What happened to the days when the public utilities were actually that? That is that they were owned by their ratepayers. The main job for the utility was to service the customer. To provide dependable power at a reasonable cost. Making maintenance and infrastructure upgrades for future growth. Some were privately owned, and some were municipal. But the job was still to service the customer. There has been a shift though. A great many of our public utilities have become public corporations. They are now beholden to the shareholders. The job of that corporation is to maximize profit, it’s all about quarterly returns. Forget maintenance or long term planning. They are just running the the thing into the ground to maximize profits. Push the infrastructure to the brink. Only make repairs when something is broken. The whole thing just gets less dependable and dirtier. The price of your utility goes up.

Why is this happening? because you have just shifted from being the the customer to being the product! It’s not about providing you with your utility, it’s about maximizing the profits the corporation can get from you. The product the company now produces is your hard earned money.  You have just realized that at the end of the buffet table is an abattoir….. Pubic utilities are different from other businesses. They are a monopoly of a sort. You don’t have a choice as to which water pipe you connect to or which power line. Your choice is what is there. Your only choice is whether you use it or not… not much of a choice. There really is no free market at this point. That is why public utilities should not be publicly held by shareholders. They should be owned by their ratepayers, to service them, their customers.

There are places in the world where people are getting fed up though. There is a group of towns in Germany that have bought back the grid in their area. This is a trend that should happen in more places in the world. The grid and other utilities should be put back in the hands of the ratepayers. We are not a product… we want the service.