Donald Trump’s crippling of basic government functions should prompt the citizenry to remember why they value government. After this hurricane season—and already after the floods in Texas—there will be little support for a weakened FEMA or a failing National Weather Service. Cutbacks of Medicaid will do palpable harm to tens of millions of people, many in red states. Conservatives into hunting and fishing do not back the evisceration of the Bureau of Land Management or the sell-off of public lands. Air travelers, whether Democratic or Republican, don’t support a ruined air traffic control system.

But just as democracy was badly hollowed out even before Trump, so too was the public sector. Ever since Jimmy Carter, Democratic presidents and the corporate wing of the party have joined Republicans in attacking government and sponsoring various forms of privatization and deregulation. Carter bragged about his efforts “to get the Federal Government off the backs of private industry by removing needless, burdensome regulation which benefits no one and harms us all.” In his 1996 State of the Union address, Bill Clinton declared, “The era of big government is over.”

Privatization was supposed to marry the efficiency of the private sector with the public purpose of government. While there were some semi-successes, such as tradable emission rights, the policies that followed were mostly disasters. Instead of the discipline of market competition producing more efficient delivery of services, the typical pattern was for the vendor to be parasitic on government, enjoy windfall profits, and make public services more complicated and annoying to use. Contracted-out government provided new opportunities for corruption. Deregulation promoted monopoly.

The government covers the direct or indirect cost of about half of all health care expenses in the U.S. But with the exception of the public VA (increasingly privatized under both Democrats and Republicans) and traditional Medicare (likewise), private for-profit vendors have invaded the health care system to extract those public funds. The result is a system riddled with middlemen and consolidation, onerous to clinicians and patients alike. The mixed public/private health system did not improve efficiency; mainly, it added complexity and cost while charging monopoly rents.