> Many things are natural monopolies ( infrastructure, education, healthcare) and are best left to state monopolies, even with the downsides.
You have to be really careful with this. Most of the natural monopolies are very narrow.
You can't just say "infrastructure" or even "telecommunications." The natural monopoly is limited to the physical plant in the last mile. Transit is a competitive market. You don't want to extend the monopoly an inch more than it needs to be.
Almost nothing in "healthcare" is a natural monopoly. Maybe emergency services, and even then it's not a "real" natural monopoly (which is characterized by high fixed costs and low variable costs) but rather a market failure as a result of being unable to make a rational choice between providers while you're unconscious. It certainly doesn't apply to, for example, cancer treatment, where there are many providers and people are willing to spend as much time as necessary and travel long distances in order to receive the most competitive care.
And there is no sense in which any education is a natural monopoly whatsoever. It is the exact opposite -- a competitive market whose costs are predominantly variable (per-student) rather than fixed.
There is a case to be made for the local government to do the thing which is actually a natural monopoly, but that doesn't mean you can just reclassify a bunch of random stuff you want the government to do as a natural monopoly when it isn't.
* access to it is important for the whole population, so should be everywhere and not discriminate, and should be accessible
* choice between providers isn't viable ( there isn't enough need for multiple providers) or practical ( e.g. some people might travel an extra hour to the "cheaper" or "better" airport or train station, but it's better for everyone if they don't clog up transit capacity over that and use the fastest to reach one)
All infrastructure falls here. You can't really have competition between railroads or regular railroads, and it'd be a colossal waste of space and money. Telecommunications infrastructure costs a lot, and without heavy help/regulation can easily become monopolised ( at least regionally). For instance here in France, if an ISP puts down fiber in a neighborhood, they have exclusivity with it for a few years(iirc 3), afterwards they have to share it with the competition. That ensures a healthier market.
As for education, it's mostly a natural monopoly due to the fact that it should be accessible and present everywhere. Switching providers is complicated ( you might have to move, the kid might not enjoy the stress, transportation can become harder and longer, etc. etc.)
Healthcare should be close to you - do you imagine a cancer patient having to travel hours for treatment? Or having be far away from friends and family for that treatment? Or you get an operation 3h away, and nobody can come see you or help you get home.
> And there is no sense in which any education is a natural monopoly whatsoever. It is the exact opposite -- a competitive market whose costs are predominantly variable (per-student) rather than fixed.
The thing that worries me about this kind of thinking is that, while it's technically correct, privatizing education, or treating it as a competitive market, gives you bad outcomes. The rich can afford to send their kids to the best schools, which keeps the rich families rich. The poor can only afford to send their kids to the worst schools, or the chronically-underfunded public schools, and this keeps the poor families poor.
We already see this in some (many?) US school districts with our hybrid public/private system, largely because public education is underfunded and private schools are generally out of financial reach for most folks.
> The thing that worries me about this kind of thinking is that, while it's technically correct, privatizing education, or treating it as a competitive market, gives you bad outcomes. The rich can afford to send their kids to the best schools, which keeps the rich families rich. The poor can only afford to send their kids to the worst schools, or the chronically-underfunded public schools, and this keeps the poor families poor.
Who runs the schools is a separate question than who pays for the schools. You can have the government provide school vouchers to everyone without having the government operate any/all of the schools.
The existing system is what gives you the thing you oppose. The rich can afford to pay for private schools no matter what, but the middle class can't both pay property taxes to fund public schools and also pay for private schools. The poor can't even afford to live in the neighborhood that allows them to attend the middle class public schools.
Give everyone a voucher and the poor kids can go to the better schools because getting accepted into a particular school has nothing to do with the price of your house.
Of course, the really market-based solution is to give parents cash rather than vouchers. Because maybe you want to home school and spend the money on books or field trips rather than a prepackaged education bureaucracy, or pay one of the parents for their time in teaching the child themselves, and why should only the rich kids have access to that?
The really rich can do homeschooling and that avoids all problems. What is the problem that you are trying to address, the rich having access to better education than others or the others not having the same education as the rich? There is no solution to that than forcing everyone to go to the same school, but one can also avoid my moving to a different state or country.
Moving requires being able to afford the buy-in and, for families who don't earn enough to afford the education of the rich (those seem to be the careers that are less amenable to remote work), finding a new job. The upfront costs are prohibitive.
You have to be really careful with this. Most of the natural monopolies are very narrow.
You can't just say "infrastructure" or even "telecommunications." The natural monopoly is limited to the physical plant in the last mile. Transit is a competitive market. You don't want to extend the monopoly an inch more than it needs to be.
Almost nothing in "healthcare" is a natural monopoly. Maybe emergency services, and even then it's not a "real" natural monopoly (which is characterized by high fixed costs and low variable costs) but rather a market failure as a result of being unable to make a rational choice between providers while you're unconscious. It certainly doesn't apply to, for example, cancer treatment, where there are many providers and people are willing to spend as much time as necessary and travel long distances in order to receive the most competitive care.
And there is no sense in which any education is a natural monopoly whatsoever. It is the exact opposite -- a competitive market whose costs are predominantly variable (per-student) rather than fixed.
There is a case to be made for the local government to do the thing which is actually a natural monopoly, but that doesn't mean you can just reclassify a bunch of random stuff you want the government to do as a natural monopoly when it isn't.