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The issue is not necessarily ownership, it is the existence of competition. Unfortunately, for most (all?) government services, there is no competition - hence
by jazzyk 11y ago
The issue is not necessarily ownership, it is the existence of competition. Unfortunately, for most (all?) government services, there is no competition - hence the inefficiencies. But private companies are prone to the same, if they don;t operate in markets open enough.
- legulere 11y agoCompetition can also mean inefficiency. A good example is the comparison of the mobile network infrastructure in Sweden and Germany: In lower populated regions you will usually only find one network called Sweden. It's a cooperation of the mobile providers that allows them to save money by not deploying infrastructure four times. In Germany such cooperation is forbidden because it's considered anti-competitive. Subsequently mobile service in Sweden is both better and cheaper, even with a way worse situation (lower population density). Every time you have competition you have the inefficiency to have some structures several times.
- jazzyk 11y agoYou picked a very specific segment (infrastructure-based services), but in that segment, the "public roads" model needs to be applied: just like roads are public, and used by private cars and private trucking companies for a fee (usually taxes or tolls). Same should apply to cable/fiber networks - the municipality owns the infrastructure, and there is only one cable = no need to dig up the town three times over.