This. It’s the fundamental reason natural monopolies like utilities are problematic to privatize. Democratic governments have an incentive to prioritize residents and citizens interests. The only interests private companies incentivize are shareholders, who increasingly do not care if their profits result in destruction, death, and disaster because they don’t know or care about the people being harmed. They don’t live in the places that are burning, so why would they reduce their take just to ensure the safety of the communities the company serves. As long as the losses they take from lawsuits and the cost of paying governments to limit their liability, are less than the cost of maintaining the lines then 100 year old hardware seems “Good Enough” to them.
Can you regulate them to the moon and back to prevent that? Sure. By the time you’ve finished building that bureaucracy, it would have cost you a fraction of price just to have a government department do it.
This. It’s the fundamental reason natural monopolies like utilities are problematic to privatize. Democratic governments have an incentive to prioritize residents and citizens interests. The only interests private companies incentivize are shareholders, who increasingly do not care if their profits result in destruction, death, and disaster because they don’t know or care about the people being harmed. They don’t live in the places that are burning, so why would they reduce their take just to ensure the safety of the communities the company serves. As long as the losses they take from lawsuits and the cost of paying governments to limit their liability, are less than the cost of maintaining the lines then 100 year old hardware seems “Good Enough” to them.
Can you regulate them to the moon and back to prevent that? Sure. By the time you’ve finished building that bureaucracy, it would have cost you a fraction of price just to have a government department do it.