This view is naive. There is an exceedingly small number of people that do not think the government should get out of the water business and even then, these are the people most critical of these kinds of institutional failures.
They seem to want us to be like Mexico, where the rich live in private enclaves with good services and everyone else lives in a slum. Mexico, last I checked, is not a world power. World powers have healthy populations and solid infrastructure.
Don't get me wrong. I do think government can be a "beast." But the other problem with starve the beast is that in practice it starves the wrong part. The healthy tissue (such as water services) atrophies and dies, but the waste and corruption finds a way to hang on. If anything the conditions of near-collapse created by these tactics are actually friendlier to corruption and waste. Look under the hood at Flint's water drama and you can see this in action.
The free market provides a great laboratory for analyzing organizational structures and pressures and their results. Perhaps we should look there to see what management tactics result in positive, good kinds of efficiency. I guarantee you that cutting the legs off your infrastructure, logistics, and core competencies is not a successful strategy. What would happen if FedEx cut back on repairs to its truck fleets in an effort to save money?
