I KNEW IT. NUMONEX IS A TROLL!

I disagree with the OP. Being a privatized employee and seeing my share of this privatization effect first hand. I can tell you the work is far substandard. There is no reward for good work or incentive for good work. There is also a lot of bad work being done with little and usually no penalty. This Bad work would be less tolerated in non privatization and risking to lose a $20/hr job vs $10/hr job makes a big difference. The positions have a HIGH turn around rate because it's a lot of crap or responsibilities for little pay. Then there are taxes. People who make less money, spend less money. Which is less money taxed.

So heres the question from my perspective. Is apx $10/hr worth getting into an altercation with a bleeding, drugged up hepatitis patient? When your job is to literally restrain them for medication and applied restraints? Then afterwards to get harassed by the Nurses because your duties are limited due to be privatized employee. I admit it's extreme and not an every day occurrence, but hey it happened.

I wouldn't say Numonex is trolling. As much as he has been posting all these radical theories. 

This. Lots of this.

Something else that doesn't benefit from privatisation is things where it is desirable for society that a minimum standard is provided to all. Education and healthcare are examples of this. Even for someone very rich who doesn't depend on the state directly, it is desirable to them that everyone else in the country [not just, say, 95%] meets a standard of literacy and numeracy and is healthy enough to go to work. I believe it makes sense in thsoe cases to offer a universal baseline service, then people can go to private firms for things above that (private schools for small-group tuition and extra-curriculars, or private healthcare for shorter waiting times and cosmetic surgery).

Just going by ManusJustus's category though: water, electrcity, gas, buses, trains, refuse collection.

My category: Education, healthcare, public safety (police v. private security companies).

Other places where it doesn't work is like the regional monopolies but instead being a single-supplier, or worse a government-mandated single supplier. For example the UK spun off its government/military research unit into Qinetiq, a private company, but then mandated that all government research contracts of certain kinds MUST be purchased from them. Thus there is no competition but you get all the downsides of a private entity.

A lot of government outsoucing is wasteful too. Especially when the outsourced firm doesn't employ anyone really and just hires people when they get paid to (see the UK's Capita, Serco, and many others). It would just be more efficient for the government to hire the workers directly as needed, same outcome. The reason they don't is that the government likes to delegate and defer responsibility so they can't be blamed when it goes wrong (see: many national IT projects) and have an excuse to not inspect the work or make the expenditure accountable which ought to happen.

I believe in a moderate level of state ownership, not as much as post war levels and more than in the post-Thatcher era.  The Government now basically just has NATS, the Dartford Crossing and Royal Mail (I'm discounting the banks).

I think that the bus network is a very good candidate for nationalisation, fares are ridiculously expensive (£3.50 ($5.56) for just over 3 miles is a fucking joke).  Privatisation had effectively led to local private monopolies/duopolies/oligopolies, which IMO are far worse than a public monopoly.  The state could also re-invest a lot of the profit in the conversion to hydrogen.  I would like to see the likes of school catering in the state's hands as well.

I still stand by my belief that if the Government retained some nationalised industries, the budget deficit would be much lower, due to the dividends.  Privatisation raises a hell of a lot of money in the short term (see the massive budget surpluses and tax cuts during the second half of the Thatcher years), but in the long term it drastically reduces the money the Government gets.

I'm a huge fan of

1) Declaring a state of national emergency due to the state of the debt (justifiable)
2) Forcibly acquiring bus services, trains, utilities on the grounds of how shockingly bad they are run
3) ???
4) PROFIT (especially since the gvt already subsidises train and bus companies right now. That's right, you pay in taxes now AND you pay huge fares.)

Of course it is politically impossible. Doesn't mean it isn't desirable.