LeBrok, it seems you don't get it - we have no hatred towards private enterprise.
You'd better confirm this with your new friend before assuming how he feels about this. If not hatred, how about dislike?
Civil rights are not goods, they have nothing to do with production, with your "bang-for-money" logic. Nobody is saying that police shouldn't be efficient; on the contrary, we all want that. But for sure privatization is not the right solution, because it would bring money-related mechanisms where money cannot count at all - on the matter of your own civil rights.
You are deluding yourself telling us that money has or should have nothing to do with operations of civil services, like police force in this case. Everywhere we look police departments operate on a budget, and there is not even one real life example showing otherwise. Quality of police officers, their equipment and abilities to fight crime is directly related to the amount of money we, as society, spend on police schools and policing in general. It is so easy to compare police departments of western countries to their counterparts in Africa or Asia to see the difference money can make. Don't you think that Pakistan, Angola or Vietnam wouldn't like to have well trained and well equipped police force as you have in Italy?
Would you rather tell them "Forget about money, it is not important, just believe in your civil rights"?
Also when you look at statistics you see that amount of corruption in police forces is inversely related to the cops salaries. The more cops make the less corruptible they become. But somehow you claim that we must not introduce money related mechanisms to the equation, and money shouldn't count at all. Maybe in your perfect word in you head it's the case, but in real world money already is in equation of running police departments, and in very major way. So please get off you ideological horse and smell the real world. Or even better, ask policemen in your city to work for minimum wage. You don't want them to be influence by it, do you?
I would like to mention that there are already many cities with private contractors running some aspects of policing as in service of parking control or speeding cameras, and other auxiliary ways. Therefore it shouldn't be too difficult for you, to find cases of privatization going wrong, or at least working worse that when these services were in public hands, to prove your point. Otherwise your idea of corrupting the system or police force being less efficient while in private hands is just a pure speculation and it will remain so. I've heard similar voices to yours arguing in exactly same way against privatization of airlines, insurance, mines, or liquor. We know now they were wrong, airplanes are not falling down from the sky from lack of maintenance, and nation is not drunk all the time, regardless of companies making profit.
Would you rather want government running cell phone services or even producing smart phones in Italy?
Your tendency in favour of marketism - the reduction of all aspects of human life to sheer market, to "bang-for-money" - has nothing to do with liberism or socialism or capitalism, with right or left or whatever.
Stop exaggerating. Where did I say something like that?
What would you propose instead of Free Market?
Marketism has no political colour, it's a venom that's gradually poisoning all governments, no matter communist or liberal or whatever, by substitution of money and economics in place of principles and ideas.
Did you ever asked yourself a question when would humankind be without economy, without any production? Where would humankind be with only the principles and ideas? Did you find answer in books you've read? I don't think so, so let me answer it.
In caves without stone tools, because to make any tool it is an act of production.
In case you don't agree, please give us an example of human existence without any production. On other hand I can give you examples of existence of people without noble ideas or civil rights. I'm talking about examples to prove importance of production, not about my favorite state of affair, so don't jump into one of your quick assumptions.
Again, we are not against money and economics, but the tendency - which you clearly display -
Of course you like money, you can exchange it for someone else's sweat and hard work, to get stuff. You're sitting today in a warm cosy house (production) with belly full of good Italian food (production) in front of your computer with Eupedia on (production) and teaching us of non importance of production (money). lol