I decided that I don't get into nearly enough debates with strangers.

[SamuelRSmith]

Soleron said:

Marks said:
Well I, for one, agree with privatizing everything. The only roles of government should be national defence and protecting us from others (police/courts), everything else can be done much more efficiently and cost effectively if privatized.

Corporations are very bad at providing services with natural monopolies.

- You can only realistically run one water pipe to a house
- You can only realistically run one set of trains
- You can only realistically have one primary (elementary) school for a given area, otherwise young children will have school travel times of >1/2 an hour

How this is usually done for the first two is a N-year contract is awarded, and then (and I have hundreds of back issues of UK's Private Eye with evidence) they can charge what they want with no fear of business dropping, and never invest in infrastructure because they're looking for a gain within N years. 

You can have lots of regulatory oversight to counteract this but honestly the corporate profit margin + large regulatory bodies + very badly written contracts because civil servants don't care about how much the government spends on procuring something so they get a bad deal is less efficient than a state owned service.

Knowing some /things/ about the defence industry as I do (adding up to, well, hundreds of millions in wasted tax money), NOTHING is less efficient than public bodies contracting private companies. Even a completely private system monopoly is better.

Typically speaking, I'm very weary of people claiming "special cases" like water. I'm sure, if given the chance, 99% of markets could be argued to be "special cases"

For example, with your case on water, there may only be one provider of water, but they still want you to consume as much of their water as possible. If the company charges too much, people will respond by conserving their water. They may even resort to collecting a portion of the water that falls on their property, and use it, instead of the water that this monopoly provides.

A particularly smart man might sign people up to a business where he installs large tanks, and fills them on a regular basis for a monthly charge, or something. Eventually, if the problem goes on for too long, another company WILL build a second set of pipes. I saw a statement by Coca Cola that said they now consider drinking water from the tap to be their number 1 competitor... if a water company starts acting in a bad way (in a free market), who knows what business proposition CC could sweep in with?

These are off the top of my head, but a natural monopoly in one form of supplying the water doesn't mean it's a monopoly on water. Apple have a monopoly on iPhones... but they don't have a monopoly on smartphones.

The same goes for the trains. If they do start price gauging, so what, people will begin to use alternative forms of transport, and, eventually the company will be forced to change its ways, or go out of business.