As Roosevelt pointed out in his “New Nationalism” speech back in 1910, the “equality of opportunity” has been a central theme of human struggle for betterment. Thus, he concluded that the government, as the defender of the national interest, should keep special interests out of politics to rein in corporations instead of acting in corporations’ interest. The conflict of public interest and free market is especially controversial in the U.S. because the U.S. was developed as a free economy. What Roosevelt suggested was to have the government providing its citizens equal access to uniform standard goods and services. It was one of his major concerns regard capitalism back then, and the problem still stands today.

With the creed of profit-maximization, corporations inevitably revise their goods and services accordingly to each company’s own interest. In one way, the differentiated goods is a sign of healthy market—firms compete with each other by providing goods that suit costumers the best to maximize profit margin. On the other hand, however, this profit-seeking nature leads to various problems that rarely occur to public goods. In the article “Is Private Enterprise More Efficient Than The Public Sector When It Comes to Student Housing?” the author gives us an example of a typical private enterprise failure: a balcony detached from a newly constructed resident hall building that led to injuries of three students at the University of South Texas. The possible causes of the incident are conjectured to be flaw design and rush work. While the old resident halls, constructed as public goods, are far more reliable because they are built by the same standard that had been tested for a long period of time. Professor Smith revealed in his speech “The Corporation: An Historical Perspective” that corporations generate plenty of benefits like social mobilization, efficient production and service, and flourishing of innovation ideas, but at the same time, they have had a long history of cost externalization: tragedies like Triangle Fire, wasteland left over after resources are exploited, etc. The accident of UST is just another example of shortcoming of private enterprise.

When it comes to public goods, we have to be very cautious about privatization. Private firms with its competiveness and efficiency may be able to handle easy tasks like manage of toll roads or provide electricity. But for public goods that face much more and broader customers or deal with safety concerns like military, the government should be the one to handle them.