Public ownership is when a municipality, state, nation, or other public body controls and derives benefit from an enterprise or resource. It is a means of ensuring and enhancing community control of the socio-economic decisions that affect local lives and livelihoods. By providing democratic accountability over economically important institutions and enterprises, public ownership can fulfill a variety of objectives, including: increasing public revenues, improving and expanding service, reducing costs for users, providing stable employment, and achieving environmentally sustainable growth or stasis. There are real-world contemporary and historical examples of highly successful public ownership in virtually every economic sector and in cultures and nations across the world. Source: Beautiful Solutions