Public Ownership vs. Regulated Natural Monopolies; A Paper Submitted to the League of American Municipalities at Its Third Annual Convention, September 19-22, 1899, Syracuse, N.Y. (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1900. Excerpt: ... REQUIREMENTS OF A CORRECT SYSTEM OF PUBLIC REGULATION. The requirements of a correct system of public regulation, to be prescribed and enforced by state laws, may now be concisely stated as follows: 1. Civil service regulations for public and profitsharing regulations for private plants. 2. A uniform system of accounting, prescribed and audited by the state, identical for both public and private plants. 3. Rules for calculating the true and entire costs, identical for both public and private plants. 4. The prohibition of all free service by public or private plants. 5. Price to users public plants to be cost plus provision for eliminating capital taken from taxpayers or secured by sales of bonds. Price to users private plants to be cost plus legal profit. 6. Grants of power, public or private, to be inclusive of the entire municipality, exclusive of right of competition or division of service as to territory or public and private service, and perpetual, with proper provisions for a change of policy, either way, properly safeguarding all investments. Under authority of such regulations, sustained by proper state laws, if the people cannot command the honesty and ability to regulate natural monopolies so as to develop their highest degree of efficiency, and to cause every advantage from favoring conditions to go unimpaired directly to users, when they are owned and operated by private corporations, they cannot do it when owned and operated by the public. If the government cannot regulate wisely--it cannot own and operate economically. Under the system of public regulation proposed every legitimate advantage of public over private ownership and operation will be fully developed and officially certified. Every existing disadvantage of private ownership and op...