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Perhaps the reason for the markets not performing well is the regulation in the first place? IMO the idea of utilities being so different from everything else
by digitalfour 16y ago
Perhaps the reason for the markets not performing well is the regulation in the first place?
IMO the idea of utilities being so different from everything else is only true because the government defines them to be different and then forces people to act in that (mistaken) framework.
- argv_empty 16y agoIdeally, it's meant to be a recognition of and response to high barriers to entry: we can't have an arbitrarily large number of competing companies all rolling out their own overlapping* infrastructures, and the few we allow must put up a lot of capital up front. The applicability of this description depends on the particular service in question (e.g. it describes running water far better than it does cell phone service). *If they don't overlap, they don't compete.
- digitalfour 16y agoSo the solution to the problem of high barriers of entry is to make the barriers even higher? The issue I see with the idea of barriers to entry is that a monopoly (or oligopoly) rarely if ever actually increases the quality of the service provided. Many rail against various companies for monopolistic practices, but it suddenly makes sense to have a monopoly water or cell phone service? Perhaps this is a solution in search of a problem.