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Comment by bastard_op | Hacker News Reader

There's probably more accurate answers, but I'd say they don't because they don't want the responsibility internally and/or don't have the funding, and can't because they're too ineptly run to do anything properly.

Having spent a good part of my career consulting for state and local governments in IT, it's an easy generalization to say they're mostly all incompetently run, and not something most are equipped to support from the top down. Even when run well, they're not well funded, and if some of the people actually are good, they're probably too busy fighting and offsetting the incompetent ones to do any good.

The flip side is I've also worked for several power companies over the years, and they're not often much better. They're at times better run and better people, but so dragged back by bureaucracy and politics they can't get out of their own way to do any good if they wanted to.

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Sure, I get that having a profit-motive is one way the market can incentivize efficiency. But without the ability for any real competition (i.e. there will only ever be one set of main transmission wires or water pipes for an area, we won’t ever have two completely distinct physical competitor networks serving the same identical addresses) does that still hold?

For a private company in sole ownership of a utility, how does the market keep the incentive to cost-cut (i.e. increase profit by reducing expenditures on things like timely customer service or deferring capex) in check versus actually improving service and efficiency above “it still works” ? It’s not like any individual could choose another provider of electricity, so therefore it’s not much of a market at all.

What is the motive to do anything other than rent-seek without a competitor to incentivize them to improve?

At least municipal and state leaders have some sort of accountability in that they could get voted out if it’s going wrong on their watch. Meanwhile PG&E was rewarding its shareholders by raising rates and deferring maintenance for paying out high dividends rather than re-investing in itself, which seems like exactly the opposite thing the public would want to incentivize.

I live in one of the places with good power. Have lived in my present building for 20 years, only two power failures in that time, and of those happened because unknown persons really wanted to cut power to my neighbour. The price for this reliability is said to be up to about ten times of what the Americans pay. I appreciate the reliability personally, but I imagine that if you went to your customers saying "this part of your power bill is going to increase by 1000%" some of them might scream at you.

I've also done some contract work for a couple of power companies, and don't have the impression that they tried to maximise profit. Rather, they seemed to see themselves as safe, zero-risk, low-profit places. As someone who'd never make either large profits or losses. The teams I dealt with didn't seem like people who would face down screaming customers. Safe, low-risk, boring, staid, always profitable, never headline makers.

Assuming that the Californians are like the teams I dealt with, I would tend to explain their present state with a reluctance to offend the customers.

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