We have experience with for-profit governments in a colonial context, mainly in the early period but with latecomers such as the Congo Free State. I wouldn’t like to be ruled by any foreign power that regarded me as less than a full citizen, but apples-to-apples comparison (say the Congo Free State vs. Belgian Congo) doesn’t give me a great deal of confidence in the for-profit over the more standard version.
Another instance of for-profit government is mafia organizations. These act much better, and put more effort into producing public goods, than the most extractive colonial states. But the general preference isn’t to live under them and equally undemocratic governments (for again apples to apples comparison) can generally establish legitimacy by eliminating them. It can be argued that mafias suffer from lack of bureaucratization (some of the largest, as in Mexico, may be counter-examples worthy of study) and the violent costliness of unclear political borders with rival “states.” I also think the lack of bureaucratization is related to the for-profit status; mafias rely especially upon family connections because attempting to function internally on an entirely profit-led basis leads to disaster.
State-owned enterprises can be seen as an instance of for-profit government. Some of these work poorly and others work extraordinarily well. However these are involved in the least essentially state-like functions, relative to the maintenance of the monopoly of violence and sovereignty.
If for-profit governments worked better than not-for-profit governments, then it would have been the East India Company that bought out Britain, not the other way around.
There is a large amount of prosocial, long-term investment that must be put into effective governance, and one can always cut costs while delaying the downstream effects for years or even decades, in government. Thus, effective governments rely on sacred values like "justice" or "ensuring a better life for our children" to maintain a legal system that people trust and a school system that bothers to actually educate.
Places like Prospera's good governance rely on the fact that they can't force people to live there (so they have to actually make living there something somebody would choose). But this is only because they are subordinated to a real government which ensures freedom of movement; an unfettered corporate state would begin to restrict migration just as countless real countries have, for much the same reasons.
There are probably a lot of other effects like this. Again, if for-profit governance was really superior, then the largest and most powerful corporate state in the history of the world would not have good quietly into the night.
A for profit government would simply confiscate everything. In fact I would say that it would be the obligation of that government to its shareholders.
Who even would be the shareholders? Dysfunctional, highly-corrupt governments are already run as "for-profit" orgs, if the "shareholders" are government officials trying to maximize their bribe income.
Because it is an historic anomaly! Normal governments more or less steal as much as possible: all land and the commanding heights of the economy are allocated to the ruling class, that in their turn rent it to tenants. You need a long cycle of burgoise revolutions (the modern West) or a militia state (Greek and Rome) to have robust property rights.
And so the objection is, maybe everyone else should want for profit governments, since their governments already steal as much as possible, but not us, because our government steals less than usual?
You cannot run anything “for profit” outside of a society with robust property rights! But if you are the government, and try to work “for profit” what you have to do is to maximize profits by universal confiscation. The whole concept of a “for profit government” is meaningless. To run something for profit, you suppose the existence of the mechanism of property as something external. When you are given the mechanism itself, you really don’t know how to act “for profit”…
In the free market, PRICE is the feedback mechanism.
In politics, VOTE is the feedback mechanism.
Today VOTE is corrupted, so politics suffers Hanson's Disease (leprosy). Govt. blunders about doing damage without feeling any pain, and so is unconstrained.
We do NOT want monopoly providers. We want govt. limited to only that which we must of necessity do collectively.
Just because there are a lot of government units does not mean there is meaningful competition between them, if the "customer" (citizen) has limited ability to switch between countries. It is usually quite a long and difficult process for most people to move to another country and change their citizenship. There are also monopolistic network effects and language barriers keeping people from moving.
Competition depends on the customer's freedom of choice without barriers preventing it.
I think this is very important, yes. We *could* set up a system where people can easily change governments, there are ways that could happen, but we don't have one and really never have had one.
Combine that with government monopoly on the use of violence, and you have pretty much destroyed the ability of the customers to provide sufficient feedback.
