privatization.

Simplistic:

The fields you mention (water, electricity, garbage, public transportation) are different to the degree of whether the problem of a natural monopoly exists.

Water and electricity are the very definitions of a natural monopoly. Selling off these services to a private company without heavy public regulation is a bad idea because the private company can exercise its natural monopoly power which will result in (1) increased rates, (2) lesser development, (3) distributional problems of decreased services because of increased cost.

A real-world example of this is internet companies. In most areas, the local internet company is a natural monopoly (Comcast, Cox). These areas have higher prices and lower speeds because there is no competition.

The private sector works on competition, and when competition is not present, it does not provide better services than the government but it does have negative distributional effects.

I think garbage is an area where a natural monopoly does not exist (unless there are restrictions with where trash can be disposed of). It seems that this is where competition could work and I would totally support it (subject to the definition of privatization which I talk about below).

I don't know how I feel about public transportation. There are problems with it, but I don't really know enough about it.

I do think that the subsidization aspects of it however are a public/democratic choice that we make. We want low income people to be able to use public transportation because it has a multiplier effect. If the DC metro or NYC subway completely reflected the cost (with no subsidization), it would make it more expensive for commuters. Some low-income commuters would not be able to work in Times Sqaure with the increased cost, unless they were paid more. Maybe the public should not subsidize employers and employees of this way, but it does not seem unreasonable to me and shows how complicated the question really is.

What you mean by privatization:

Often privatization means government contracting out services. This is terrible in my view. An example would be City X contracting out with Company Y to provide garbage services (or water services).

I think this is problematic because: (1) it encourages "swamp" behavior of rent-seeking by companies, (2) does not really lead to an increase in efficiency. The competition is in the bid process but the public often eats the cost of bad bids in crappy services or paying extra afterwards, (3) it has a negative distributional effect. Public employers typically pay decent wages to a lot of people. Contractors pay a ton to the connected owner of the company, but the workers make a lot less. When you are not getting any efficiency advantages, this seems like the wrong distributional choice.

So when I say I support privatization, I mean the government getting completely out of it. No contracting services out, but rather completely exiting the market. The problem is that this is hard to do because of natural monopolies in a lot of instances where government is involved and it will cause at least a short term disruption in service while private parties adjust.