this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2026
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Why are utilities privatized?
Our energy provider increased our rates, then reported record breaking profits the next year. :(
(US)
Nah, let's privatize all the services you need to have a functional home. That way the companies can extract maximum value from the customers.
Brilliant.
Won't anyone think of the shareholders!?
For real though, I had a job where the management team tried to motivate us by setting "shareholder expectations" or some such nonsense. Obviously this didn't work. Also the company was small enough that pretty much everyone working there personally knew all the shareholders.... Because they also ran the business. They were the managers.
The balls it must take to be a shareholder, and to be known as a shareholder then talk about shareholder expectations like those are for a different set of people that isn't just you... Gotta be massive...
And those who are/want to go off grid:
Straight to jail.
That's so typical.
Source: also US
Grid should be public and production should be privatised.
Same here and I just found out the majority shareholder of my electric company is black rock. And the same year our rates went up the highest is the same year the CEOs made a bunch of bonuses.
Because as a general rule governments aren't efficient running services and that's fine for a while but long term that means infrastructure isn't properly maintained which leads to service malfunction, which leads to privatization because someone else can do it better and competence appears because someone else things can do it better than the other or to collapse because things don't work anymore.
Source: I am Spanish, a lot of companies were privatized after the dictatorship because they weren't efficient and infrastructure was falling apart. Privatizing allowed competence which meant someone had to invest in infrastructure to be better than the other. Problem is now governments are confabulated with some of those companies to create oligopolies. For example my city has it's own water/trash company (half private half public) so no one is allowed to bid against them; you can imagine how that is going (from paying 35€ every 3 months to paying 65€ in one year), price goes up, no one can't complain or hire a cheaper one, while with cable and phone companies since Telefonica was privatized other companies popped out and you can have cheaper and better internet/phone/tv.
Portugal decided to privatize their electricity and outsource it to China.
So government can spend the investment on schools and hospitals instead. (In the civilised world, obviously not America)
This has little to do with where you're from. It's just neoliberal rhetoric. Having a public energy sector would be beneficial in the long run and would reduce what we have to pay for it. Right now the earnings are privatized in most places.
My area privatized the publicly owned electricity provider and since prices started going up they then had to implement rebates to bring bills down a bit. Effectively a roundabout way to move public funds from paying for the actual infrastructure into subsidizing corporate profits instead
Exactly. Privatize the profits and socialize the costs. What a brilliant system. Unfortunately it benefits only a small handful while everyone else picks up the tab.
How's Venezuela's infrastructure after two decades of socialism?
Ah, whataboutism. How cunning. I'm done with you.
It's called evidence lol
A well-run public energy sector, certainly. Idk what we'd end up with given the most recent rotation of people in charge.
The state does have an incentive to keep consumer costs low in a way the private sector does not. But state officials also traditionally do a bad job of maintaining and expanding utilities to match consumer demand.
The end result tends to be low end user prices at the expense of reliable distribution and surplus volume.
It's not rhetoric. It's economics 101. Opportunity cost.
A mixture of private and public is best. The Nordics show market socialism done well.
Edit. A mixture allows more spend on more things. Govts can't sell infinite debt
Thanks professor. Do you know private debt and state debt are hardly the same? Have you considered the opportunity cost of not having public energy, therefore losing potential "earnings" to private investors? Or are you telling me next that rich people are a necessity as well? Is trickle-down part of this course or do I have to wait for 201?
What a lot of shite you write. Where does the state debt come from genius?
What opportunity?
Opportunity cost. If you spend money on one thing, it means you can't spend it on something else
Of course. So providing profits to utility “owners” is money stolen from the people that could be more productively used literally anywhere else.
The profits are in return for investment that the government couldn't otherwise do. What's the alternative?
Also, the private company employs people, they pay income tax.