Re:Some of the regulation is practical (Score 2, Insightful)

This is an excellent point. However, certain utilities do not lend themselves to local public ownership, since many rural areas would be completely without access to them. Case in point: rural electrification in the 1930s. The population density of these ares is such that the local governments would have to raise taxes so high to cover the cost of stringing and maintaining power/cable/telephone lines to Old Lady McGee, that she'd never be able to pay them. Even at a wider level, this may not be fesiable, for states such as Alabama, Wyoming or Arkansas that are either too thinly populated, or the average income is too low to provide a sufficient tax base for this.

All that being said, this would be a spectacular experement to try in Fairfax Virginia, Montgomery county MD, or the Bay Area, since population density, tax base, and access to technology makes this competition much more plausable. These are also places that have some of the highest cable/internet prices in the nation (prince william county is charging 5$/month to Comcast subscribers to build an intra-county fiber network. This is why i'm not a subscriber anymore)