The market does take care of this. No one builds the second sewerage system or railway on the same route, it’s a terrible investment. The first mover gets a mon

The market does take care of this. No one builds the second sewerage system or railway on the same route, it’s a terrible investment. The first mover gets a monopoly, price gouging happens, public complains and the government steps in. Currently we have private water companies in the U.K. they don’t have their own pipes and they are supplying the same water at nearly the same price, the actual water is provided by another private water company which owns the pipes and has a monopoly which has to be heavily regulated by the government. The result is choice of 10 different companies which charge between say £995-£1005 for the same thing, it’s not an efficient use of my time @ £60/hr to deal with the phone calls and paperwork needed to choose a supplier, it feels like I’m being forced to take part in a stupid game making a purchasing decision for something which is essentially exactly the same regardless of who I buy it from. The trouble is that infrastructure is often a natural monopoly. Countries that provide thier citizens efficient hassle free infrastructure increase thier productivity relative to other countries by reducing the bureaucratic load on citizens. Britain has private trains, electricity, water, phone networks etc. It doesn’t seem to be working very well, for example our rail ticket prices have increased faster than the rest of Europe, our train operating costs per mile are higher than state run systems in other comparable countries. In general our productivity is pretty low compared to other similar countries in Europe despite working some of the longest hours, maybe all the stupid phone calls from utility companies are one of the reasons why.