I'm not 100% on this, but it seems all of the best aspects of American services come from competition and letting capitalism thrive.
Would love a counter opinion.
In addition, comparing the government with the private sector is pretty silly. They have different goals. Private companies try to maximize profit, even if it comes with massive externalities (which, barring regulations, they happily pass on to others). Governments aim to serve their citizens, even if it comes at the expense of efficiency. This means that any given problem will be handled very differently by the private sector compared to the government. The route we pick really depends on our priorities as a society.
That's a pretty poor argument if you line it up against gov't waste, incompetence and corruption.
Government provided services provide the opportunity for total transparency; this is not the case in the private sector.
EDIT: @refurb: You're confusing a free market with what the United States has. A free market it ain't (especially regarding healthcare).
If one doesn't exist, I wouldn't like our system to move into that direction based upon wild speculation and pure theory. The implicit assumption in free market models is that people are rational agents, when all research shows that people are highly irrational.
Wouldn't you like see evidence of how a free market would function on the scale of the United States? Like a scientist, not like a religious zealot?
In fact, the reason government sucks right now is that corporations/wealthy have rigged the game by buying representation average citizens can't compete with (legalized corruption = lobbying).
You may think medicare, for instance, is run horribly -- but I'm pretty confident that seniors are far happier with it than they were pawning off their possessions to get medical treatment prior to it being created.
- Medicaid
- Medicare
- The USPS (which, let's be honest, is freaking amazing for the price)
- Social security
- Basic research
- The military (remember our private security contractors and how much more horrible they were?)
- The fire department
- The police (can you imagine how horrible a private police force would be?)
And on the flip side, consider how atrocious private prisons are compared to federally operated ones.
I'm sure there are many, many others...
Sure, but empirically, seniors are far happier with privatized Medicare plans than they are with publicly-administered Medicare plans. Original Medicare has the lowest satisfaction rates of all major Medicare plans - far lower than the lowest of the privately-managed plans.
Medicaid is run at the state level, but the same applies there as well - privately managed Medicaid plans are gaining popularity because they deliver better medical results at lower prices.
> The USPS (which, let's be honest, is freaking amazing for the price)
USPS is a mixed bag, but it isn't a straightforward comparison, because the USPS is statutorily protected from competition. For example, by law, all private carriers are required to charge at least twice what USPS charges for a first-class letter - so when you say it's "amazing for the price", we're already dealing with a warped perception of what mail delivery costs.
Most of the other examples you list don't address OP's question ("Do we have examples of the government running a service better than the private sector"), because there hasn't been a private sector for those in modern history for us to compare them with.
I suspect it would be highly case-by-case, which is fine and how a deliberative legislative body should function. I'd still be extremely leery of private police, military, fire, or infrastructure, it just seems like a transparently bad idea.
Like our security contractors paid by the military, who cost vastly more than public employees and have far less oversight. And who (possibly coincidentally, but come on) are to blame for the worst abuses by our forces overseas.
But for some specific, narrow market (like space travel or health care or even retirement funds) I'd be absolutely willing to give them a chance as long as it didn't break the existing government system.
Charter schools seem like a good case study in that, which I say not because the data completely backs up the idea that government run is always better, but because it's a very complex system with many examples that provide insight in both directions.
This is disputable. Private companies are also motivated by greed which means they'll cut corners to save penies.
Every other first world country?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_univers...
In effect, it's not that different from a single-payer system funded by a progressive income tax. I have thought the German system might be a better fit for the US, since sickness funds can still compete with each other, mostly on customer service and the like.
In addition to that, the German system isn't really a private system. The premium and health coverage is set by law and the insurances are not-for-profit entities. There's the possibility to get private insurance for parts of the population, but you're not dependent on private companies.
(Yes, mediterranean countries have a higher life expectancy due to diet and physical activity, but that wouldn't change much with a different health care model.)
You seem to misunderstand the role of governments though. Citizens and taxpayers are not shareholders seeking to maximize return on investment. The government exists to provide for national defense, rule of law, postal service, and domestic security. Private industry would have an incentive to not provide these services for free riders (the poor, those who dodge payment, etc.)
Private industry also ignores externalities in their pricing, which is why we have regulation. I quite like not having to pay for relatively clean air.
Medicare is a good case study, because Medicare has both publicly managed plans and privately managed plans.
As it turns out Medicare Advantage (the privately managed plans) consistently beat Original Medicare on the three primary metrics: cost, medical outcomes, and patient satisfaction scores.
(In fact, Original Medicare has the lowest satisfaction rates of all major Medicare plans).