> creating a competing utility company wouldn't make sense competitively in any way, so naturally there's a monopoly
So how come there are countries without a natural monopoly and with competing utility providers?
Also running your own generator with oil isn't a few orders of magnitude (i.e. at least 100x) more expensive. I wouldn't be surprised if it's not even one order of magnitude more expensive, but maybe just twice as expensive.
I also don't think GP's simile is good, but some of your arguments against it are just blatantly false.
> So how come there are countries without a natural monopoly and with competing utility providers?
Local governments own most U.S. utility lines and pipes, so a competing for-profit utility would have to go against the not-for-profit public service, leaving low to no room for profit and no reason to even compete.
Fiber/cable/dsl lines are one of the few U.S. utilities with competition because the performance/reliability/features of the service can vary greatly and because almost no local governments ran their own ISP before private companies came in and ran their lines. I can bet that any area with a municipal ISP has a very low chance of seeing xfinity/att run their own fiber if they're not already servicing the area.
So how come there are countries without a natural monopoly and with competing utility providers?
Also running your own generator with oil isn't a few orders of magnitude (i.e. at least 100x) more expensive. I wouldn't be surprised if it's not even one order of magnitude more expensive, but maybe just twice as expensive.
I also don't think GP's simile is good, but some of your arguments against it are just blatantly false.