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I've always had a problem with Governments(who don't pay tax on their profits) operating in environments where they may compete directly with private industry(w
by sathackr 10y ago
I've always had a problem with Governments(who don't pay tax on their profits) operating in environments where they may compete directly with private industry(who must pay tax on their profits)
We have two cities nearby that run their own power companies and all areas around the cities are supplied by a much larger private company. Power rates in both cities are higher than the surrounding areas, and outages are far more common in the city-ran areas.
I know of several cities that have attempted to provide city-wide wi-fi service. I do not know of any that were successful. Most of them bought the mesh-networking koolaid and disaster was the result.
- nitrogen 10y agoThis view of competition is too narrow; it misses the bigger picture of the benefits and detriments to society. Also, a few anecdotes do not disprove the theory, especially when many of the municipal utility efforts that fail had meddling from corporations trying to sabotage them. Many citied and towns across the globe have demonstrated that municipally owned infrastructure can be better than monopoly owned infrastructure.
- amazon_not 10y agoMunicipal utilities pay a fee to the local government which is equal or more than what they'd pay in taxes as a private company. It's called PILOT, payment in lieu of taxes.
- sathackr 10y agoHmm interesting...I wasn't aware of that. Must research.