Which economic sector has the most volatility (meaning unpredictable): the private sector or the public sector?

[Jacob]

The private sector is the component of the economy, sometimes referred to as the citizen sector, which is run by private individuals or groups, usually as a means of enterprise for profit, and is not controlled by the state. By contrast, enterprises that are part of the state are part of the public sector; private, non-profit organizations are regarded as part of the voluntary sector.

The public sector, sometimes referred to as the state sector or the government sector, is a part of the state that deals with either the production, ownership, sale, provision, delivery and allocation of goods and services by and for the government or its citizens, whether national, regional or local/municipal. Examples of public sector activity range from delivering social security, administering urban planning and organizing national defense. The organization of the public sector (public ownership) can take several forms, including:

* Direct administration funded through taxation; the delivering organization generally has no specific requirement to meet commercial success criteria, and production decisions are determined by government.

* Publicly owned corporations (in some contexts, especially manufacturing, "state-owned enterprises"); which differ from direct administration in that they have greater commercial freedoms and are expected to operate according to commercial criteria, and production decisions are not generally taken by government (although goals may be set for them by government).

* Partial outsourcing (of the scale many businesses do, e.g. for IT services), is considered a public sector model.

A borderline form is as follows:

* Complete outsourcing or contracting out, with a privately owned corporation delivering the entire service on behalf of government. This may be considered a mixture of private sector operations with public ownership of assets, although in some forms the private sector's control and/or risk is so great that the service may no longer be considered part of the public sector (e.g., the United Kingdom's Private Finance Initiative) (Barlow, Roehirch, and Wright 51-55).

In spite of their name, public companies are not part of the public sector; they are a particular kind of private sector company that can offer their shares for sale to the general public (i.e., to anyone willing to buy them (as opposed to a privately owned company, shares of which can be sold to someone only if the owner of the shares agrees to sell them)).

The role of public sectors are as follows:

* The role and scope of the public sector and state sector are often the biggest distinction regarding the economic positions of socialist, liberal, and libertarian political philosophy. Generally, socialists favor a large state sector consisting of state projects and enterprises, at least in the commanding heights or fundamental sectors of the economy (although some socialists favor a large cooperative sector instead). Social democrats tend to favor a medium-sized public sector that is limited to the provision of universal programs and public services. Economic libertarians and minarchists favor a larger private sector and small public sector with the state being relegated to protecting property rights, creating and enforcing laws and settling disputes, a "night watchman state".

Again, which economic sector has the most volatility: the private sector or the public sector?


Barlow, J, J.K. Roehrich, and S. Wright. "De Facto Privatisation or a Renewed Role for the EU? Paying for Europe’s Healthcare Infrastructure in a Recession." Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 103 (2010): 51-55. Print.

[Sienna]

The state gets all its revenue by confiscating private property. Therefore the private sector is more volatile, because the state can and does literally send businesses broke and still continue itself. The state is, as the name suggests, more static. Why?

The reason is because the state is, by definition, that group in society claiming a legal monopoly of the use of force or threats of force. It it this fact that underlies its two great powers : jurisdiction and taxation. Jurisdiction is a claim of a legal monopoly of ultimate decision-making. Taxation is a claim of a legal monopoly of taking private property by coercion.

This enables the state to operate outside the market by doing what would be illegal if it didn't exempt itself. Everything it does is a crime if anyone else does it. All the money that a person or group earns it must earn by the *voluntary* payment of consumers. They will only pay voluntarily if they value what they get more than they value the money they pay.

But it's different with the state. They don't have to provide what the consumers of their services actually want. They can and do always get money, despite consumer dissatisfaction, by simply taking it. You have no choice whether to pay because taxation is by definition not a voluntary payment. If you don't agree, you'll be fined and if you still don't agree, you'll be imprisoned.

This is the critical fact that is obscured by talking about public and private economic "sectors".

The distinction is not between public and private. Public just means people. Yet the private sector provides goods and services for people just as much as the state sector. A bakery or a mechanic's workshop are still providing services to "the public". In fact the private sector does *more* service to the public because
a) the public value them more as is demonstrated by the fact that they pay for them *voluntarily*, (the fact you are forced to pay for the state's services proves that you value something else more highly) and
b) the private sector provides all the revenue on which the state feeds, without which the state would collapse.

So the proper distinction is not between "public" and "private", but between the productive voluntary sector - the market, and the coercive parasitic sector - the state.

The state is more static than the society it feeds on precisely because the purpose of the state is to exempt itself from the voluntary choices of its subjects. In other words, you have to pay for them to live at your expense, whether you want their "services" or not. Some service eh?

[Anjaree]

The private sector is unpredictable. The public sector is autonomous.

[Aleconomixt]

In order of fraudulent practices...
Socialism
Mixed Economy
Public Sector

I think Libertarian views are too much to digest , then read " Thatcherism" unpublished.

The way I run from one doctor to another ( confused ) in India, i wonder whether I could have been alive in UK under NHS.
NHS is communism of human welfare....If the doctor is wrong, all you can have is death certificate.