Reply to post:

This is too complex for me to think about on my day off :)

If I just take the point about it being about markets and regulation, there are still a lot of different examples that prove or disprove any arguments. The initial privatisation process should upset most people, unless you are one of the people buying pound notes for sixty pence. The market for the shares is deliberately skewed to create the demand for all the shares being sold at once, rather than sell them off in chunks at the market price when they are sold. Elsewhere, the market for the privatised Post Office has the universal delivery constraint, electricity generation and supply by the same company seems to allow them to move costs and profits to again skew the market and the essential needs for high street banking services were mixed with the gambling of investment banking so that when the latter messed up we were all hit by the fallout.

The issue for Governments in providing what they deem to be services required for the good of the Country seems to be the inability to negotiate supply contracts, leaving companies to scoop them up and sub-contract them elsewhere taking a healthy slice of the fees. The Government also seems unable to determine the impact on the market of the regulation they impose; get the cheapest cleaners into the Hospitals and ignore the germ breeding grounds.

I'd suggest privatising the contract negotiation and regulation, but we already have the advisers to the tax dodgers helping create the tax rules, and vice versa.