[qs]Do you have any specific tasks where government and private sector performance can be compared?[/qs]Back in my youth, down under, the political right used to point to the railroads as an example of what goes wrong when the government runs things. The political left used to point to the telephones to demonstrate the efficiency of government run things.

When I came to America for graduate study, I discovered that the railroads were privately run, and were even more of a mess here than they were back in Australia. And the privately run telephone system was similarly efficient, but far more expensive.