[WS:] Rationally speaking, yes. But organization of society and economy is anything but rational. Institutions are shaped according to prevailing beliefs what is "the best" and those beliefs are accepted as an aritcle of faith without any factual evidence. These beliefs are an integral part of collective identities and thier founding mythologies (cf. Aaron Vildavsky, "Chosing Preferences by Constructing Instituions: A Culural Theory of Preference Formation", American Political Science Review, 81(1) March 1987). Rationalizations are used merely as means of legitimating these irrational beliefs in the era where everything is supposed to have a "reason."
The belief that private business is better than government is the foundational myth of the Amerikan cultural identity - it is an article of faith that is more "self-evident" than "life, liberty and pursuit of happiness." No fact can possibly contradict this belief. You may witness the entire American economy collapsing on them, and yet the majority of the "Amerikan peeple" would firmly believe that the private-ownership foundations of that economy were sound, and the balme lies elsewhere (foreign speculators, government interference, political leadership or lack thereof, greed and incompetence of individual operators, etc.) .
The only way to succeed politically in this country is to exploit and manipulate the mythologies that dominate the "Amerikan mind" - and the supposed virtues of private enterprise is the central part of these mythologies. The Repugs are quite good at that, even while they defacto nationalize iconic private instituions, like AIG. But if you fail to appeal to and manipulate that mythology and try to reason instead, you will head for a certain failure as the Left and Democrats find over and over again.
Wojtek
--------------------------------------------------------------- "When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental — men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost. [...] All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men." - HL Mencken ----------------------------------------------------------------