"The free-market is a veritable Swiss Army knife compared to the sledgehammer of bureaucracy." - Quantumushroom

Even a sledgehammer has a purpose and there are plenty of instances when it is the better tool for a job than a Swiss Army knife. It all depends what you want to do.

Bidouleroux - I have to say that it is indeed you that has a totally bogus argument. Electrical signals in wires and water flowing though a pipe do not operate on the same principle.

With water, like with telecom and power systems, a single infrastructure is the only practical solution. However, different water providers operating on the same grid can not work because while people may pay differing amounts for water of varying quality, when mixed in a pipe, every gets the same quality water in the end and you no longer got what you paid for. If you neighbor is poor and can only afford water with fecal matter in it, guess what, you are getting fecal matter too. If you have HDTV and your neighbor doesn't, the fact that his/her cable signal is passing along the same wire as yours doesn't not diminish the quality of either signal.

At the same time, the free-market is a fine solution when the item in question is not necessary for the basic survival of a human being! We can all survive without a telephone, internet, cable tv and even electricity. People did for thousands of years. People can not survive with access to clean drinking water. Hence, something like water, that must be of a high quality, must always be publicly owned and administered in order for the public to ensure its quality and access. It's not a monopoly if the "mono" in question is everyone.

As a teacher of economics, I find the the free-market to be the most misunderstood and widely misused idea I have ever come across. Like I said before, it is a fine solution when the item in question is not necessary for the basic survival of a human being. The result of not understanding such limits of the free-market will ultimately cause the disastrous application of it to situations like that in Bolivia and dozens of other nations. The free-market is a tool, and like any tool, it is not the best solution for every problem.