> If there are 10 factories making nails, I'd rather have them be run by 10 different companies than one. And you might be able to convince me that 9 or 8 or ev

> If there are 10 factories making nails, I'd rather have them be run by 10 different companies than one. And you might be able to convince me that 9 or 8 or even 5 companies is reasonable, but not one or two. Well, a nail is fungible, as are many other products. So what you'll end up with instead is a bad situation on its own. The 10 nail factories win sales contracts by competing on price (obviously), so there is a massive incentive for the companies to undercut each other by going offshore, exploiting their staff (which usually leads to an enshittification across the industry), exploiting the environment (by "saving" on emission mitigation or outright handing waste over to the mafia instead of recycling) or by cutting corners in the process (water down the material composition with cheaper raw materials or be less strict in outgoing QA and hope the customer doesn't notice). In the end you have 10 companies shipping crap nails but since they were so much cheaper than what was there before, there are no high quality nails on the market, and no bank will give anyone a loan to try and start up a company selling high quality nails. We've seen that happening quite often over the last decades... UK and German public transport where the "private" competitors have reduced staff and maintenance to the utter bare minimum, "chinesium" being so widespread it's a legitimate meme, or by Europe being completely dependent on India and China for basic pharmaceutical compounds. In contrast, a government controlled (or outright owned!) monopolist has entirely different priorities, and the customers/citizens will get high quality products again.