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[–]AntarchomachusAnarchist[S] 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (7 children)

A natural monopoly doesn't refer to one that happens naturally - it is what economists call a type of service where it is generally considered desirable that only a single infrastructure exist. Water and electricity are the typical examples of these, although cable and the internet have aspects of this as well

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

yeah no natural ones exist is the point

[–]fschmidt 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

In these rare cases, the local government should run it. I am a free market libertarian, but I think monopolies are even worse than the government.

[–]AXXA 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

The government is a monopoly.

[–]fschmidt 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

But the government isn't for-profit. The worst thing is a for-profit monopoly.

[–]AXXA 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I disagree. The government not being for-profit means that they have no incentive to avoid waste and corruption. A for-profit monopoly has limited incentive but at least they have some.

[–]AntarchomachusAnarchist[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Hey AXXA, I'm sympathetic to this, but Ill say this:

It seems like it would be easier for the public to hold the government accountable through elections for potential mismanagement than it is for us to as voters to force a private company to do what needs to be done.

I'll offer my experience in California where a privatized monopoly power company (PG&E) is burning down the state and regularly causing outages due to an unwillingness to spend to place the lines underground in areas where this is obviously necessary.

Either the state needs to take it over , or we need some way of regulating this that will actually work

[–]AntarchomachusAnarchist[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Very true, but at least in theory the 'stakeholders' are the general public rather than private individuals. I'll grant that there are complications in terms of what happens in the real world