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HappySqurriel on 25 April 2011
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mrstickball said:
Rath said:

It must be strongly noted that there are definite differences between a public-private partnership and purely private enterprise. Take roads for example, a public-private partnership involves the government (at whatever level) contracting out road building and maintenance. Purely private involves the roads being built and maintained by private companies and being paid for through road tolls.

Public-private partnerships are (in my opinion) a good idea for a lot of things that do not strongly risk human lives, such as transport infrastructure, communications infrastructure and maintenance of public areas.They probably should be generally kept away from things like fire service, ambulance service, prisons and defence though.

Just a note: private companies, in my experience, do a great job at EMS when needed. I worked dispatch for our local police station, and we contracted EMS when the city had all crews out. I also worked at said EMS company after leaving dispatch, and they did a fantastic job. So I think the line can be blurred betwen what works through private entities, and what must strictly be public. Don't get me wrong, matters of justice are probably best suited to the government, but I think that is about the only think that really needs to go in the government column.


While I wouldn't recommend it with the current state of laws within the United States, the judicial system could (theoretically) be privately run. When you think about it, all the judiciary is supposed to do is make judgements based on the legal framework that has been created by the legislative branch of the government, or precedence set by a higher court, so as long as the legislative branch and supreme court are managed in the best interests of citizens lower courts could be privatized. Unfortunately, when you have multi-thousand page laws  full of contradictory and poorly written rules it is unlikely that a private business would be able to consistently judge cases.