“The very term ‘public utility’ … is an absurd one. Every good is useful ‘to the public’, and almost every good, if we take a large enough chunk of supply as the unit, may be considered ‘necessary’. Any designation of a few industries as ‘public utilities’ is completely arbitrary and unjustified.” – Murray Rothbard
Every American business and household is directly and indirectly impacted by the seemingly never-ending rise in public utility prices (including airports, electricity, gas, post, public transport, rail, seaports, telecommunications, and water & sewerage). State and federal regulation of these ‘so called’ natural monopolies (very worryingly, now including the Internet), in fact, virtually ‘locks in’ such an upward trajectory.
Consequently, consumers are paying a ‘pseudo-tax’ that is hidden from plain sight. This is in great part due to, as pointed out by economist Ludwig von Mises, that:
…No alleged ‘fact finding’ and no armchair speculation can discover another price at which demand and supply would become equal.