In many cases it is the government itself conspiring with the utility company to raise rates. The utility company has a monopoly, so if rates go sky high consumers do not really have any choice, other than move to another region, or stop using electricity altogether. http://www.treehugger.com/corporate...erians-utilities-and-government-to-blame.html
Where I live we have public utilities because private enterprise was just not interested in providing the services despite being solicited to do so. My town spent 6 years trying to lure a private provider before voting to organize its own municipal electric authority. Seattle did much the same as did many other towns and cities. It was not some communist conspiracy. It was a matter of the private sector's deliberate failure to meet consumer demand. In the face of private sector failure the people turned to what they could do for themselves, which was cooperative publicly owned and operated utilities. My electric rate is quite a bit lower than the private utility charges in the surrounding communities and the service is more reliable. The oversight board is elected and unpaid and the whole department is very exposed to public opinion since they live among us and everyone knows them. This has resulted in the municipal electric department spending a lot of time and money in making the electric system as reliable as they can while keeping rates low by keen bargaining with electricity providers since the wholesale market was partly deregulated. We have our geeks, who keep the management on its toes at the monthly public meetings. There were zero outages here from the recent winter blizzard despite our very exposed position on the coast, the 60+ mile and hour winds and heavy wet snow. When there are outages they are quickly restored because our workers know the system, unlike the workers called in from three states away to help the big private utilities restore service. Private utility operators are cherry pickers. They will not operate where they cannot make a good profit. If it was left up to them half of the US would still be without telephones and electricity and large areas of the US would never have high speed internet or cellphone coverage. So, rant and rave all you want against public utilities but, unless you live in some big city you would be sitting in the dark without them, even if you now get your electricity from a private company.
Very interesting thread, especially when conservatives can see it is their own best interests to regulate for corporate monoplys, and stiff competition in favor of lower prices for themselves. lol
We have 27 public electric companies in Massachusetts and the rest of the state is served by investor owned utilities, the rates are about the same, but during inclement weather the public utilities have fewer outages and when they do, they restore power significantly faster. We had a big storm last winter and every public utility customer who lost power had there power restored within 24 hours, while some customers of investor owned utilities were without power for up to 10 days. This is because public utilities have more linemen and do a lot of right of way maintenance during the good weather. Investor owned utilities "save" money by reducing staff and deferring maintenance, in good years this produces large profits, which generate large executive bonuses, in bad years it results in losses and calls to increase rates to cover losses. Those are the facts.
Could you please provide evidence for what you have just said? As far as I can tell that wouldn't be good the private company. Everyone would move to the public ones, putting the privates out of business.
anything the govt manages turns to $hit. They have the reverse midas touch, when it comes to efficiency. Public housing? Look at any city. Medicare? Now, Øbamacare? Even the military are wasteful & inefficient. There are some municipalities that are manged well for a while, but whenever you have tenured bureaucrats running things with NO bottom line consideration, the results are always waste, fraud, corruption, & inefficiency. It is insanity to expect different results when this is always the case. Anytime you want prices to rise, cost overruns, inefficiency, bloat & corruption, ..put a bureaucrat in charge. that is a scientific, repeatable proof.
I don't care about efficiency, I don't care about prices, I don't care about coverage. I care about reducing involuntary regulation and taxation. All public utilities should be immediately and permanently abolished.
Now you see, for me, the american sense of efficiency & economy kicks in. I'm all for collective projects, IF they benefit the collective, AND they are cost effective. I don't mind a road, or a bridge, or a national park, or other govt run projects, IF they can be done with reasonable efficiency & benefit the collective. That said, when the federal govt is involved in a public project, those things are not there. They are pork projects, with extreme inefficiency, cost overruns, & corruption. They are a waste of the taxpayer's money, & are not a frugal benefit for the common good. IMO, these things can be done better by local administrations, using local contractors & local cost estimates. Some municipalities seem to manage costs better than others. My brother lives in burbank, ca, & the city provides most of the utilities. they are expensive, & not efficiently run, which you expect in california. But my daughter used to live in ogden, ut, where the water, sewer & electric was also a municipal provision, & it was also very expensive. I have lived in cities where nothing was run by the city, & the utilities were fine & reasonable. I'm in a small town, now, where everything is private. Costs are reasonable, & you have to pay for each individually. Water is a private company, as is electric, gas, trash, phones. The only 'public' project is an 'improvement district', managed by the county, to run a wastewater facility. Each person hooking up to it pays a hookup fee, & a monthly fee for operations. It is reasonably priced, & is run by private contractors working for the county, but paid by the improvement district. That district is funded completely by those using the service. It is not subsidized by other taxpayers. There is opportunity for corruption, but oversight by the county manager, an elected official, can keep that down. IOW, there is a certain amount of transparency with a public project like this. I guess there are a lot of factors, but in general, govt run things do not run as well, financially, & otherwise. IMO, the less we have govt, especially the feds, involved in our day to day lives, the better off we are, & the more we get to keep the increase from our labors. But the bigger & more intrusive the govt gets, the more they take from us, & the less we have to invest in the economy, our homes or businesses, families, or charity to others. But i do not automatically oppose all 'collective' projects. Some, like the sewer in my county, or a bridge or dam, can be useful to the collective, & are better managed by a govt entity. As long as there is accountability & transparency, local projects tend to be better managed & more cost efficient than federal ones. There is a place for collective ventures. Police & firemen are better provided by a govt entity, imo. The justice system is better done locally, supported by the collective, rather than privately funded. The left likes to paint all small govt types as anti govt anarchists, because we oppose the overreaches of govt. But the choice is not, authoritarian rule by totalitarian despots, OR total anarchy with no law & order. Those are extreme caricatures by dishonest debaters. Some collectivism is fine.. it is a choice by the people deciding on certain things they want done by entities they create for that purpose. But the govt has grown into an all consuming monster, devouring everything & anyone in its path. I'm for the KISS method of govt, but that is contrary to all bureaucracy. Simple & small never work for bureaucrats.
