I assume the myth being that will never be able to provide 'timely and cost-effective services', not that they currently aren't.

If the belief is that there is no way that the government could ever provide good services, then the only solution seems to be to get rid of them and have someone else provide good services. The challenge I see with this solution is that private service providers have a very very strong incentive to get people to believe that this is the only solution: it's hard to compete with an effective monopoly.

If the belief is that they could provide good services, then we might see that maybe they don't provide good services for a number of reasons and try to improve them as well.

It could also be that one party WANTS to provide good services while the other party is bought by the private industry and thus never wants government services to be good.

EXAMPLE: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/02/biden-cannot-fir...

I agree but maybe could have said it differently:

> The challenge I see with this solution is that private service providers have a very very strong incentive to get people to believe that this is the only solution: it's hard to compete with an effective monopoly.

The myth is that governments are "fundamentally incapable." That they're not in this particular case doesn't speak to the larger issue.

One political party has been devoted to handicapping government functions at every possible point for at least 40 years, and still some parts of the government continue to function well, so well that people don't even notice or think about them.

People notice the IRS--underfunded on purpose, and with intense lobbying to ensure it is illegal to provide a higher quality of service--and the DMV--underfunded in most states--but not anything else that works cost-effectively, like public schools or the USPS.

When you have evidence that some governments are timely and cost-effective, then it's a myth that governments are fundamentally incapable.