this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2023
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I actually live in a city where the public works is a publicly owned utility, and it's pretty great. Rates are reasonable, excess revenue goes to infrastructure improvements rather than shareholders, and leadership is paid reasonably ($300k+benefits for CEO equivalent), and key decisions are voted on by the city council.
I'm curious why you want something separate from the government. To me, a crowd funded publicly controlled service is a government service in all but name and accountability.
The city/state level is much more likely to achieve things like this and that’s great but it’s not always the case. Regulatory capture and complex relationships with industry players make the government an imperfect vehicle for doing what’s best for communities. Sometimes a downright impediment to it.
My point is that there’s nothing inherently stopping us from doing it for ourselves in any situation where the state is not optimally stewarding the public trust on our behalf, and the sooner we figure that out the sooner we start solving up-til-now rather intractable problems.
I suppose my point was more that publicly owned funded and managed is functionally what government is.
Any issues with government management of a utility is just as applicable to a crowd funded publicly managed one.
There's nothing stopping us from altering the state to optimally steward the public trust. It's probably easier because the state already exists, and has mechanics for dealing with the types of civil issues that arise from community organization on complex projects.
The government isn't something that's apart from us, it's made of us.
What, to you, is the actual difference between a community working together and organizing their resources for the common benefit, and a government?
Sorry for the delayed reply. Been AFK.
The ability to collaborate solely with values-aligned community rather than being forced to reach consensus across all people in a geographic region regardless of how antagonistic or philosophically misaligned we are.