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Comment by autoexec | Hacker News Reader

The privatization of infrastructure is basically theft. Take from the public, and gift to private corporations that the public has no power over. The privatization of the public's air or water supply should be criminal.

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> The privatization of the public's air or water supply should be criminal.

Internet, cellphone, electricity, trash, healthcare, insurance... if the vast majority needs the same thing, the local, state, or federal government should provide it. We need to put an end to all the rent seeking behavior, it's parasitic and slowly destroying our economy.

Don't forget roads and mail delivery. And there are people who look at that public infrastructure that basically allowed civilization to develop, and they go "what a shame, someone could be collecting rent on that".

> if the vast majority needs the same thing

It's more that if you privatize certain necessary infrastructure, the owners either end up as monopolies and/or require heavy regulation, which means the customer can't just buy from someone else and/or new companies can't unseat dysfunctional incumbents.

The government doesn’t need to provide it. There should be type of company for utilities that are basically non-profits for providing the service. Government owned makes sense for most. But could also have co-op where the customers own the company, or charity.

Also, the utility doesn’t have to provide everything. MVNO, which are cellular providers on top of other provider, could work with mobile provider utility. Internet is the other ones where in some countries multiple providers sit on top of phone company.

Isn't that a public company / crown corporation?

(Not to be confused with a publicly-traded company)

In the US, public companies are traded on stock exchange. There are state-owned corporations. The federally owned ones are a mix of semi-independent like Amtrak and USPS, and ones that should be governement agencies. Municpally owned corporations tend to be independent but are owned by states or cities. Municipal utilities are pretty common but work best for small ones like water.

The US has whole categories of 503c non-profit organizations, with 503c3 tax-exempt charities the most well known. I can't tell if there category for non-profit utilities. I think there should be room for companies between government-owned and for-profit, companies that do a service without making money.

When my trash stopped being picked up reliably, I appreciated the option to switch services. How would that work?

You can have "premium" services for-profit over and above base-level services. In countries where the government provides healthcare, you can pay for amenities like a private hospital room. Or if the government is too slow with mail delivery, you can pay a courier to overnight it. and so on.

I'm pretty sure you can still pay someone to pick up and dispose of your trash regardless of any public trash disposal service regime.

Like how you can hire private bodyguards, and not leave your safety to the police.

Or course your trash stopping being "picked up reliably" and the presence of alternative private services are often not independent events (either the government/local government decides to not put in the effort and leave it to the public to pay for third party services, or they're actively encouraged to do so with under the table bribes).

I think private ISPs are fine, as long as there is meaningful competition. Meaningful competition is not really possible with water companies.

Yep. Not saying public service is efficient, the privatisation of certain sectors like water and is much worse. The environment cost is just ignored and the public still get to foot the bill

Too broad... I would say monopolies are the problem, both public and private.

You don't think "governments are a problem" is too broad?

Monopolies are desirable (unavoidable?) in some cases. I don't want 35 competing toll roads running past my house. Natural monopolies, goods and services that will never be profitable (or would just never be as profitable as refusing to provide them would), and essential services are ideal for public monopolies. I'm not sure there's ever a situation where a private monopoly is the ideal though.

The best way to evaluate it would be as a function of the elasticity of the service provided.

I can avoid eating a pizza but not avoid taking a specific road. Besides it seems like any domain where the initial investment is large seems to be places where one monopoly eventually emerge.

At least in my opinion healthcare (hospitals and such not including drug development) should not be private or of there is there should be a strong public hospital network for providing care

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