Quoting from Dr. Block’s correspondence:
… I don’t see the problem, however, with privatizing Central Park. Presumably, it would be owned by very acute, astute, businessmen, who would try to maximize its present discounted value. I really don’t know whether or not a few skyscrapers in it would do that, but, the market rewards profitable decisions, that serve most people, and does the very opposite for bad decisions.
Rockefeller Center has long been in private hands. They are doing pretty well with it, right? If not, it would tend to be transferred to other entrepreneurs.
Lookit, private investors are forever making mistakes. We have a profit and LOSS system. But, when they err, they lose money. If they make enough mistakes, and/or big enough ones, they go bankrupt, and their capital moves to other hands. When government is in charge, this system splutters. For example, the Army Corp of Engineers was responsible for the failure of the levies in New Orleans during Katrina. Are they still in business? To ask this is to answer it. Of course they are. They are part of the statist system. If a private firm made an error of this magnitude (1900 people died) they would not likely remain in business.
So, yes, if you compare free enterprise, peopled by flesh and blood creatures, with Nirvana, laissez faire capitalism does not look all that good. But, if you contrast it with government, it smells of roses.
See here for a bibliography on the aforementioned Katrina example.