If it's owned by the government, the public can request financial records. "Government run" private monopolies are opaque.
See, this is far less a problem of "government is corrupt" as it is "no one in our democracy bothers to hold government to account", which they technically have the power to do. People just expect things to work so long as they pay their taxes, and that was never true.
I get it; it's extremely onerous and frustrating, by design, to even figure out what governments are doing, let alone ascertaining who in particular is responsible, let alone fixing the problem, let alone reprimanding the guilty party.
But it is possible and the public consists of millions of people who waste most of their time on TV and social media. If we spent even a fraction of that time getting into the governments' business, rather than Brenda's on Facebook, we could have a real nice countey here.
If it's owned by the government, the public can request financial records. "Government run" private monopolies are opaque.
See, this is far less a problem of "government is corrupt" as it is "no one in our democracy bothers to hold government to account", which they technically have the power to do. People just expect things to work so long as they pay their taxes, and that was never true.
I get it; it's extremely onerous and frustrating, by design, to even figure out what governments are doing, let alone ascertaining who in particular is responsible, let alone fixing the problem, let alone reprimanding the guilty party.
But it is possible and the public consists of millions of people who waste most of their time on TV and social media. If we spent even a fraction of that time getting into the governments' business, rather than Brenda's on Facebook, we could have a real nice countey here.
You can certainly make a law that private utilities must provide financial records. No need to be owned by the government for that.
Yes it's human nature. Democracy would never work in the long run.
Well, the FOIA is similar, and still runs into the old "it's classified" problem where all the stuff you actually want to know is redacted.