Pipelines and Dams and Blackouts...
Coming soon to a city near you.
Read it in Newsweek Magazine.
And if that doesn't freak you out a little, watch the History Channel's America's Crumbling Infrastructure. That'll do it.
This guy gets it.
Corporate monopolies that own railroad bridges, hydroelectric dams, and high-pressure pipelines have skimped on taking care of this infrastructure, putting lives and property across America at unnecessary risk from blackouts, collisions, and explosions, even the threat of entire towns being washed away by bursting dams.
“The industry deluges rule-making processes with their public relations people and lawyers, and most regulators have either come from the industry they now regulate or plan to go to work for that industry once they leave government service.”
Not taking care of equipment may seem like a dumb strategy. It would, for sure, doom any competitive business. But for a monopoly utility, diverting money from inspecting, repairing, and replacing equipment can make economic sense. When lots of poles fall, interrupting the flow of electricity that defines modern life, or a pipeline ruptures, blocking the passage of fuel to heat our homes, the utility company can get an emergency rate increase that the public is sure to back as long as they don’t know about the past diversions from infrastructure repair to executive pay. Best of all for the utility, unless consumers bird-dog a case, any “temporary” rate hike will likely be permanent.
There’s also this irony: utility prices are set by the government, which lets the companies include in their rates the cost of insurance to pay damages from, say, a pipeline explosion.
As legal monopolies, they get to add the higher insurance costs to the rates they charge. That means we are forced to pay more even as we are put in greater danger.
Adapted from The Fine Print by David Cay Johnston.
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