Add in the modern prohibitions against governments waging war in most cases, and you've also destroyed the feedback mechanisms whereby other governments remove their underperforming competitors from the market.
Hesitated to overshare, but you're quite right. Delighted to expand.
Stable systems need feedback, from governors on steam engine, to thermostats, to prices in free markets and votes in democracies.
Authoritarian govt. has many virtues, including speed, and fit with human nature across cultures The 5/15/80 distribution of personality. That is, One in twenty want and are able to lead; 80% want simple, balanced home/public life. In-between, some aspire but marginally able. In earlier times, the weak-15 ended up in menial spots or else crime. In prosperous circumstances like America, these end up in academia, media, and quasi-government spots. Mostly harmless.
Thus authoritarian societies have a place for all, and only rarely screw up. Most often that is after several generations wander too far. Revolution marks the end and new beginning.
Totalitarians are too hard on the 80%, so fail faster and harder; see USSR or wait soon for PRC.
Pure democracy descends to totalitarian; hence the saying one-man, one-vote, one-time.
The brilliant Founders formed a more durable democratic Republic, now a creditable number of generations long. Stumbled at 90 years for structural issue of slavery. But 150 years after that and still standing if a tad atilt.
America is now victim of its own prosperity. Individually with obesity, diabetes, hear disease, anomie. Collectively with growing share of population detached from need to earn a living, and thus unaware of economic reality.
Critical feedback mechanisms fail. Prices in the free market are overridden by overweening govt. Votes in the free society increasingly distorted, both patently and institutionally.
ECONOMICS Surprisingly little price information is needed to maintain markets. But we're reaching a critical low. Every socialist society ever has failed. Even welfare states UK and EU scrapped the bottom in 1980s and had to correct. Thank God for Thatcher. USSR lasted two generations after WW2, thanks to "fartsovka," and the indispensable tolkach. Afloat until 1987.
POLITICS No "beyond a shadow" proof of election fraud. But we cannot believe every public institution in America shows signs of corruption EXCEPT elections. More importantly, the greater sin is not ballot-stuffing but media-bending, and increasing detachment of the 80%.. It is not external enemies, but atherosclerosis. Boomers will retire with all the chips, and only when desperation reaches that of France 1789 will there be a reckoning.
Specific examples on request, across the range of topics/issues.
I am not sure what you think the main selective pressure has been on governments, but at the national level it seems to have been predominantly military, both in terms of individual mobilization capacity (for which GDP is an approximate metric, which is part of why it's considered such a big deal) and in terms of alliances (which benefit from cultural similarities among governing castes).
The Middle Ages in Europe, the Levant, and the Fertile Crescent was characterized by competition between Christian and Muslim systems of government, in which polylegal systems were common, and militaries had to use currencies valid outside their own territory in order to mobilize enough resources to compete with each other. But during the period roughly from 1453-1945, polylegal systems were decisively defeated by financialized nation-states which acquired control of their own currencies, at first gradually, and then suddenly in the 20th Century. Patrick Wyman's podcast series about the emergence of Modernity, and Adam Tooze's books The Deluge and The Wages of Destruction cover the gradual and rapid transitions respectively.
When a nation controls its own currency, it isn't very meaningful to think of it as operating on a for-profit basis, as any nominal profits or losses are better understood as a tool by which the regime manages the value of money and rate of economic mobilization, than as a meaningful estimate of the resources that regime can meaningfully mobilize; a nation can in principle (and is supposed to frequently in practice according to macroeconomic theory) maintain a perpetually growing (in "real" terms) national debt, taking a consistent "loss" year-over-year, while simultaneously increasing both its actual mobilization of economic resources, and reserve capacity to convert those resources to military ones when needed.
Part of the relevance of polylegal systems is that different service providers can meaningfully to appeal to customers. By contrast, territorial monopolists - especially ones with closed borders of the sort that became popular in the World War period - compete for territory (which sometimes comes with people), not for customer choice.
