The Reason Foundation's Annual Privatization Report records high levels of privatization in a variety of sectors including road-building, education, aviation and telecommunications.

Once privatized, ie taken out of the control of the nation state, an activity is usually conducted with more regard to its users (citizens, individuals, consumers, as the case may be) because it is in the market, and will fail if it is not competitive.

Of course the Democrats (why can't we just call them old-fashioned socialists?) try to prevent competition because they conceive that it is bad for trade-unionists. For the same reason they are against freedom of investment and take a zenophobic stance against 'offshoring' and foreign ownership of US assets.

They are against privatization because they rightly see that in the free market foreigners (aliens, as the American government charmingly calls them) will compete for ownership of privatized activities. This is called globalization, and the Democrats are against that as well, in fact it is a hate word for them. As a result they and their friends in the disinformation sector (the media) have managed to give privatization and globalization a bad rap with Joe public.

Free trade will never be an easy sell until education is taken out of the hands of doctrinal (unionized) school teachers; but the irony is that in the long term citizens, even coal miners, benefit from the market. Ask King Arthur Scargill's ex-subjects in their car-washes, Internet dealerships and taxi-hire businesses.