Dat inequality

[Renton]

Please do.

I will try not to present everything in public vs private dichotomy but it will sometimes be necessary. For one thing, the primary difference between a public service and a private one is that the public one is almost always an enforced monopoly. In cases where isn't an outright monopoly, there are measures put in place to insure that no private service can truly compete with them, and it is impossible for citizens to determine the true costs of the public service.

Take fictional tire manufacturer Tirez Are Us for example, hereafter referred as Tirez. That Tirez must compete with other tire companies is the single most important force against corrupt or incompetent business practice. In order to make a profit in a competitive market, Tirez has to provide a product or service to the consumer at a price he is willing to pay next to the alternatives, and if the consumer isn't satisfied with that exchange, he will choose another provider. This pressure is ever-present in a free market, and its more than what's immediately apparent. Clearly, Tirez must provide either a higher quality or lower priced tire to compete with other tire companies, but even if the company has 100% market share in an area, it still has to compete with the specter of a competitor yet to arrive. If Tirez is ripping off and defrauding consumers in an area where it is the only provider for 100 miles in every direction, then Tirez's rapidly tarnishing reputation and high prices will create a large profit signal for competitors to enter the area and carve out a foothold for themselves.

Even if some tyrannical mega-corporation merged with Tirez and dominated every aspect of the tire economy, from rubber extraction, to manufacturing, to distribution, and the entire automobile economy to boot, they still would face market pressure not to rip people off. This is because of substitution. People have other means to travel. There are other materials that tires could be made from than rubber. Consumers have the capacity to substitute a nearly infinite amount of products for products less available, and this makes it literally impossible for such corruption and fraud to run rampant in the private sector. It is only through state-sanctioned means that companies have any power to run amok in this way.

So that covers competition, the primary market force that keeps everyone honest that only can be prohibited by states. The other common argument is that we need state-based watchdog institutions to make sure that our private providers give us safe and effective products. Well aside from competition, if people value the peace of mind that comes from such a service, it isn't as if watchdogs are incapable of emerging in a free market. The simplest examples of these are websites like yelp and tripadvisor, but those examples are kind of superficial and not likely to satisfy the more left-minded people. A somewhat better example is the Better Business Bureau.

Nearly 400,000 local businesses in North America support the BBB.^[4] The BBB invites successfully vetted businesses to become dues-paying Accredited Businesses that pledge and continue to adhere to the BBB Code of Business Practices.^[6] In return, the BBB allows Accredited Businesses in good standing to use its trademarked logo in marketing materials.

The effectiveness of the BBB in preventing unethical business practices notwithstanding, this is at the very least proof that business are willing to pay to be be policed, and by extension, their customers are willing to pay for the privilege of knowing whether a business meets a stated list of minimal standards.

This model could very easily extend to a forthcoming private corporation that fills the role of currently state-run departments of health inspection. Provided that customers who eat at restaurants or buy from grocery stores value knowing whether said businesses are on the up and up, those businesses will pay a company to do random health inspections and keep an up to date health score. As such inspection services would exist in a private context of ever-present competition, they would be similarly forced to provide an effective service. Eventually, businesses would highly value the seal of approval that comes from a prestigiously pre-eminent inspection company, and would be foolish not to seek one. Needless to say, this would all come at a decreased cost to the bureaucratic state-based alternative that has much fewer incentives to increase the quality or reduce the cost of its work to the consumer.