Electric Vultures Selling Bottled Lightning

Starting in the 1980s a wave of “deregulation competition and privatization” took over infrastructure industries. The “unbundling” of an underlying commodity from the “natural monopoly” assets is supposed to create market competition. For example natural gas was unbundled from the pipelines and associated equipment that deliver it. This has failed for electricity systems. The overlooked basic reason for the failures is because the underlying “commodity” electrical energy is by nature a public good like streetlighting radio or satellite TV. When public goods are made to look like private goods metaphorically bottling lightning in electricity’s case economic rents windfall profits in plain language are created. In Ontario the restructuring of the industry to create a putative market has created vultures public and private that feed on the rents of the carcass of the demised public monopoly Ontario Hydro. In contrast Ontario consumers have faced ever-increasing electricity bills. This book explains how Ontario consumers have been bamboozled and where their money has gone. Without understanding how consumers’ money has been wasted there can be no corrective action.