Without the private sector utility company, there wouldn't be a mechanism to raise funds from and pay profits to shareholders.

Sure there would be; raise funds: tax, pay profits: reduce tax / tax breaks. The real differentiator is in the ability to choose who your shareholders are with less scrutiny.

I tend to agree, but that's a collective decision and action problem, which we have difficulty with as a society today.

There is very little reason for private utilities to exist in California, especially PG&E (none of them are great, but PG*E is especially bad), which keeps funding lavishly to lobby against expansion of public utility coverage areas, committing homicide, and going bankrupt only to be resurrected in an endless cycle of nonsense.