The emergence of cryptocurrency seems like it could in principle make it easier to run a competing regime, but strong coordination between incumbent regimes imposes the following challenges:
No new regime is likely to be able to shield its users from the need to inferface with the existing international system of territorial nation-states - to pay taxes, hold a passport if you want to travel across national borders, hold a license or other state ID if you want to travel rapidly even within national borders.
Most people in rich countries are strongly acculturated and educated to understand themselves primarily as subjects of their nation-state, to think of wealth as consisting of claims to assets within that nation-state's legal system, with values denominated in that nation-state's currency.
For-profit government was pretty much the standard for Bronze Age rulers, as I understand it. Why did that change, historically?
It was also the norm in the Age of Exploration, as European countries set out to enrich themselves using their technological advantages to expand their territories.
Specifically, Contingentative Capitocracy. It is where the government is structured like a corporation of shareholders (stateshare-holders), and its issued stateshares are publically tradeable with prices determined by the longterm ability of the government to collect taxes fswith which it pays out to statesharelholders either/both as a monetary dividend or a service dividend (roads, courts, police, hospitals, voting privileges, etc). The kicker here is that no one is allowed on government property (ie, in the country) unless he or she is a stateshareholder over some minimum amount. While in the territory, a number of stateshares are locked away as collateral.
I have just started reading _the Case for Colonialism_ by Bruce Gilley. It seems that, in Africa, various African leaders and groups, unhappy with the local mismanagement of affairs, invited the British Empire in to run things. They'd a continuous history of being conquered by local despots, who never gave them competent governance, and decided they would like it with a better class of rulers. It's been a fascinating read so far.
I am not sure the profit here is more than just an increasingly prosperous tax base, but
would that be enough? Seems a noble enough goal. I really want this to work, and not be just the latest in a series of ways to waste money not improving lives in Africa.
By that definition, my wife and I are an organization. I think there’s more to it. Clearly, the distinction is not that huge, but somehow, I think it matters.
So what lies in between an organization and an individual? Perhaps an informal social institution. We have standard games we play and roles we fulfill. They have rules we didn’t make up, but that we might be able to change if everyone agrees.
"They actually greatly prefer autocrats who substantially serve personal ends!"
Politicians primarily serving their personal ends (the main one being getting votes) is a fully accepted principle in European sociology for 200 years. That's called modernity. Unlike for-profit-prisons for example, with are premodern dysfunctional institutions (because institutions have functions, believe it or not).
A historical example of for-profit government is the Dutch West India Company, which had commercial outposts in many locations in the New World. Company-appointed officers, like Peter Stuyvesant in New Amsterdam, served as de-facto government officials.
The common explanation for why nobody in that part of the world today speaks Dutch is that when the going got tough, these commercial interests bailed. Two problems: (a) not many employees will put their life on the line to defend a corporation, and (b) a corporation tends to drop any activity that cannot turn a profit, and functioning societies have quite a few of these things.
I love the idea of government outsourcing more of its work to for-profit companies; tremendous value to unlock there. A favorite example is NASA's COTS program for orbital services; SpaceX wouldn't exist without it. A lot of National Park Service operations are outsourced. Imagine how much better the DMV experience would be if for-profit company ran it.
That presumes some kind of oversight, like govt would provide over a for-profit utility. That regulator compels the utility to provide needed services. What is being proposed here is for-profit all the way down; who or what provides that oversight?
You should acknowledge that the empirical evidence is a bit iffy here. In the Congo, the part that the Belgian government ran was an ok, though colonial, government. The part that was the personal property of Leopold is a permanent exhibit in the museum of human evil.
It is not always true that that for-profit companies are more efficient than government organizations. When it is true, this efficiency often occurs via some variant of what is essentially cheating and non-ethical practices. For-profit companies save labor costs by paying unfair wages and ignoring safety laws; externalizing costs via dumping; and strategizing to maximize short-term profits.
The profit motive seems worse than humans pursuing their complex personal agendas.
