There are certain societal functions that the government can undertake with better efficiency than any private company, for example, law and order and military defence, which is their veritable raison d’être. Even with the last two examples, it’s not due to the stellar management skills of governments, but as a result of the practicalities involved.
There are some fanatics of capitalism who espouse the idea of the privatisation of law and order and even the military, though you can have some form of it for the latter. Let’s assume, for instance, two citizens employ the services of two private law and order firms. Then citizen B accuses A of stealing his property, which then induces the arrival of the swat cars of their individual law and order providers to the supposed crime scene. At the worse scenario, each of these companies claims the illegitimacy of the other. You can just help yourself regarding what happens next. With the military, it is much efficient to pull resources rather than having individual providers deciding how much tanks or fighter jets it requires.
On the contrary, government management of enterprises meant for the creation of wealth, besides providing vital services, has been abysmal to say the least. Before the era of Margaret Thatcher, all vital state utility companies were all state owned across the board in Western Europe, and their services were nothing to write home about. By the time she came to power in 1979, the new Jerusalem Labour proclaimed in 1945 had collapsed.
The Iron Lady had the thankless job of shovelling the rubbles away, and cleaned it up to make it the strong economy the British are accustomed to now. When the British realised the stupidity of this ideology, the Labour Party, which was committed to the nationalisation of all industries in Britain, they had to ditch their famous 1918 clause 4 – the god of the pre-Blair Labour Party. This happened, because Thatcher came to show them a better option. That was when they...