this post was submitted on 10 Apr 2024
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Ohio separates distribution from supply. You can't select the distributor who connects your home to the gas mains, but you can choose from dozens of suppliers who put gas into those mains.
We do the same with electricity.
This is the same for both gas and electricity (both import and export for those who can) in the UK.
It generally works quite well, and could be pretty competitive if you knew to shop around. Since Vlad's 3 days began and natural gas prices spiked the entire market (the companies that survived) has pretty much been at the government price cap. There are some deals starting to re-appear but the main reason to switch right now is customer service. Amazing how much brand loyalty let's the big firms treat people like shit and get away with it.
The best deals tend to be time of use for people with smart meters.
Same in the EU. Or at least I think so, it's the case over here and it's EU-wide for electricity providers. Water, sewage and garbage disposal are municipal responsibility though there's no network/provider separation there.
What's actually missing is a municipal-level telecom monopoly -- again, with separate providers. The last-mile network is just as much a natural monopoly for telecom as it is for other wires or pipes.
I find it interesting that this is a good thing in the US and most of Europe, but in France this majorly fucked our electricity market by forcing the (mostly) state funded electricity producer into selling their electricity to some companies that provide no value aside from being an intermediate between the producer and the consumer (they are not required to produce their own electricity to buy some from EDF at a discount, and they are even allowed to sell it to consumers for less money than the lowest price EDF is allowed to charge when they are doing the same thing, because of some dumb regulations I can't remember).
All in the name of the free market because "monopoly bad", even though electricity production and especially distribution is, as you said, a natural monopoly.
Yeah you can't combine a market mechanism while telling a production (quasi-)monopolist that they need to fix prices.
Reminds me of the good ole GDR: They would subsidise bread so that people could always afford it, a completely laudable goal. People also had chickens in their backyard because eggs and meat and when it came to feeding those chickens, they had a look at the prices -- and, yeah, the state subsidised bread. Not grain. So they fed the chickens bread as it was cheaper. It's an easy enough fix, just shift the subsidies but nope, governmental inertia or something prevented them from doing it.
In Australia, you can't choose the suppliers. All the gas comes from the same place.
You can, however, choose the billing company. And it's the same story for electricity.
https://youtu.be/ELaBzj7cn14