public sector vs private sector metaphors are mostly nonsense. It's nice to say 'public sector' or 'publicly owned', but in reality the words and definitions ar

public sector vs private sector metaphors are mostly nonsense. It's nice to say 'public sector' or 'publicly owned', but in reality the words and definitions are a creation of orwellian-style double speak. It's propaganda. Institutions like NASA or any other government institution is owned and controlled just as much as IBM or Microsoft. They are all a for-profit institution simply because the people working and running them are in it for themselves. Democracy seems like it would allow another means of control for the 'public' over the 'public institutions', but was easily nullified by the bi-partisan system. Effectively this country is controlled through two major political dynasties since just about the beginning. And these political dynasties are not driven by ideological differences, they exist for using political means to provide economic benefit for themselves. Democracy can only work on small scales; in city-states were they cannot control population movement. At the small scale governments are easily controlled by their tax base. On a large scale they cannot. That is to say nobody works for free. Everybody works for profit, otherwise there is no point in working and no point in participating in the institutions in the first place. And a organization is nothing but a body of participating individuals. The major difference is that government institutions are able to use the political means, that is violence, to get the funding and resources they desire. Where as a 'private' corporation either has to go through the government to get access to the political means or obtain what they want through economic means in the market place. Ultimately when you say 'public sector' versus 'private sector' you are saying 'people that work for profit that you are required to pay by law' versus 'people that work for profit that can only obtain funding through the market'. Unfortunately the government is intertwined very very deeply into the economic system of this country. When you get to the large corporations the distinction between government and private corporations is _very_ blurred.