The most pressing conflict in the sector of public services these days is whether they should be privatized or remain in public hands. And while many in the debate try to skew the arguments towards favoring the private sector, over time it has become clear that the most preferable combination always favors public ownership of services ranging from health care to transportation to utilities. This is true both because of accountability reasons, price costs, and the ability to provide the necessary services.
Accountability is much better when services are directly under public government control. This is because while people cannot elect their corporations, they can in fact elect their own public officials. In the cases of public services, the provider has to have a monopoly, whether it is private or public. This is because competition in such services is impractical: one city cannot have several different subways competing with each other, both because the infrastructure costs are too high and because the logistics would be detrimental. Thus, citizens are unable to choose their company as easily as they can choose their leaders.
The problem of corruption does come into play. After all, governments, with control of a public service, can be tempted to use that power in order to exert political influence. This problem, however, is non-unique: whoever possesses the service in the first place will have the ability to implement corruption. Further, government corruption would be easier to get rid of, because both legal avenues (court cases) and quicker avenues (elections) can be used. Thus at worst corruption is the same in both cases and a best an easier issue with a public government monopoly, meaning that for the sake of choice the public monopoly should be the default consideration for public services and utilities.
Prices for services provided by a public monopoly will be lower, always. This is specifically because of two reasons. First, public officials will not be granted the political capital to give huge salaries and bonuses to their top ranking officials of the service in the same vein corporate CEO’s are, inherently reducing cost. Secondly, assuming that the costs of the service are the same for a public and a private monopoly, the public one run by the government will have lower costs because it would not be seeking to constantly maximize its profits, which is something the private provider would do. Seeking to maximize profits would result in either less services for the same price or higher prices, neither of which are desirable. This makes the public monopoly the better choice.
Lastly, the most necessary services are easier provided as public monopolies. Public monopolies, after all, can provide for unprofitable but necessary services. One example of this is the rail system throughout much of the rural United States (such as Alaska) which keeps these isolated communities connected with the outside world: there is just no way for a private service to do this profitably, and thus only a public monopoly could provide them.
All in all, a public monopoly is evidently preferable to a private one. This is because the public one offers more accountability, lower prices, and more services than privatization. These conclusions are natural and logical: empirical evidence validates that once services have been privatized, no increase in quality ever occurs, and increases in price almost inevitably follow. Thus, for the sake of all public services, their provides should remain public as well.
