, many companies from any and all business practices. The difference is that in the private world is that there is actual competition for the products and services, in the government-monopolized world, there is not. If there is a better unique system, it's rarely implemented in the government system (why don't we have differed investments for SS to get a better rate? Politicians. Why don't we have more school choice? Politicians) yet the situation in the private field is far more liquid.
I worked for a private EMS company for a year. I know what privately-backed services do when they intrude on the government's game. They are usually cheaper because the labor supply is based on free-market economics and not government-mandated requirements (a medic for the publically-funded city is about twice as expensive as the privately-backed county), and tenure usually isn't a problem, which usually is the case in the public realm.
Back from the dead, I'm afraid.
