from“Austrian Economics and Hayek's View of the Market Process”：

But, because the government is a coercive monopoly, it is immune to competition, having barred all prospective competitors from the utility market via the threat of force. The government cannot know what the true cost of its service is, since it did not allow the competitive process to discover it.（我想补充：垄断的国有企业也不可能知道真正的成本是什么，因为在垄断的情况下不可能有成本价格出现，因此，任何人，包括经济学家都不能判断这种垄断的危害究竟有多大） Rather, whatever value the government designates to be the “cost” will be a mere arbitrary number. In a competitive market, private businessmen—driven by the profit motive—would have continually discovered better ways to provide utility services. They would have figured out hitherto unknown ways to cut costs, increase productivity, and eliminate waste. The government, by restricting competition, prevents these discoveries from taking place and relegates all the consumers of public utilities to having to pay far more than they otherwise might have.