Your argument boils down to "public service is awful". The article simply states that privatizing is simply making things worse.

Privatizing is not the solution. You said yourself: "We pay far too little for services like water". Well, yeah. Stop paying so damn little for your infrastructure then.

Your critique of public service is that it is unable to function with so little ressource. I don't see that as a failure from the public service itself, but from the society that should be making it work.

And I mean society, not government. It's too easy to fault the big bad government for being unable to do it. That's the taxpayers that are in the end voting for populists that will pledge to reduce spending and taxes to unrealistic levels, breaking public services, preparing the terrain for privatization and selling to their friends.

Anyway.