> The difference is private companies that accumulate too much waste and useless things can fail and be replaced. Unfortunately, there isn't enough competition

> The difference is private companies that accumulate too much waste and useless things can fail and be replaced. Unfortunately, there isn't enough competition for this to be true. In many markets the largest incumbents are able to build a moat to stop smaller, smarter companies from competing. Sometimes this is regulatory capture, but it can also be that the market is a natural winner-take-all market, and in that case well-thought-out regulation can be necessary to enforce competition. Venture capitalists shy away from funding companies that want to compete in a well established market. They view it as a race to the bottom with no huge payout. Once a company is large and well established, it can be as bloated and inefficient as any government, and it will extract rent with it's IP, real-estate, and means-of-production for decades before it has to worry about failure.