I agree, and I think that's a really insightful way of framing things, though there is a caveat: Often government services are of the sort whose value would be rather difficult to capture commercially.
For example, while I doubt many would dispute that having an active police force provides a significant societal benefit, actually capturing that value via a market-based system would be exceedingly difficult. (E.g. You just caught and jailed a murderer. Now, who do you bill for that?)
Thankfully, trains don't suffer from that problem; their value is extremely easy to capture (and thus quantify) via a ticketing system. But I felt I should point out that it isn't always so easy in the general case.
For example, while I doubt many would dispute that having an active police force provides a significant societal benefit, actually capturing that value via a market-based system would be exceedingly difficult. (E.g. You just caught and jailed a murderer. Now, who do you bill for that?)
Thankfully, trains don't suffer from that problem; their value is extremely easy to capture (and thus quantify) via a ticketing system. But I felt I should point out that it isn't always so easy in the general case.