Public Private Partnerships

I have considered these several time with ultimately no positive results. The mindset of the civil servant is orthogonal to that of the business person, especially an entrepreneur.

An entrepreneur will take risks, their own time and money, and seek a return on that investment if possible. A civil servant is risk averse. They want to get as much as they can for nothing and never want to endanger their pensions. An entrepreneur has no pension and does not get paid.

A decade ago I tried this with a town in New Hampshire and the result was a loss of many dollars and time. The town could never agree to anything. In fact the Board demanded free service for its "poor" residents, and my comment was "show me one and I will pay personally for their service". Needless to say it went no where.

The NY Times discusses this concept and the article states:

 Whether through fees like parking meters and tolls on a road, or through government payments to the contractors, such projects are ultimately supported by taxpayers.

Now read this statement very carefully. Taxpayers support it even if there are tolls or meters!  Now just think, yes think, what the words mean and are saying. If the user is paying, which is what we see in a real economy, then the taxpayer pays only as a user, NOT as a taxpayer. That is basic logic. But somehow the writer states the opposite, namely the statement is at face wrong! The writer in my opinion must be clueless!