I think you raised really important points about the business-industrial paradigm being applied to public services and public infrastructure. I continue to believe, however, that the difference is really about paradigms of perception, rather than left and right ideological debates.

Some on the progressive left can perceive an emerging paradigm of co-creation, mutual aid and open innovation that takes place both inside and outside government.

Others would refuse to see these possibilities and continue to argue for investment to be made into the existing structures of the public sector, ignoring these new possibilities.

Co-creation may take the form of new kinds of so-called “public-private partnerships” which most on the left would argue against on ideological principal. I think that the web makes possible new kinds of collaborations and new forms of public value production.

Hard infrastructure is not the web, of course, so it’s tricky to apply a digital paradigm to a physical public good. But the concepts are there and should give us pause to cast aside our ideological assumptions to consider possibility.

Good conversation material!