Governmental Involvement in Public Utilities

Paper Summary:

The climate today favors deregulation and privatization as a way to address the twin and related issues of conservation and increased production of energy in the future. The writer discusses the ways in which the government has been involved in the arena of public utilities. The paper cites of examples of aspects that are being privatized and the impact of this move on the economy.

From the Paper:

"Government regulation of the infrastructure may impinge on real and perceived economic freedoms and opportunities. The problems facing governments in the world today involve more than this sort of regulation. The solutions tried in the 1970s also involved the even more difficult task of changing behavior, of getting people to use energy in a different way, to use less energy, to shift their economic priorities, and to make do with less. Such regulation is regulation of the commons, that which is accessible to and responsive to all. Hardin notes the conflict involved in the idea of the commons. On the one hand, in a country such as the United States especially, freedom is highly prized and promoted. Each person would like to be able to in effect do what he or she wants, develop economically as they please, spend as they please. Hardin describes the common in terms of a pasture land that is open to all."

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