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Funny, I want exactly the opposite. I don't give a fuck about 5 choices if they are all bad. In fact, most people in the USA are in this exact conundrum with c
by Der_Einzige 4y ago
Funny, I want exactly the opposite.
I don't give a fuck about 5 choices if they are all bad. In fact, most people in the USA are in this exact conundrum with certain types of utilities (e.g. Internet). In fact, public ISPs in the USA have a phenomenal track-record compared to their private competitors.
I want one good choice for my utility. Portland, for all of its problems, has a pretty excellent electric company, also named "PGE", which absolutely mogs the fuck out of the other "PG&E" that people on HN are likely more aware of due to the blackouts that the public private partnership, PG&E have instituted.
In fact, I can't think of any large-scale situations where public utilities in the USA were privatized and it led to improvements in services rendered.
As it turns out, fiduciary duty is kinda fucked up when you're talking about essential utilities. I want there to be no profit incentive.
- ShredKazoo 4y agoPG&E has blackouts to prevent wildfires. It's not clear how switching to a different provider would solve that problem. But even accepting your premise that Portland's PGE "mogs the fuck out of PG&E", under the scheme I proposed, California voters could vote to assign say 5% of California energy contracts to Portland's PGE and see how it goes. That % could increase every year if the voters think they're doing a good job. The thing I proposed is not the same as traditional utility privatization. Utilities are natural monopolies, so privatizing them doesn't actually create competition. With the proposal above, the voters get to vote on exactly how much competition they want in each industry, including utilities.