Comment by dragonwriter

It should be an anti-goal. If it can be provided adequately at a profit (that is, if the benefits of purchasing the service to direct purchasers are sufficient to warrant direct users paying a sufficient price to not only offset the costs of providing a service but also to provide a profit to the service provider), then there is probably no reason to have a public service.

The reason to have a public service is primariy that it is desirable but not profitable, probably because of externalized benefits, or because the utility provided is concentrated in a financially disadvantaged population, such that the amount that they are able to pay underrates the utility delivered (the use of money as a proxy for delivered utility is only at best a loose proxy when money itself is unequally distributed), or for some other reason.

If it should be a public service at all, then it should almost without exception be publicly subsidized in whole or in part. Profitability in a public service is a "code smell" that you have something that likely should be a private industry that has instead been unnecessarily monopolized by the state.