Are there good for-profit universities? "Company towns" drive a shiver of fear down our bodies because worker exploitation can be extreme. Sometimes such towns are parodied in movies such as 'Sorry to bother you' but sober-minded accounts are also damning.
Genuine amazement is hard to express in text, but, count me, uhm, wide-eyed. So people think that way. Hm. One of these is not more ethically questionable than the other to you. Well. I'm sorry you feel that way. :-(
There would have to be a huge amount of "cheating and non-ethical practice" to explain how for-profit firms dominate over other orgs in almost all industries. Paying market prices is not "unfair". You also have to explain why non-for-profit orgs do NOT do any of this cheating.
We have experience with for-profit governments in a colonial context, mainly in the early period but with latecomers such as the Congo Free State. I wouldn’t like to be ruled by any foreign power that regarded me as less than a full citizen, but apples-to-apples comparison (say the Congo Free State vs. Belgian Congo) doesn’t give me a great deal of confidence in the for-profit over the more standard version.
Another instance of for-profit government is mafia organizations. These act much better, and put more effort into producing public goods, than the most extractive colonial states. But the general preference isn’t to live under them and equally undemocratic governments (for again apples to apples comparison) can generally establish legitimacy by eliminating them. It can be argued that mafias suffer from lack of bureaucratization (some of the largest, as in Mexico, may be counter-examples worthy of study) and the violent costliness of unclear political borders with rival “states.” I also think the lack of bureaucratization is related to the for-profit status; mafias rely especially upon family connections because attempting to function internally on an entirely profit-led basis leads to disaster.
State-owned enterprises can be seen as an instance of for-profit government. Some of these work poorly and others work extraordinarily well. However these are involved in the least essentially state-like functions, relative to the maintenance of the monopoly of violence and sovereignty.
Where would the p[rofits go in a for-profit government? Would we have investors or shareholders or something else in that class?
If for-profit governments worked better than not-for-profit governments, then it would have been the East India Company that bought out Britain, not the other way around.
There is a large amount of prosocial, long-term investment that must be put into effective governance, and one can always cut costs while delaying the downstream effects for years or even decades, in government. Thus, effective governments rely on sacred values like "justice" or "ensuring a better life for our children" to maintain a legal system that people trust and a school system that bothers to actually educate.
Places like Prospera's good governance rely on the fact that they can't force people to live there (so they have to actually make living there something somebody would choose). But this is only because they are subordinated to a real government which ensures freedom of movement; an unfettered corporate state would begin to restrict migration just as countless real countries have, for much the same reasons.
There are probably a lot of other effects like this. Again, if for-profit governance was really superior, then the largest and most powerful corporate state in the history of the world would not have good quietly into the night.
A for profit government would simply confiscate everything. In fact I would say that it would be the obligation of that government to its shareholders.
Who even would be the shareholders? Dysfunctional, highly-corrupt governments are already run as "for-profit" orgs, if the "shareholders" are government officials trying to maximize their bribe income.
Why doesn’t the existing government confiscate everything?
Because it is an historic anomaly! Normal governments more or less steal as much as possible: all land and the commanding heights of the economy are allocated to the ruling class, that in their turn rent it to tenants. You need a long cycle of burgoise revolutions (the modern West) or a militia state (Greek and Rome) to have robust property rights.
And so the objection is, maybe everyone else should want for profit governments, since their governments already steal as much as possible, but not us, because our government steals less than usual?
You cannot run anything “for profit” outside of a society with robust property rights! But if you are the government, and try to work “for profit” what you have to do is to maximize profits by universal confiscation. The whole concept of a “for profit government” is meaningless. To run something for profit, you suppose the existence of the mechanism of property as something external. When you are given the mechanism itself, you really don’t know how to act “for profit”…
If it is meaningless, why are you saying so much about it, and how do you draw conclusions about what they would have to do or cannot do?
No.
In the free market, PRICE is the feedback mechanism.
