5 ms·

This is a bizarre series of comments. (Q1) Regulators should encourage competition? True/False (Q2) All government services are monopolies? True/False. (Q3)

by 001sky 13y ago

This is a bizarre series of comments. (Q1) Regulators should encourage competition? True/False (Q2) All government services are monopolies? True/False. (Q3) All municipal services are either (utilities, monopolies)? True/False. These are all absurd formulations. Public Services are a thing. Some examples: Ex 1> My public library is an ISP. Ex 2> My public library is Tax Filing Center. Ex 3> My public library is a copyright depository. Ex 4> My public libary is a copy/fax location. Competitors: Ex1'> Comcast Ex2'> TurboTax Ex3'> Netflix Ex4'> Staples I don't think the solution is to allow municipalities to do more things that undermine competition. Again, this is absurd. Public services do not undermine competition by implication. This formulation is akin to saying: "a good competitor undermines competition by being good." Or, "a new competitor undermines the competition, by entering the competition."... Um, no. This is not to say single payer healthcare would not change the business/policy landscape in the USA. But to even suggest that any municipal provisioning of communications services (public radio, public TV, public internet access) would be aking to "single payer healthcare" in scale/scope/completeness etc is simpley a rhetorical exaggeration. I think its interesting to debate the pitfalls here, butnot with such extreme poles as a starting point. Limited scope incremental services are fine, IMHO. Feasible, cost-effective, and market & competition extending. And the existence of national parks does not make the government a "land monopolist" or what not. =D

nardi 13y ago
Government competition is not fair, because governments don't play by the same rules as businesses. They can make money by fiat through taxes. They can and usually do lose money on services they provide. Businesses simply can't compete with the power of taxation. It should come as no surprise that there are no book rental companies when there are libraries.
- 001sky 13y ago
  I'm a libertarian but i believe in public rights of way. I'm finw with a single provider of roads, provided they are not toll roads but rather "dumb" roads that let me go when and where I please. This is in contrast to government-sanctioned but opportunistically managed toll-roads with dynamic pricing that rips me off every time I have an important meeting to get to by turning into a "protection racket" for my important business. The rest of the stuff about "fair" x or y is not really relevant. Markets are supposed to be "free" and not "rigged", but neither of these two concepts imply "fair" in the sense you are using it. Every company on the NYSE hasi its own cost of capital--is that 'fair'? no. its not fair to the owners. But that does not imply that the market is not free for capiral or that the market for capital is 'rigged'. There are plenty of ways that government services can be provided to extend markets geographic reach, variety, and product depth without getting into some nasty discussion of socialism/totalitarianism etc. There are some services that are more-efficiently organized through the government. In that respect, a government entity is just like a non-profit that competes with a for-profit or private foundation entity (eg universities). And more ...
  - nardi 13y ago
    Of course government should provide roads. And water, and sewage, and a police force, and fire protection, and libraries, etc. What made you think I didn't agree with that? You are fighting a straw man. And "fair" absolutely is relevant, from a market-wide POV. Of COURSE some companies have natural advantages over others. That's great. They should win. When the better competitors DON'T win, you have a market fairness problem. If government is providing a service at higher cost to the taxpayer than if a private company was providing it, then there is a problem. And this happens all the time, because the sticker price of government services is always low, or zero, even though the real cost can be very high.
rayiner 13y ago
I don't think it's controversial to say that public infrastructure crowds out private investment. It's very hard to "compete" with a service that everyone is obligated to pay for anyway through their tax dollars. A good example is schools. In the U.S., private schools are allowed, but 90% (and increasing) of kids go to public schools. Is that because the public schools are better? No. It's because taxpayers are obligated to pay for public schools anyway. Furthermore, I don't think it's controversial to say that municipal services tend to be least common denominator affairs. Again, look at schools. I might personally be willing to pay twice as much property taxes to get well-funded schools that hire well-paid teachers, but good luck getting 51% of voters to agree to such tax increases. Look also at power, water, and sewer utilities. Why are they so badly underfunded, and in a continual state of life support? As a yuppie, I'd be happy if my sewer bill went up by 500% (from $10/month to $50/month) if that meant a high-quality sewer system that didn't dump raw sewage into the river when it rained. I'd be happy to pay a lot more for water that wasn't flowing through old leaded pipes. But good luck getting any of that through a rate setting board! Public utilities are under political control. Depending on the industry, this can be a good thing or a bad thing. I think for telecom, it's not a good thing, in that it won't lead to an equilibrium that I think techies would be happy with. Say you wanted to build municipal fiber in San Francisco. What's the body politic that will control that system? Do you think it'll be techies? Of course not. It'll be the folks that are out there picketing Google. The discussion will shift from provisioning high speed service to figuring out how to subsidize low-income and high-cost people. Or, take Seattle, which is not very dense and is quite sprawling. Do you think the political consensus will lead to installing fiber in the high-density, high-income, low-cost areas first? It's also interesting you use public libraries as an example. Municipalities all over the country are cutting library budgets to the bone. Why? Because people don't care about them. I think what you'll find is that municipal broadband will be in the same bucket. People won't care enough about it to appropriate the substantial funds that will be necessary to maintain and continually upgrade the network.

