Real estate isn't bad in most places in the US. In most places it's easy and cheap to build, and houses are large and comfortable. The expensive places (San Fra

Real estate isn't bad in most places in the US. In most places it's easy and cheap to build, and houses are large and comfortable. The expensive places (San Francisco, Manhattan) are expensive because of government interference, and there are places in Europe just as dysfunctional in different ways -- waiting lists for rentals, undersupply and poor quality because of rent control etc. In the US healthcare is regulated like crazy, entirely broken by government intervention. Probably other places have governments that have broken their systems less badly. I won't argue that systems with some private actors involved are necessarily better than those that have none at all. And as for education, America's private and charter schools are better than its public non-charter schools even controlling for funding and student quality. And it has among the best tertiary education in the world, and yeah it's not a bad thing that the students who can afford to pay for it have to pay their own way. (American tertiary education costs are largely means-tested.) As for the rest of the argument, I think the fact that nobody can afford to buy a television because we're all being gouged by unregulated, excessively profitable technology manufacturers is the best demonstration of your point. Everyone can at least agree with you that competitive pressures never lower prices.