My takeaway is that the local, state, and national interests aren't balanced correctly. Things should be done at a high enough level so that it's worth having

My takeaway is that the local, state, and national interests aren't balanced correctly. Things should be done at a high enough level so that it's worth having experts do them. They should be done locally enough so that people can get involved and be heard, but not to the point where personal vendettas against volunteers matter. Utilities should provide infrastructure, and should be for anything worth doing (correctly) once. Paths, roads, pipes of all sorts, including data pipes; even basic postal and transit options. Competition should happen over those utilities, where public interests aren't paramount. 911 and similar can just exist on a data-pipe network. Power is often so critical that failures of the market, like Texas recently, show exactly why that has to be highly regulated even if there's competition. Water and sewer can't be divided like that. Though options for transit, and secondary providers for other forms of movement (like long distance data transfer) are logical to have.