The middle ground is something along the lines of a co-operative/charity. These are organizations that can and often do operate as a business selling things, p

The middle ground is something along the lines of a co-operative/charity. These are organizations that can and often do operate as a business selling things, providing services, and paying their suppliers, employees and landlords at commercial / market competitive rates, but don't aim to distribute surplus profits to their shareholders. For a traditional co-operative, the shareholders are the customers, so the incentive is that they get whatever service they need reliably and without price gouging or increases. The flipside is that the co-operative itself isn't incentivized to increase efficiency or lower prices.