Your solution would be an unfunded mandate. That's fine if you accept the tradeoffs, but as others have said, the practical upshot is that open-registration ser

Your solution would be an unfunded mandate. That's fine if you accept the tradeoffs, but as others have said, the practical upshot is that open-registration services like free Google accounts would just not exist any more. The electrical company's situation is not comparable. You can only get an account by proving you own a property they already run a line to, and at some point, they need to go out and physically run that line to hook you into their grid. If registering a Google account was similar, then sure, they could be expected to provide a similar level of service, but no more anonymous accounts, no more duplicate accounts from the same person, and no 10 figure user base. This, of course, would mean they're no longer as important to you as electricity because the network size is likely the reason you think that.