> Water, electricity, phone services (and other communication), roads
These are all natural monopolies due to the limitations of public infrastructure. Such natural monopolies don't necessarily exist for goods/services like food, clothing, and medicine (most notably, over-the-counter generic medicine). Communication is largely left to the market, rather than government coordination/pricing.
> but even there I think there's room for a government foodbank/clothes bank style option.
Either that, or just providing the poor with money to buy food at market-rates, i.e. food stamps.
Re:Walmart Gets Into Health Care
by karatestomp on Tuesday February 25, 2020 @08:32PM
(#22419471)
Notably, food and to some extent clothing (textiles) have been very much the concern of the state, or of the way the state’s organized. What’s changed is that both got way the hell cheaper to make and we settled on some good, more-or-less stable regulations and systems of management to keep things from getting too nutty too fast.
We do/have. Water, electricity, phone services (and other communication), roads, child care and and whatever else the romans have done for us have all had successful government implementations. Food and clothing typically haven't been included in this list because choice is more important for them and the market does a good job at providing them, but even there I think there's room for a government foodbank/clothes bank style option.