In politics, VOTE is the feedback mechanism.
Today VOTE is corrupted, so politics suffers Hanson's Disease (leprosy). Govt. blunders about doing damage without feeling any pain, and so is unconstrained.
We do NOT want monopoly providers. We want govt. limited to only that which we must of necessity do collectively.
There are ~200 countries in the world, and far more govt units. We aren't remotely near a monopoly situation.
Just because there are a lot of government units does not mean there is meaningful competition between them, if the "customer" (citizen) has limited ability to switch between countries. It is usually quite a long and difficult process for most people to move to another country and change their citizenship. There are also monopolistic network effects and language barriers keeping people from moving.
Competition depends on the customer's freedom of choice without barriers preventing it.
I think this is very important, yes. We *could* set up a system where people can easily change governments, there are ways that could happen, but we don't have one and really never have had one.
Combine that with government monopoly on the use of violence, and you have pretty much destroyed the ability of the customers to provide sufficient feedback.
Add in the modern prohibitions against governments waging war in most cases, and you've also destroyed the feedback mechanisms whereby other governments remove their underperforming competitors from the market.
I mean any govt should provide only that which actual private market cannot. Like "defend the border ; no libertarian snark please.
Otherwise govt becomes just another collectivist effort like a mutual insurer, where client are the owners.
Note that such mutuals are largely gone, as unresponsive.
Meanwhile any "govt mutual" with govt powers will inevitably abuse sovereign ability.
TLDR: Define govt nnarrowly. Then let free market capital fill all other demand.
You can't just declare "should" and be done with the topic. You are supposed to offer arguments for and against various possibilities.
Hesitated to overshare, but you're quite right. Delighted to expand.
Stable systems need feedback, from governors on steam engine, to thermostats, to prices in free markets and votes in democracies.
Authoritarian govt. has many virtues, including speed, and fit with human nature across cultures The 5/15/80 distribution of personality. That is, One in twenty want and are able to lead; 80% want simple, balanced home/public life. In-between, some aspire but marginally able. In earlier times, the weak-15 ended up in menial spots or else crime. In prosperous circumstances like America, these end up in academia, media, and quasi-government spots. Mostly harmless.
Thus authoritarian societies have a place for all, and only rarely screw up. Most often that is after several generations wander too far. Revolution marks the end and new beginning.
Totalitarians are too hard on the 80%, so fail faster and harder; see USSR or wait soon for PRC.
Pure democracy descends to totalitarian; hence the saying one-man, one-vote, one-time.
The brilliant Founders formed a more durable democratic Republic, now a creditable number of generations long. Stumbled at 90 years for structural issue of slavery. But 150 years after that and still standing if a tad atilt.
America is now victim of its own prosperity. Individually with obesity, diabetes, hear disease, anomie. Collectively with growing share of population detached from need to earn a living, and thus unaware of economic reality.
Critical feedback mechanisms fail. Prices in the free market are overridden by overweening govt. Votes in the free society increasingly distorted, both patently and institutionally.
ECONOMICS Surprisingly little price information is needed to maintain markets. But we're reaching a critical low. Every socialist society ever has failed. Even welfare states UK and EU scrapped the bottom in 1980s and had to correct. Thank God for Thatcher. USSR lasted two generations after WW2, thanks to "fartsovka," and the indispensable tolkach. Afloat until 1987.
POLITICS No "beyond a shadow" proof of election fraud. But we cannot believe every public institution in America shows signs of corruption EXCEPT elections. More importantly, the greater sin is not ballot-stuffing but media-bending, and increasing detachment of the 80%.. It is not external enemies, but atherosclerosis. Boomers will retire with all the chips, and only when desperation reaches that of France 1789 will there be a reckoning.
Specific examples on request, across the range of topics/issues.
Your discussion doesn't even mention for-profit govt, the topic of this post.
You suggest the profit motive might work as well for government as it does for free enterprise.
If that means “privatization,” return swaths to the free market, that's a great idea.
