Sure the monopoly made sense when it was issued, but once tech catches up to the point of making it obsolete, the incumbent rarely goes down without a fight, delaying the deployment of new technologies, ultimately hurting consumers.

I'm not in California, but sounds to me like PG&E maximized profits by reducing maintenance, then when they were really far behind and running into issues, they begged for more money from taxpayers because they could not afford to make up for years of maximizing shareholder and senior management profits... I.e. corporate welfare.. they made lots of profit knowing this would bite them in the rear end, and then want the government to bail them out. It's nearly always win-win when you're that large of a company to pull these shenanigans

A non-profit government-run utility wouldn't have a profit incentive to skimp on equipment maintenance for decades. It would have other, more interesting problems.

They were running bootleg copies of Windows as recently as 2015 because they don't have the resources or incentives to upgrade.

Every office of the executive executive branch is in theory non/not-for-profit but they still manage to waste as much money if not more than a comparable private sector firm.

Federal light and power would not go well.

But add in the totalitarianism, censorship, 60m+ dead in the last 50 years, and I don't think you'll find the price to be particularly cheap.

I'll take my slower but steadier progress.

I'd be surprised if these areas weren't already under at&t and charter monopoly.

The "lifeline" program [0] has existed since 1985. Granted, it's not perfect. It has often been used by ILECs to harass CLECs. Still, it seems to work. It has already been extended from landline POTS to mobile, mobile "broadband", and fixed "broadband". It may be worth investigating why more Alabamians aren't using this program.

[0] https://www.fcc.gov/general/lifeline-program-low-income-cons...

I don't think the government is particularly good at actively promoting things. Too easy to incorrectly optimize.

So to best promote investment in private firms, they should find something that currently disincentives it and stop doing that.

Okay? That doesn't seem to be happening in Europe for example. Everything runs fine. There's internet access in rural areas. The world didn't collapse.

>Plus granting a firm a government monopoly on a region is always a bad idea that ultimately hinders the development and deployment of new solutions.

It's an auction. And others can choose to deploy afterwards.

>Cab medallions in NYC. Fixed price airline tickets. Exclusive right to trade spices west of the prime meridian.

Yes, the free market seems to work fine in this case. That's why these Alabamians have 1 Gbps fibre... oh no wait they have no access to the Internet at all. Dammit. Call Ayn Rand