Governments are so bad as business owners and so incapable of running a commercial process free of politics that governments cannot even sell a state-owned enterprise for a good price under the full glare of the media and public.
Anyone can sell an asset. It is the simplest task of ownership. Hire some consultants and go for the best price. Governments lack this ability.
Privatisations are often politicised, with discounts for small buyers from the middle class, for employees and other special interests. These messy privatisations are the best case out there against state ownership of businesses.
“No asset sales” was the Labour Party’s most coherent slogan in the 2011 general election in New Zealand. It cannot be claimed that the more recent privatisations in New Zealand were not subject to the maximum amount of public and parliamentary scrutiny possible in a democracy. The 2011 election was said to be a referendum on asset sales.
This inability to sell state-owned enterprises for a profit and free of politics calls into question the ability of governments to make complicated day-to-day business management and entrepreneurial judgements as owners of business enterprises. Imagine the quality of the day-to-day state-owned enterprise decision making that is further away from the glare of an election?
Private asset owners have a strong incentive to sell assets at a profit as it will otherwise hurt their share price and their personal wealth. Inferior entrepreneurs and owners are punished by losses. Any assets that inferior entrepreneurs either mismanaged or sell at a bargain price will, through further buying and selling, end up in the hands of more alert entrepreneurs and owners.
There are no similar feedback and error correction measures disciplining governments as asset owners and in their day-to-day monitoring of their business portfolios. Governments who own business assets have an inherently softer budget constraint.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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