Matt Yglesias sez:  “The genius of the real private economy is
that firms that are really poorly run go out of business. It’s
not that some magic private sector fairy dust makes the firms
all be runs soundly. Lots of bad businesses are out there. But
they tend to lose money and close. Meanwhile, well-run firms
tend to earn profits and expand. The public sector doesn’t have
this feature. Just because a public agency is inept is no
guarantee that it will go out of business. Resources are
allocating according to political clout rather than any criteria
of merit. It’s a problem. But it’s not a problem that
“privatizing” public services actually solves. There’s no magic
private sector fairy dust.”  You’d think this would be obvious,
but to a lot of people, it’s not. I don’t know whether this is
because people think especially little of the government, or
simply don’t have enough private business experience to realize
how badly a lot of them are actually run (and how many of them
fail).  (via Andrew Sullivan.)  Van