An inherently
inefficient and bloated system of running
business.
Public ownership allows the
government to run things, and as good as it sounds on
paper, it never works as well as it should, thanks to
bureaucratic red-tape that is so common in
government today.
Public ownership is
socialist and hence bad because it sucks up
tax money, stuffs it through the red tape, and a small fraction comes back out in the form of
goods and services.
For example, Britain had several enterprises in the past that were publicly owned. One was British Airways. Since public ownership is by nature expensive, slow and top-heavy, the company was run under in the 1980's and 1990's by smaller, leaner and more efficient privately owned firms, that offered more flexible and superior service for a fraction of the price. British Airways begged the government to put a stamp on competition (see monopoloy), but Maggie Thatcher and the other good guys knew better and privatized the lumbering public ownership company. Now they offer competitively priced schedules and better service. As a sidenote, several other public sector firms were dismantled in that era, causing the stagnant economy to move again. I hope that my little Tony and the Care Blairs don't ruin it.
See also the former USSR and China. Horrendously inefficient state enterprises caused the stagnation of the Russian economy in the 1970's and made them lose the Cold War. Which in retrospect, was a good thing. You see, the government has a much smaller emphasis on profits, which is the keyword in business. If you don't focus on profitability, you can't do business. Your goods and services tend to be inferior and overpriced. In the end, all the USSR state enterprises were sold to private investors. In China, Deng Xiaoping declared "To be rich is glorious!", and by the hundreds, public sector firms were sold off and China became the great manufacturing nation that it is now.
If the good or service is too difficult, too expensive or not profitable enough to produce, I've got one word for you.
Subsidize
Public ownership has never succeeded, and it never will. Those Canadian experiments into the public sector are semi-public owned, and all it does is tax everybody to death, and may I tell you that the taxed include the poor? For what? Inferior goods? How's that for inequality!
Public sector goods have been proven again and again to be of shoddy quality, and at the same time cost much more to produce. And that my friends, is not good business.
Wait. We are trying to run a business here, aren't we?