Choice is a necessary condition for free markets. There is little to no choice in water, roads, phone lines, rail transport, etc. I still don't understand why the UK went down this path.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thatcherism
Or talk to a few older folks about Britain in the 1970's and 1980's.
But "2 + 2 = 3 is false" is not an argument for "2 + 2 = 5 is true".
(FWIW - I've seen arguments, in a broad range of periodicals, to the effect that the current generation of British politicians - if not the entire British ruling class - are dysfunctional sh*t, and the UK's future looks pretty bleak.)
And the west pushed this Privatize All The Things model into the former Soviet bloc, too, where mass brutal privatization of the huge portfolio of state assets created the kleptocrat economic they have there now.
Nobody ever denied that the free market is efficient. The question is: efficient at what?
Its really disconcerning how many people simply assume that small nations have no agency whatsoever. It's this kind of thinking that births ideas about Russian/American zones of influence around Europe and similar very dangerous antiquated nonsense.
It need to die.
As for zones of influence... It is very real. That's why we jumped into NATO at first opportunity. A lot of companies were privatised looking for capital from, e.g., specifically USA, to make sure they have more interest in our survival. And any Russian investment is seen as a possible risk.
Moving control of capital to capitalists. That's what it does. That's all it does. That's all it's ever been capable of doing.
In hindsight, much stricter regulation regarding reinvestment of profits would have been a good idea.
The regulatory structure of the privatized industry says the water companies can only make profits if they make capital investments, and so the amount invested in water infrastructure in the UK (particularly England) has duly gone up a lot since privatization and has been comparable or higher to other nations since.
From this point of view, it's less about choice and markets as a way to structure the regulation and ownership so that capital investment actually happens.
That's such a ridiculous argument though.
Privatisation increasing investment means one of two things, either the investors are getting ripped off or they're going to get a profitable return on their investment. Assuming no government would admit to the first and no investor would intentionally invest in the first, let's assume the second is the plan. In which case, if the investment will yield profits, there's no reason the government shouldn't make the investment themselves so that the public get the profits (as well as the benefits from increased investment at the start).