But if it’s “performance based pay” in government, forget about ambition and incentives. How will “for-profit” ever discipline losers?
Employees choose government because it is easy duty for above-average pay, and far safer than private work.
Govt. pay is already far too high, and with far too many employed.
“For profit” govt. will never accept pay cuts for bad performance.
Fired for failure is inconceivable.
Fatally, no part of govt. can ever go “bankrupt.”
Govt. already interferes in far too much in the economy. By nature govt. seeks to grow at every opportunity.
No assistant-deputy-under-secretary will stop grasping for more, much less let go of anything already in his grip.
Pure tax-and-spend govt. is terribly inefficient, ineffective and prone to corruption.
“For-profit” just throws more fuel on the conflagration.
Well said
sacred feel of non-profits style to explain the madness of their tax exemption for contributions.
the government effectively subsidizes non profits without any oversight of optimization. but sacred
I am not sure what you think the main selective pressure has been on governments, but at the national level it seems to have been predominantly military, both in terms of individual mobilization capacity (for which GDP is an approximate metric, which is part of why it's considered such a big deal) and in terms of alliances (which benefit from cultural similarities among governing castes).
The Middle Ages in Europe, the Levant, and the Fertile Crescent was characterized by competition between Christian and Muslim systems of government, in which polylegal systems were common, and militaries had to use currencies valid outside their own territory in order to mobilize enough resources to compete with each other. But during the period roughly from 1453-1945, polylegal systems were decisively defeated by financialized nation-states which acquired control of their own currencies, at first gradually, and then suddenly in the 20th Century. Patrick Wyman's podcast series about the emergence of Modernity, and Adam Tooze's books The Deluge and The Wages of Destruction cover the gradual and rapid transitions respectively.
When a nation controls its own currency, it isn't very meaningful to think of it as operating on a for-profit basis, as any nominal profits or losses are better understood as a tool by which the regime manages the value of money and rate of economic mobilization, than as a meaningful estimate of the resources that regime can meaningfully mobilize; a nation can in principle (and is supposed to frequently in practice according to macroeconomic theory) maintain a perpetually growing (in "real" terms) national debt, taking a consistent "loss" year-over-year, while simultaneously increasing both its actual mobilization of economic resources, and reserve capacity to convert those resources to military ones when needed.
Part of the relevance of polylegal systems is that different service providers can meaningfully to appeal to customers. By contrast, territorial monopolists - especially ones with closed borders of the sort that became popular in the World War period - compete for territory (which sometimes comes with people), not for customer choice.
The emergence of cryptocurrency seems like it could in principle make it easier to run a competing regime, but strong coordination between incumbent regimes imposes the following challenges:
No new regime is likely to be able to shield its users from the need to inferface with the existing international system of territorial nation-states - to pay taxes, hold a passport if you want to travel across national borders, hold a license or other state ID if you want to travel rapidly even within national borders.
Most people in rich countries are strongly acculturated and educated to understand themselves primarily as subjects of their nation-state, to think of wealth as consisting of claims to assets within that nation-state's legal system, with values denominated in that nation-state's currency.
For-profit government was pretty much the standard for Bronze Age rulers, as I understand it. Why did that change, historically?
It was also the norm in the Age of Exploration, as European countries set out to enrich themselves using their technological advantages to expand their territories.
have you ever heard of Capitocracy?
Specifically, Contingentative Capitocracy. It is where the government is structured like a corporation of shareholders (stateshare-holders), and its issued stateshares are publically tradeable with prices determined by the longterm ability of the government to collect taxes fswith which it pays out to statesharelholders either/both as a monetary dividend or a service dividend (roads, courts, police, hospitals, voting privileges, etc). The kicker here is that no one is allowed on government property (ie, in the country) unless he or she is a stateshareholder over some minimum amount. While in the territory, a number of stateshares are locked away as collateral.
