3 ms·

Yeah exactly. In fact anyone who believes in markets should laugh in the face of private natural monopolies as an obviously terrible idea. The UK structures wa

Yeah exactly. In fact anyone who believes in markets should laugh in the face of private natural monopolies as an obviously terrible idea. The UK structures water provision as regional monopolies. This should be a hilarious joke but it's the reality. You can't change water company without living in a different region. There is no effective market competition for water provision in the UK. We already rely on price caps to keep this state of affairs in check. Pretty much the only argument that almost stands up for them is that they're quite good at contributing to private pensions as a byproduct of being good stocks because people need water to not die. We gloss over where the rest of the money goes, possibly into PR management around frequent sewage dumping.

TremendousJudge 3y ago
Doesn't it go into dividends for the owners?
- captainbland 3y ago
  Yeah to an extent, I admit that last statement was a little bit of a barb although I felt the topic of dividends was implied by the part about stocks etc.
makomk 3y ago
No, that's not it. They make sense as investments for things like pension funds because what those pension funds need is basically the other side of what's needed to have infrastructure like water and sewage treatment: the pension funds have a bunch of up-front money that they need to turn into a reliable income stream, whereas providing water and treating sewage has a bunch of up-front cost to buy/build/upgrade the infrastructure but only receives money slowly over time from people using that infrastructure. The British media has been obfuscating this because for partisan political reasons they want to convince people that having to pay for things that they directly use and benefit from is somehow stealing from them, and that the fair solution is for Canadian teachers' retirement money to be used to deal with their literal shit for nothing in return. So far it's been working astoundingly well.
oarabbus_ 3y ago
> The UK structures water provision as regional monopolies. This should be a hilarious joke but it's the reality. You can't change water company without living in a different region. There is no effective market competition for water provision in the UK. This is how utilities/water work in the vast majority of the US. I’m unclear why you think this is strange? At the very least, it doesn’t explain the UK’s problems.

TremendousJudge 3y ago

Doesn't it go into dividends for the owners?

captainbland 3y ago
Yeah to an extent, I admit that last statement was a little bit of a barb although I felt the topic of dividends was implied by the part about stocks etc.

makomk 3y ago

No, that's not it. They make sense as investments for things like pension funds because what those pension funds need is basically the other side of what's needed to have infrastructure like water and sewage treatment: the pension funds have a bunch of up-front money that they need to turn into a reliable income stream, whereas providing water and treating sewage has a bunch of up-front cost to buy/build/upgrade the infrastructure but only receives money slowly over time from people using that infrastructure. The British media has been obfuscating this because for partisan political reasons they want to convince people that having to pay for things that they directly use and benefit from is somehow stealing from them, and that the fair solution is for Canadian teachers' retirement money to be used to deal with their literal shit for nothing in return. So far it's been working astoundingly well.

oarabbus_ 3y ago

> The UK structures water provision as regional monopolies. This should be a hilarious joke but it's the reality. You can't change water company without living in a different region. There is no effective market competition for water provision in the UK. This is how utilities/water work in the vast majority of the US. I’m unclear why you think this is strange? At the very least, it doesn’t explain the UK’s problems.