<i>The thing is that there is a large body of services and capital investments that are most efficiently - for both economic and political reasons - conducted by accountable, democratic institutions. The canonical example are roads and firemen but also education and public transit and healthcare and some kinds of housing.</i><p><i>Extremely</i> debatable.<p>That said, public education is such an evident failure that it&#x27;s doing you a disservice to list it. Alternatives like Sudbury schools tend to be privately or cooperatively owned institutions.<p>(Also, most firefighters are volunteers, who need not be publicly funded.)