What about telecommunications, air travel and banking?

I don't pay any bank fees. They are for suckers.

So you think the government should get back into those businesses? Or should not have sold them in the first place? What other businesses should the government be running?

The business we should have as private are those that should have been.

I guess what I'm trying to get at is what is your underlying philosophy for judging what should be private and what should be government run?

There are a lot of services that could be considered essential. Air travel would not be at the top of the list.

'They' won't have a monopoly because 'they' are not one entity.

So how do you judge what is an 'essential' service - ie a service that the government should provide? Maybe you should just give us a list.

Can you be a bit more specific? Every politician would claim that their policies are in the best interests of the public. How would you judge what is in the people's interests? What is it about some indistries and not others that means the government should get involved in them?

How about I tell you what I think instead?

Private business should be expected to provide all goods and services, with a few key exceptions - two that I can think of at the moment.

1) Government should supply a service where it would be immoral to leave it to the whims of the free market. For example, it would be immoral to allow a child to forgoe a basic education because their parents cannot afford it. It would be immoral to allow someone to die because they cannot afford basic medical treatment. What we define as 'basic' is where the real debate is as both can be a bottomless pit of expense. Societies tend to spend a large chunk of their GDP on health and education, whether they are poor or rich.

2) Where the market will inevitably fail to provide the 'ideal' level of service and price because it does not meet the assumptions usually taken in economic theory, and where the government is able to do a better job. This is usually the case where the nature of the market leads to a single supplier. For example, we only need one of most road, rail, water, sewerage, power services etc and it would be inefficient to have two suppliers in the same area. You would either end up with twice the infrastructure needed or a monopoly provider charging exorbitant rates. Even with public service inefficiency the government would still give the public a better deal. There are other situations that tend to lead to monopolies where the government could not provide a better service. IT is a good example. The investment needed compared to the marginal cost of a product is large - not because a lot of infrastructure and town planning is needed, but because the marginal cost is almost zero. For example, MS Windows would have cost a fortune to make, but printing another CD for a customer only costs a few cents. This is why microsoft (almost) has a monopoly. The government (even the US government) could not provide a better service because the industry moves so quickly. It doesn't operate in the same way we expect government to. Telecommunications is moving in this direction.

Whether a service is likely to be supplied by a monopoly provider can change with time. The first bank in a new country, the first airline, the first phone company is likely to only be a monopoly provider for a long time, but eventually the market will be big enough for more competitors. This is why the government set up telecom, qantas, CBA etc, and why it later sold them.

Also, even if the government is providing a service, it should contract out most of the work on a competitive basis and carefully separate out those parts of the industry that are best supplied by industry. The government should be in control of the power lines etc, but it should contract out the job of building them and should create a competitive market palce for the supply of power.

Of course all of this does not tell you whether we should be selling telstra, but it does give you a framework for making the decision.