> Hell, at least in the US, there's precedent for this: government builds and maintain all the roads; they run most transit and intercity rail operations; and they run physical mail delivery.

Correct me if I'm wrong but it seems to me the US government is doing a terrible job at all of these.

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kmeisthax a day ago | parent [-]

Yes, but most of those problems aren't inherent limitations of government. They're specific missteps that could have been avoided, like:

1. The suburbanization of cities turning road-building into a Ponzi scheme and transit into a guaranteed money-loser. Lowering the density of cities dilutes the tax base while increasing the need for roads and cars to carry people on them.

2. America's absolutely stupid decision to privatize Conrail without retaining ownership over the trackage. Wall Street infected all of the Class I railroads and convinced them to downgrade their own infrastructure. Imagine if your local city had sold all the roads to a private company.

	▲	panick21_ 14 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Ok, but if something has gone on for 70+ years its not a 'misstep' that something else. And doing all these things very well is not easy even in the nations that do it 'best' and most nations are not in that class. In terms of the Post Office for example, they had to kill their commercial competitor to establish a monopoly and held back more advanced competitors like FedEx with their monopoly. Thus useful services didn't exist for many decades where they could have existed.