> Private organizations do some things much better than public, and vice versa.
That is certainly a true statement, and I'm of course by no means suggesting that privately-supplied functions such as "day care" or "religious institutions" should be government-run.
I'm reacting primarily to the current American administration's de facto stance of "small government good, big government bad," which I feel is just as simplistic as the straw-man version of my question you constructed. Privatization efforts have been proposed (or have long since been carried out -- this tendency long predates Trump) for the prison system, the education system, air traffic control, even the military itself through use of mercenary companies like whatever Blackwater's name is now. (There's certainly room for reasoned disagreement about which functions a government ought to serve compared to private industry, but surely "military and jails" belong under the government umbrella?)
In every case I'm aware of, the justification has been that it will reduce costs due to increased efficiency, yet the end results have been increased costs and reduced quality of service. Maybe Americans are just bad at privatization, but that was a genuine question: has there been a case where privatizing a function traditionally served by the government has improved it? The case under discussion here, the american prison system, certainly hasn't.
My main point was this:
> Even if you accept the premise that private industry is necessarily going to be more efficient than government-run industry, the efficiency gain has to be greater than the profit-taking for it to be a worthwhile tradeoff for the taxpayer.
...which seems inarguable, yet is rarely if ever addressed by proponents of privatization.