You do know that television is also regulated like a utility, right? How did innovation in that sector turn out when the FCC took control?

It grew to be our primary form of news and entertainment nationwide. The internet has now mostly replaced it for news and appears to be replacing it for entertainment.

Yes, but both electricity and water don't really require innovation in the future. I can't remember the last time I wanted higher speed water in my house.

You almost couldn't be more wrong about that. Providing electricity and water are both massively complex undertakings, and ongoing innovation[0] is crucial to providing service for a growing population, and meeting the ecological challenges of tomorrow. California is in the middle of an epochal drought[1], and you're saying we don't need innovation in water?

[0] http://energy.gov/oe/services/technology-development/smart-g...

[1] http://ca.gov/drought/

Right. We have zero issues with water availability in the world. I guess those billions being poured into desalination, water recycling and alternatives are all, forgive the pun, money down the drain?

And you're absolutely right - we have zero need for alternative energy sources (although on that, it's kinda true - I've no particular issue with nuclear fission per se, though we need to figure out something better in regards to storage, and nuclear fusion is something that merits a huge deal of research into commercial viability).

In many states, power-production has been decoupled from power-delivery. For example, in Illinois[0], customers can choose which company to buy their power from but maintaining the lines and delivering that power is still the responsibility of Commonwealth Edison, the old monopoly utility. This seems like a reasonable compromise to me, and it's not that dissimilar from Comcast delivering my packets, while I choose to buy my content from Netflix or Hulu or Amazon.

[0] http://www.pluginillinois.org/default.aspx