It's not really collective projects that I have a problem with - voluntary association is a great thing, it's the involuntary sort I dislike. It's not building bridges or paving roads that I have a problem with, it's the way they fund such things - through involuntary seizure of property.
Private companies typically are not allowed a monopoly, and if they were, and they were not government regulated, then they could charge any amount they choose for a vital consumer product. When private companies are required to compete for market share, this is when you'll find lower pricing, better quality, better service, etc. Because of the gigantic costs for the infrastructure to generate and distribute electrical power, and to maintain the system, you cannot divide a 100 square mile town into 50 or 100 independent private power companies. How would this work? The price of 'your' electricity is based primarily on the cost to generate and distribute the electricity plus a small and regulated profit margin...how is your electricity different from that in Texas? How does Texas generate electricity? An interesting story; http://www.statesman.com/news/news/...rge-private-water-companies-brings-h-1/nRh7F/ I'm thinking I would prefer a public utility compared to a private monopoly...
The choice of where to live is completely voluntary. If you chose to live somewhere, declaring that the taxes you are paying are some sort of involuntary seizure of your property is a pretty ridiculous position considering that you voluntarily associated yourself with these taxing entities in the first place. What? You didn't know? Nobody asked you personally how you feel about paying these taxes? These days personal responsibility is a big right wing meme so it can only be through some personal failing of your own that you are living in a place where taxation feels like theft. If you don't like it you are always free to leave, I am sure that you could find some place to live where you will feel like you are not being robbed by the taxes you do or do not pay.
The idea behind Public Infrastructure was, by providing basic services at or below cost & by keeping rent-yielding infrastructure in the public domain, to lower both the cost of living & the cost of doing business.
I'm going to start a murderous rampage, and if you don't like it, I guess you'll have have to move away. The question is who should get to decide what happens in a society.
Actually it sounds like you were not self-sufficient as a public utility but were subsidized by the govt. Thats typically what happens in very sparsely populated areas, the expense to run and maintain power lines, substations, etc. is paid by the users. When it went to a private operation, the subsidy went away and you are probably now paying the true cost of your utility. Where I live, the electric utility is a large private not-for-profit co-operative owned by the customers. Prices are very reasonable, the service is efficient, and there is total transparentcy. Thats because the owners are also the customers.
Because up until that horrible eminent domain case by the SCOTUS, the consensus seemed to be that one would need government involvement in order to take the land to make them happen would be my guess. If the government wants to run a power line across my property, not much I could do to stop them other than fight over the value. If it were a private company, I could have held out and made them pay more for the land. I have more problem with cable service being allowed to be a monopoly in my city than who supplies my water. When I lived in an area where one purchased gas and electric directly from private companies, it was cheaper than when in an area with public utilities both before and after moving there.
Where you live there is a public utility, that's what a not for profit cooperative is, its a form of public utility. Investor owned utilities charge about the same sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less, but they don't provide the level of service, we had a big storm a yar or two ago, and all the public utilities had restored power to their customers within 24 hours, some customers of investor owned utilities went without power for 10 days. The difference turned out to be the extra money the public utilities spent on a more robust workforce and more maintenance, the investor owned utilities paid out in executive bonuses.
No, it is not a public utility. The local utility is setup as a private corporation, it operates just like any corporation but with 3 basic requirements a regular corporation does not have: 1 - it must operate at cost (it does not operate to make a profit - if there is a surplus at the end of the year, the surplus is returned to the owners/customers, there are no bonuses or golden parachutes or big salaries) 2 - it must be run in a democratic fashion (elected officers, review of the budget). 3 - all customers are also owners, non-customers cannot be owners, all owners are equal, and all officers must be owners/customers (the corporation does not answer to far off stock holders but the customer) We get hurricanes and sometimes a lot of damage, but the local utility does a great job of repairing the system.
What you don't have is an investor owned utility, with a profit motive, that is what drives poor service and high rates. That is why cooperatives and public utilities generally provide superior service, because they are there to serve the public, not to make a profit. Generally they will have more workers than investor owned utilities, spend far less on management, and provide better service, for about the same rates.
Yes. you're right, it was government subsidised. I doubt though if we're paying a true cost, just a price that the market will bear. It sounds like your location has a good deal, I'd like to see something like that here, unfortunately we're dominated by neo-liberal economics in public policy.
