The problem with publicly owned power coops, which the article touches on repeatedly, is that they form a model for the straightforward provisioning of modern necessities. Left unchecked, this can end up spreading. For example, my municipal electric company got bored and decided to branch out into providing Internet service. $75/mo for a gigabit symmetric, no caps, no contractual pricing games. And now that they've finished building out the whole town, they're using that experience to help smaller neighboring towns build out their own networks as well.
namuol 35 days ago [-]
Sounds awful. Which city?
foobarchu 34 days ago [-]
Municipal broadband/fiber is fantastic. Locally owned so they're much more incentivized to provide good service.
I lived a while in a satellite town of the smaller city I grew up in, and it had an electric cooperative instead of the company that has a monopoly over pretty much the rest of the state. It was significantly more reliable service, because there were stakes and it's not completely for profit.
The same town also has a municipal fiber company, who has begun branching into the anchor city. Everyone is excited for it, because again they provide a wildly superior service in every way. The massive corporations with the former duopoly are clearly in fear of this, to the point a technician showed up unannounced to check the decaying wiring and connections"free of charge" (this is unheard of in the 25 years I've been forced to use them).
bsder 35 days ago [-]
And this can be a mixed bag.
Princeton, MA is a really good example because they've got success and failure. They sort of succeeded with Internet and sort of failed with electricity (and windmills).
I may sound stupid here, but what is the problem? (Where I am, this would be a better option then anything I have available ).
bell-cot 35 days ago [-]
> [...] It took another seven years of legal battles and two more referendums before Massena flipped the switch to a new, city-owned utility. When it finally happened, in May 1981, utility bills dropped by a quarter. The town hasn’t looked back since. [...]
> “That’s what makes Massena so unique — that we saw it through,” said Andrew McMahon, superintendent of the city-owned Massena Electric Department. Others have tried only to see the effort fall apart, he said. In Massena, “the town hung together.”
What's far more special about Massena is that they've kept their municipal electric utility going since then. Similar to start-ups, successfully doing this is 1% idea, 99% execution.
Flip-side - one of my uncles spent 50 years managing a small municipal electric utility. But after he retired, there were too few locals who understood that their cheap & reliable electricity didn't come from Santa. Politicians short-changed maintenance 'till something complex & expensive broke - and Big Electric Co. bought up the whole system for pennies. Because "keep shivering in the dark" was the only other bidder.
roenxi 35 days ago [-]
It bugs me no end because in every debate about public/private ownership people maintain these wild fantasies that governments can handle long term thinking and capitalists can't. But frequently the story is like this one, it turns out the institutions of capitalism have longer planning time horizons than the public does. Turns out that low-bandwidth-low-expertise systems like public voting doesn't lead to focused technical excellence.
I'm not dead set against municipal utilities because a municipality is so small reasonably motivated people can actually make a big impact. But a competitive free market is still better because if the incumbent is so incompetent that a total system failure is likely there is the biggest opportunity for someone to head the crisis off before it eventuates.
yapyap 35 days ago [-]
> But a competitive free market is still better
emphasis on competitive there, which these types of things tend not to be
foobarchu 34 days ago [-]
Particularly when incumbents are able to lobby government bodies to grant them monopolies, see the electric and internet markets, and formerly the telephone market.
marcus_holmes 35 days ago [-]
Politicians are notorious for only seeing as far as the next election.
Shareholders are notorious for only the seeing the business as a speculative asset to be flipped for a profit.
Governments clearly can handle long-term thinking, as can private companies. But only if they're left alone to do that.
dragonwriter 35 days ago [-]
You mean, bureaucracies: without the politicians or shareholders you want to leave them alone, they aren’t governments or companies, just blind bureaucracies, with no long term goal to plan for but the perpetuation of the bureaucracy.
marcus_holmes 34 days ago [-]
I like to think there's a middle ground somewhere between speculators and bureaucracies; a group of people who are actually interested and incentivised to serve the customer and perform the function of the organisation to the best of their ability. I may be too naive.
dragonwriter 34 days ago [-]
The existence of such people isn't (I don't think) in question, the question is how you organize a system so that their being in a position to run an organization isn't an unstable, non-equilibrium state.
It is not just bad luck or accident that businesses at scale, while they may temporarily be run by idealists of that or other stripes, either fail or end up run by people whose interests is in having the organization run as an optimized profit-returning (either directly or by increasing stock value so that investors can realize gains by liquidating some part of their holdings) machine above all else. It is the structural incentives of the system in which they operate.
roenxi 35 days ago [-]
You've missed the key stakeholder group - shareholders have to find a Buyer to flip something for a profit, who cares about the longer term prospects of the business.
The buyer is not prefect, but they're better incentivised than anyone else.
marcus_holmes 34 days ago [-]
Unless of course the Buyer is another speculator who is only interested in flipping the business for a short-term profit
wesselbindt 35 days ago [-]
> governments can handle long term thinking and capitalists can't
I don't think anyone is arguing against the long term planning capabilities of capitalists. The disagreement is about whether their plans are beneficial to society.
For example, take the case of the aggressive marketing for baby formula that nestle carried out in the third world. Very forward thinking long term strategy, and innovative too: Other baby formula vendors were not focussing on these nations. The outcome was twofold. On the one hand, higher profits for nestle, and on the other, increased infant mortality in the targeted nations.
Now, whether that outcome was desirable is entirely up for debate. Me, personally, I'm not a huge fan of infant mortality, but to each their own. What is not up for debate is that nestle engaged in some effective long term strategizing.
bz_bz_bz 35 days ago [-]
Massena has benefitted heavily from being a town with a flat/declining population and almost no industrial growth. They are entirely beholden to NYPA (also a public utility) for their cheap energy, and unfortunately for them, NYPA has already released a proposed rate change to triple their preferred rates over the next ~5 years.
