Consider something like a town/region hospital. Don't want to fund it? Don't. Want treatment? Cough up the cash. At the moment, here in Australia, the gove

Consider something like a town/region hospital. Don't want to fund it? Don't. Want treatment? Cough up the cash. At the moment, here in Australia, the government does the middle man thing, and money is just blown on crap. The town hospital is underfunded, understaffed, and KPIs for just about everything are dropping. Meanwhile, every tax-payer is coughing up dollars every day for not using the service until they need it. They might pay millions of dollars throughout their working lives for something they use for three days. OTOH, if they don't get taxed like that, and only pay directly to the hospital when they use it, maybe that would work out better. It certainly worked in the past. And every citizen would retain more wealth, some of which they could spend (if they chose) on improving their lifestyle with home gym, better food, etc. Should hospitals need to beg? No. Just require payment for service. Maybe it'll cost you $100,000 to get a broken leg fixed. But if you weren't paying that in taxes for the past 3 years, you've got that and more spare. Competition: That's how it works. If the school is optimised for profits, wouldn't that mean the parents think it does the best job? Otherwise they can just start their own school (without government interference), or individuallly home school. I do think one of the few things government should do is set human and environmental safety requirements, such as not putting radium in kids toys. Alternatively, if parents find radium in kids toys, they should find the people responsible and deal with them appropriately.