One of my friends described it as there's difference between private property and personal property. Your toothbrush is personal property. No one cares about that. Your factory where you assemble widgets is private property, where you're paying people to convert labor into stuff you can sell.
I should read more left-wing theory. It made sense when he explained it.
I'm pretty sure private for-profit water is absolutely worse than government run water. Everyone can at least nominally vote to change the government. A private org is beholden to no one except shareholders (if they have any), and maybe laws (if they exist, are relevant, and are enforced).
We already had a gilded age where we learned how low for-profit entities will go. We had saw dust in bread, chalk in milk, and worse.
For profit food production is giving us price gouging and a water crisis. Would government do better? Well, given the current administration maybe not.