I have just started reading _the Case for Colonialism_ by Bruce Gilley. It seems that, in Africa, various African leaders and groups, unhappy with the local mismanagement of affairs, invited the British Empire in to run things. They'd a continuous history of being conquered by local despots, who never gave them competent governance, and decided they would like it with a better class of rulers. It's been a fascinating read so far.
still reading Gilley ...
The for profit government seems intellectually related to Paul Romer's idea of charter cities, which https://chartercitiesinstitute.org/ is trying to bring about. Relevant substack here: https://magatte.substack.com/p/fasten-your-seat-belts-we-are-bringing
I am not sure the profit here is more than just an increasingly prosperous tax base, but
would that be enough? Seems a noble enough goal. I really want this to work, and not be just the latest in a series of ways to waste money not improving lives in Africa.
By that definition, my wife and I are an organization. I think there’s more to it. Clearly, the distinction is not that huge, but somehow, I think it matters.
So what lies in between an organization and an individual? Perhaps an informal social institution. We have standard games we play and roles we fulfill. They have rules we didn’t make up, but that we might be able to change if everyone agrees.
"They actually greatly prefer autocrats who substantially serve personal ends!"
Politicians primarily serving their personal ends (the main one being getting votes) is a fully accepted principle in European sociology for 200 years. That's called modernity. Unlike for-profit-prisons for example, with are premodern dysfunctional institutions (because institutions have functions, believe it or not).
A historical example of for-profit government is the Dutch West India Company, which had commercial outposts in many locations in the New World. Company-appointed officers, like Peter Stuyvesant in New Amsterdam, served as de-facto government officials.
The common explanation for why nobody in that part of the world today speaks Dutch is that when the going got tough, these commercial interests bailed. Two problems: (a) not many employees will put their life on the line to defend a corporation, and (b) a corporation tends to drop any activity that cannot turn a profit, and functioning societies have quite a few of these things.
I love the idea of government outsourcing more of its work to for-profit companies; tremendous value to unlock there. A favorite example is NASA's COTS program for orbital services; SpaceX wouldn't exist without it. A lot of National Park Service operations are outsourced. Imagine how much better the DMV experience would be if for-profit company ran it.
“corporation tends to drop any activity that cannot turn a profit”
If Dropping it means they go out of business, they won’t drop it.
That presumes some kind of oversight, like govt would provide over a for-profit utility. That regulator compels the utility to provide needed services. What is being proposed here is for-profit all the way down; who or what provides that oversight?
You should acknowledge that the empirical evidence is a bit iffy here. In the Congo, the part that the Belgian government ran was an ok, though colonial, government. The part that was the personal property of Leopold is a permanent exhibit in the museum of human evil.
"Even thought msot" -> "Even thought most"
It is not always true that that for-profit companies are more efficient than government organizations. When it is true, this efficiency often occurs via some variant of what is essentially cheating and non-ethical practices. For-profit companies save labor costs by paying unfair wages and ignoring safety laws; externalizing costs via dumping; and strategizing to maximize short-term profits.
The profit motive seems worse than humans pursuing their complex personal agendas.
Are there good for-profit universities? "Company towns" drive a shiver of fear down our bodies because worker exploitation can be extreme. Sometimes such towns are parodied in movies such as 'Sorry to bother you' but sober-minded accounts are also damning.
https://www.pbs.org/tpt/slavery-by-another-name/themes/company-towns
It is not "cheating" by paying low wages, any more than it is "cheating" to find a supplier at a lower price for any other input.
Genuine amazement is hard to express in text, but, count me, uhm, wide-eyed. So people think that way. Hm. One of these is not more ethically questionable than the other to you. Well. I'm sorry you feel that way. :-(
It may be hard to express in text, but you are invited to try.
There would have to be a huge amount of "cheating and non-ethical practice" to explain how for-profit firms dominate over other orgs in almost all industries. Paying market prices is not "unfair". You also have to explain why non-for-profit orgs do NOT do any of this cheating.