This. Nearly all of the situations we've found ourselves in, be it power, internet, water, etc. are because we allow companies to have local monopolies over di

This. Nearly all of the situations we've found ourselves in, be it power, internet, water, etc. are because we allow companies to have local monopolies over distribution systems, because we don't want to pay for the infrastructure up front, or take loans out as a towns. It's a lot easier as a politician to say that someone else will pay for something than to say that we as a municipality are going to issue 10 year bonds or something so that we can fund an infrastructure project. We then freak out 10 years down the line when we realize we're stuck with a bad system because we sold ourselves out.