Comment by epistasis
4 hours ago
That makes sense for the "utilities" bucket, and to a small degree for the health insurance bucket, which are the biggest buckets linked.
Utilities have had complete regulatory capture of most states' Public Utilities Commissions. It's blatant and obvious in places like Arizona that have open corruption in their elections and commission decisions. But in places like California it's far more hidden: the massive increase in cost of utilities is mostly from increased costs for the transmission and distribution grid, but CPUC has basically zero information for the public to understand why they keep on handing over more money to the big utilities. There definitely seems to be massive corruption but where is it and what is the actual mechanism? It's so well hidden and sophisticated that if there is corruption nobody understands what the F is going on.
How do you replace a state-sponsored monopoly like a utility into something competitive? I don't know, when I learned econ 101 utilities were given as the example of a "natural" monopoly. But clearly that's not working out... maybe it just needs to be "state" rather than "state sponsored monopoly." The only other state sponsored monopoly we really have is the state itself. What does the public gain by allowing monopoly utilities that giving away the public's money to investors? The incentives are all off.
The problem with the health insurance bucket is not the number of players, it's that you're buying a pig in a poke.
Between ghost networks, death panels that deny you treatment, and the nature of deductibles, you have no fucking idea what you're buying, and whether or not you're getting ripped off.