PrivateButts 35 days ago [-]
In my area when National Grid abandoned our local power station they sabotaged it before ditching it on the city. Now we got an abandoned hulk that's an environmental and economic disaster and will require millions to dismantle or repurpose.
readthenotes1 35 days ago [-]
Deep inside is the secret: regulation.
"That makes it some of the cheapest electricity in the country — largely thanks to NYPA’s preferential rates for municipal utilities. "
It is not the miracle of socialism over capitalism I was hoping for
PLenz 35 days ago [-]
NYPA is the state owned electric utility in NY. So yes, it is a triumph of socialism. A state owned entity supporting a local one.
Spivak 35 days ago [-]
It does seem to be the miracle of public utilities over private ones though. I don't know if anyone involved in this was even claiming a socialist angle.
There seem to be some socialists who are taking up the charge to expand this program but the original victory is all just public ownership. Rock bottom energy generation prices being passed on directly to the consumer instead of being sold to the highest bidder, amazing.
JohnnyLarue 35 days ago [-]
Publicly-owned is socialism. It's the workers owning the means of production.
matt-p 35 days ago [-]
So roads are also socialism?
Privatisation of utilities has been fairly disastrous in the UK. I understand what you're saying but they're natural monopolies who have limited scope for innovation. They literally aren't really any different to roads or 'sidewalks'.
Probably the safest industry to put in the hands of the state, if you're going to do it.
foobarchu 34 days ago [-]
Publically maintained ones? Yes. Socialism can be good, it turns out.
Spivak 35 days ago [-]
I mean sure but then every mixed economy is going to have an identity crisis. You can advocate for public ownership of certain industries and still be a capitalist because that's the reality of it. In all
public the economy collapses, in all private the economy collapses. You need both because the public side is how you survive the bust.
I lived a while in a satellite town of the smaller city I grew up in, and it had an electric cooperative instead of the company that has a monopoly over pretty much the rest of the state. It was significantly more reliable service, because there were stakes and it's not completely for profit.
The same town also has a municipal fiber company, who has begun branching into the anchor city. Everyone is excited for it, because again they provide a wildly superior service in every way. The massive corporations with the former duopoly are clearly in fear of this, to the point a technician showed up unannounced to check the decaying wiring and connections"free of charge" (this is unheard of in the 25 years I've been forced to use them).
Princeton, MA is a really good example because they've got success and failure. They sort of succeeded with Internet and sort of failed with electricity (and windmills).
See Mad Ned blogs for Internet: https://madned.substack.com/p/thin-pipe-part-i https://madned.substack.com/p/thin-pipe-part-ii
> “That’s what makes Massena so unique — that we saw it through,” said Andrew McMahon, superintendent of the city-owned Massena Electric Department. Others have tried only to see the effort fall apart, he said. In Massena, “the town hung together.”
What's far more special about Massena is that they've kept their municipal electric utility going since then. Similar to start-ups, successfully doing this is 1% idea, 99% execution.
Flip-side - one of my uncles spent 50 years managing a small municipal electric utility. But after he retired, there were too few locals who understood that their cheap & reliable electricity didn't come from Santa. Politicians short-changed maintenance 'till something complex & expensive broke - and Big Electric Co. bought up the whole system for pennies. Because "keep shivering in the dark" was the only other bidder.
I'm not dead set against municipal utilities because a municipality is so small reasonably motivated people can actually make a big impact. But a competitive free market is still better because if the incumbent is so incompetent that a total system failure is likely there is the biggest opportunity for someone to head the crisis off before it eventuates.
emphasis on competitive there, which these types of things tend not to be
Shareholders are notorious for only the seeing the business as a speculative asset to be flipped for a profit.
Governments clearly can handle long-term thinking, as can private companies. But only if they're left alone to do that.
It is not just bad luck or accident that businesses at scale, while they may temporarily be run by idealists of that or other stripes, either fail or end up run by people whose interests is in having the organization run as an optimized profit-returning (either directly or by increasing stock value so that investors can realize gains by liquidating some part of their holdings) machine above all else. It is the structural incentives of the system in which they operate.
The buyer is not prefect, but they're better incentivised than anyone else.
I don't think anyone is arguing against the long term planning capabilities of capitalists. The disagreement is about whether their plans are beneficial to society.
For example, take the case of the aggressive marketing for baby formula that nestle carried out in the third world. Very forward thinking long term strategy, and innovative too: Other baby formula vendors were not focussing on these nations. The outcome was twofold. On the one hand, higher profits for nestle, and on the other, increased infant mortality in the targeted nations.
Now, whether that outcome was desirable is entirely up for debate. Me, personally, I'm not a huge fan of infant mortality, but to each their own. What is not up for debate is that nestle engaged in some effective long term strategizing.
"That makes it some of the cheapest electricity in the country — largely thanks to NYPA’s preferential rates for municipal utilities. "
It is not the miracle of socialism over capitalism I was hoping for
There seem to be some socialists who are taking up the charge to expand this program but the original victory is all just public ownership. Rock bottom energy generation prices being passed on directly to the consumer instead of being sold to the highest bidder, amazing.
Privatisation of utilities has been fairly disastrous in the UK. I understand what you're saying but they're natural monopolies who have limited scope for innovation. They literally aren't really any different to roads or 'sidewalks'.
Probably the safest industry to put in the hands of the state, if you're going to do it.