by 001sky 13y ago

nardi 13y ago

Government competition is not fair, because governments don't play by the same rules as businesses. They can make money by fiat through taxes. They can and usually do lose money on services they provide. Businesses simply can't compete with the power of taxation. It should come as no surprise that there are no book rental companies when there are libraries.

001sky 13y ago
I'm a libertarian but i believe in public rights of way. I'm finw with a single provider of roads, provided they are not toll roads but rather "dumb" roads that let me go when and where I please. This is in contrast to government-sanctioned but opportunistically managed toll-roads with dynamic pricing that rips me off every time I have an important meeting to get to by turning into a "protection racket" for my important business. The rest of the stuff about "fair" x or y is not really relevant. Markets are supposed to be "free" and not "rigged", but neither of these two concepts imply "fair" in the sense you are using it. Every company on the NYSE hasi its own cost of capital--is that 'fair'? no. its not fair to the owners. But that does not imply that the market is not free for capiral or that the market for capital is 'rigged'. There are plenty of ways that government services can be provided to extend markets geographic reach, variety, and product depth without getting into some nasty discussion of socialism/totalitarianism etc. There are some services that are more-efficiently organized through the government. In that respect, a government entity is just like a non-profit that competes with a for-profit or private foundation entity (eg universities). And more ...
- nardi 13y ago
  Of course government should provide roads. And water, and sewage, and a police force, and fire protection, and libraries, etc. What made you think I didn't agree with that? You are fighting a straw man. And "fair" absolutely is relevant, from a market-wide POV. Of COURSE some companies have natural advantages over others. That's great. They should win. When the better competitors DON'T win, you have a market fairness problem. If government is providing a service at higher cost to the taxpayer than if a private company was providing it, then there is a problem. And this happens all the time, because the sticker price of government services is always low, or zero, even though the real cost can be very high.

rayiner 13y ago

I don't think it's controversial to say that public infrastructure crowds out private investment. It's very hard to "compete" with a service that everyone is obligated to pay for anyway through their tax dollars. A good example is schools. In the U.S., private schools are allowed, but 90% (and increasing) of kids go to public schools. Is that because the public schools are better? No. It's because taxpayers are obligated to pay for public schools anyway. Furthermore, I don't think it's controversial to say that municipal services tend to be least common denominator affairs. Again, look at schools. I might personally be willing to pay twice as much property taxes to get well-funded schools that hire well-paid teachers, but good luck getting 51% of voters to agree to such tax increases. Look also at power, water, and sewer utilities. Why are they so badly underfunded, and in a continual state of life support? As a yuppie, I'd be happy if my sewer bill went up by 500% (from $10/month to $50/month) if that meant a high-quality sewer system that didn't dump raw sewage into the river when it rained. I'd be happy to pay a lot more for water that wasn't flowing through old leaded pipes. But good luck getting any of that through a rate setting board! Public utilities are under political control. Depending on the industry, this can be a good thing or a bad thing. I think for telecom, it's not a good thing, in that it won't lead to an equilibrium that I think techies would be happy with. Say you wanted to build municipal fiber in San Francisco. What's the body politic that will control that system? Do you think it'll be techies? Of course not. It'll be the folks that are out there picketing Google. The discussion will shift from provisioning high speed service to figuring out how to subsidize low-income and high-cost people. Or, take Seattle, which is not very dense and is quite sprawling. Do you think the political consensus will lead to installing fiber in the high-density, high-income, low-cost areas first? It's also interesting you use public libraries as an example. Municipalities all over the country are cutting library budgets to the bone. Why? Because people don't care about them. I think what you'll find is that municipal broadband will be in the same bucket. People won't care enough about it to appropriate the substantial funds that will be necessary to maintain and continually upgrade the network.