Which came first, the private or the public sector?

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?  That’s easy.  The first egg was laid by a chicken like creature.  But which came first, the private or the public sector?  That’s a lot harder and I’m not sure there is an obvious answer.

Man is a social animal and in all human societies there is a degree of the better off helping the less well-off whether it be with food or shelter or money.  This has been the case, as far as we are aware, since time immemorial and certainly before money became available.  Altruism, at least within the tribal group, is part of what it is to be human.  After all it makes sense in evolutionary terms that by helping your fellow creature in the bad times then the group will be stronger and more able to thrive in the good times.  So it could be argued that the rudiments of a public sector (and I would include the community and voluntary sector in here as well) are grounded in this social altruism and are an essential part of the makeup of our species. 

But of course the counter side of the argument also holds true in that charity or altruism can only be available where there are those in society who have resources available to them that are greater than those required to fulfil their own needs.  For this to be true there needs to be a method of production, a method of wealth creation in which some members will do better than others.  Again this appears to be a basic truth about human kind in that whatever skill or ability is considered there are always those who excel and those who underachieve.

But of course we will never really know how it all started but if the public sector needs a resource to provide it then the means of production must have come first.  So the most likely answer to the question ‘Which came first?’ is the private sector.  This is, however, a fatuous question.  In a modern economy we cannot envisage having one without the other.  It is the job of those in the private sector to create the wealth that is needed to pay for the things that society needs and it is the job of the public sector to ensure that a society exists in which a healthy private sector can flourish. Neither can work independently as they operate in a symbiosis. 

I know it is fashionable to blame the private sector for this and the public sector for that but try getting along without either of them.  A balance needs to be struck between the kind of public sector that we can afford and the services we would like to see and all of us should get on and deliver the part we are responsible for.