This needs serious backing as evidence seems to show the opposite. For instance, if we pick firefighting as an example what is there evidence that private firefighting is a good idea? In recent history this kind of thinking have led to disasters like in Tennessee:

  - http://www.nbcnews.com/id/39516346/ns/us_news-life/t/no-pay-no-spray-firefighters-let-home-burn/#.UkpUgGSidTp

and during the 1800s private firefighting was a true disaster for homeowners:

  - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tina-dupuy/firefighting-in-the-1800s_b_247936.html

Private companies are great for a lot of things, but I am not sure that I would trust someone that might decide to prioritize a quick short-term profit over a long-term maintenance goal to provide all essential city services (fire, police, sewer, roads, etc).

By "disasters like in Tennessee," you're referring to a family that lost their home in a fire due to not paying a business for their fire-fighting services.

It's not as if they paid the firefighters, but the firefighters refused to act--if that were the case, there would be a serious civil lawsuit to recoup the cost of the lost home, its sentimental value, and punitive damages.

He didn't pay for fire-fighting. He didn't have enough insurance. And somehow, this is someone else's fault.

Yes, the family had not paid the insurance. But why does that matter in the context of the blanket claim that private companies can always do at least as good of a job as a government organization with less waste?

A city firefighting crew would not refuse to put out this fire so it is an example of a service that was provided at a lower quality in the private market due to market incentives.

The firefighters in the Tennessee case you cited were city firefighters. There were no private firefighters or private firefighting companies involved.

The Tennessee firefighter story has come up on HN before, probably because it was used as an allegory in discussions about the Democratic PPACA health care plan (which I support, ftr).

Some addition fun facts you want to know before making up your mind about what happened in this "disaster":

* The structure that burned down was on unincorporated land outside the tiny town of South Fulton, which is about as far as you can get in Tennessee away from any major metro area (it's approximately equidistant from Memphis and Nashville, near the equally rural southern tip of Illinois and Indiana).

* The owner of the structure deliberately chose to live in an area that had no fire coverage, unlike people who live in incorporated South Fulton and thus contribute directly to the South Fulton FD.

* The owner had no fire coverage because they refused to pay a $75 annual fee to extend coverage to their property.

* The structure that burned down was a doublewide trailer whose value might not have been that much higher than the assessable cost of firefighting service (when this discussion last came up I found numbers ranging from 20k to 50k). You can find estimates on the internet of fire department costs for one incident hovering in the mid-thousands, assuming no complications, and that's the FD's cost basis, not the chargeable cost.

Ultimately I don't think there's much to learn from what happened in Obion County. It will always be possible to situate your home far from the reasonable service area of a fire department, and it seems unreasonable to suggest that merely by doing so, the nearest municipality should be on the hook for providing coverage.

"Individuals make catastrophically bad decisions that the collective can avoid" is a perfectly reasonable lesson to learn from it. Another reasonable lesson is how easily money corrupts people. For want of $75, supposed "firefighters" already on-scene would not even turn their hoses a few inches. I don't know how they sleep at night.

What collective? We're talking about people who deliberately excluded themselves from "the collective".

That's gotta be about the least justifiable statement in political-economic commentating history.

1. Government is less efficient than a privately owned, profit-seeking company--at least in most cases. If a business is inefficient, an efficient competitor will wipe them out. The same cause and effect doesn't exist for governments, except in the most extreme cases (revolution).

2. Markets that state and local governments dominate are large. Do you really think Waste Management would hesitate to take new markets that were previously controlled via government contract? Or that private prisons wouldn't purchase and run ones that were previously state-controlled? Or that power and water companies wouldn't realize the incredible opportunity to expand into new areas that were previously monopolized through government interference?

Your first point is true in idealized situations. There are many circumstances which contribute to the benefit of incumbents. Regulatory capture, first-mover advantage, cartels, price collusion, asymmetric information are just a few tools inefficient incumbents use against new efficient competitors.

Your example of waste, power, and water are a few cases where people, I think, support the government granted monopoly status. These industries have huge fixed costs and generate large externalities. Reliable waste management is a communal concern with clear risks to public health. I'd rather not have the trash company decide my neighborhood is too far to service weekly and switches to monthly pickup.

Government exists as a function of the people to balance externalities. Does it go to far sometimes? Sure. But when people are actively engaged though government can be a force for good.

Do you really think a private police force paid for by a particular group of individuals would be a fair and neutral enforcer of laws?

Yeah I'm sure private policing would work great.

Are you suggesting the state policing is working well?

Yes, because privatization worked so well for the prison system.

I also recall something about private tax debt collectors who basically took peoples homes. Some things should not be privatized or "optimized" for maximum efficiency.