Monopolies are antithetical to the free market, and vertical integration in industries with high economies of scale does create substantial monopoly concerns! The best market-based solution, so far as we can tell, is precisely to carve out the monopoly-prone "tier" in the industry (this is not always easy as monopoly-potential is not always correctly judged; it's more about inherent lack of contestability creating a sort of undue "power" over the rest of the market, and not so much merely a high market share by any single actor) and require it to act as an open platform to the rest of the market, perhaps even nationalizing it if necessary (this is, after all, the basic rstionale for why many public services are provided by the government). So the regulators in the beer industry may have come out with something quite close to the best known approach, if perhaps not for the same reasons.
There's a pretty big difference between the local town and the entire nation. If a municipal gas company provides poor service in your town, a mayor who doesn't address it is going to have trouble in the next election. If a nationalized gas company provides poor service in your town, good luck making that the issue a US presidential election turns on.
And socialized isn't really right either. There is a significant difference between e.g. "socialized medicine" meaning taxpayer-funded healthcare vs. municipal utilities that you pay for as a customer thereby covering the service cost, and may not even require you to patronize them if you don't want service, even if they happen to be operated by the government.
I wish they would actually formalize the latter arrangement as something that anyone could set up on their own, i.e. something similar to a 501(c)(3) nonprofit which is established to provide a subscription service and whose directors are required to be elected by the long-term subscribers. Then you might operate an ISP that way, but also potentially things like news reporting and software development.
> something similar to a 501(c)(3) nonprofit which is established to provide a subscription service and whose directors are required to be elected by the long-term subscribers.
Ad-funded media is indirectly paid just as tax-funded healthcare is, though side effects differ.
I agree that scale affects accountability, but again, that's orthogonal to ownership. And locally owned (or operated) services can be extraordinarily unresponsive to (at least some) local needs:
> Socialism, as with capitalism refers to ownership, not payment mechanism:
From your link:
> any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods
The distinction in this case being the distribution of goods. When you have the ability to say that you don't want something and you're not going to pay for it (and then go buy as much as you want from someone else), it's not socialism.
> Ad-funded media is indirectly paid just as tax-funded healthcare is, though side effects differ.
The difference again being that you have a choice. You're not trading cash for access to YouTube, but you're trading something, and if you prefer not to make that trade then there is no law requiring you to make it.
> I agree that scale affects accountability, but again, that's orthogonal to ownership.
Nobody said otherwise. The point wasn't that nationalizing an industry doesn't imply government ownership, it was that it does imply national rather than local control, which is generally neither necessary nor beneficial.
> And locally owned (or operated) services can be extraordinarily unresponsive to (at least some) local needs:
Even in that case, the local government was responsive to the local majority, the problem was that what the local majority wanted was dastardly.
But even that case proves why local control is better -- if one locality wants something you don't, you patronize another one. You buy from the Sears catalog instead of local racists, or move to the North.
What do you do in prior years when the national government is overtly protecting slavery and passing things like the Fugitive Slave Act?
The best case for nationalizing is a little better but the worst case is much worse.
> Needn't be the case -- Apartheid South Africa comes to mind, or English-occupied Ireland.
Which of these are supposed to be instances of local control? The first is where the majority of the local population didn't have the franchise, the second a central government imposing its will on local people.
> And in the case I'd illustrated, it was local businesses running the postal franchise who were discriminating, not (just) the local government.
How is that worse than when it's the central government getting it wrong, where the equivalent would be a federal prohibition on anyone delivering packages to black people anywhere?
The point is that neither local vs. national, government vs. business, market vs. nonmarket, nor majority vs. minority strictly deliver a fail treatment to all. Power and discrimination will out.
Moral, fair, and equitable opportunity is not neatly slotted into any ideological political-economy pigeonhole.
Monopolies are antithetical to the free market, and vertical integration in industries with high economies of scale does create substantial monopoly concerns! The best market-based solution, so far as we can tell, is precisely to carve out the monopoly-prone "tier" in the industry (this is not always easy as monopoly-potential is not always correctly judged; it's more about inherent lack of contestability creating a sort of undue "power" over the rest of the market, and not so much merely a high market share by any single actor) and require it to act as an open platform to the rest of the market, perhaps even nationalizing it if necessary (this is, after all, the basic rstionale for why many public services are provided by the government). So the regulators in the beer industry may have come out with something quite close to the best known approach, if perhaps not for the same reasons.