> Is it?

Yes and no. Garbage disposal is more efficient now then it was in the mid-90s, but that has everything to do with the infrastructure and nothing to do with the ownership model. More on that later.

The ownership of infrastructure and the operation are split where private operators are allowed to compete with national operators on the same infrastructure. This is true for trains and electricity, and in some cases garbage disposal. Many of the national operators are publicly traded with the national government being the majority shareholder.

Some countries in Europe have gone much further in privatizing the rail network then others. The UK being the canonical example of privatization, and Norway being an example of a country privatizing more slowly.

If the promises of neo-liberalism were true, we should see the efficiencies gained in the UK compared to Norway. Yet, no such evidence exists. And that is because efficiencies correlate with the quality and the quantity of infrastructure, not the ideological policies that dictate the ownership of the operators.

> efficiencies correlate with the quality and the quantity of infrastructure, not the ideological policies that dictate the ownership of the operators

I mostly agree. Infrastructure quality (including institutional quality) dominates. Ideology is usually cover for a lack of evidence.

But ownership modes do create different incentive structures. Full private ownership is famously terrible in natural monopolies. It’s a well-known market failure and folks who proselytize fully privatized utilities are stupid or venal. For many other things, however, private ownership works. A good example is package delivery. (Train operation is a weird case. The UK fumbled. Italy did not. On the other end of the spectrum, DB is a trash fire.)