Historically, the United States has embraced a mixture of public and private ownership for "public utilities," that is infrastructure that provides important public services such as clean drinking water, transport, or electricity, leaning towards private ownership. For example, while most municipal water systems in the United States are owned and operated by their cities, rather than by private companies (as is often the case in, for instance, France), most public transit systems were privately owned and operated until they were taken over by cities in the 1960s and 1970s to prevent their complete collapse, most electrical utilities (or, to be more precisely, the utilities serving most customers) remain privately owned, and I don't believe public telephone or telegraph systems were ever particularly important. Certainly in the 20th century the trend has been to leave utility provision up to the private sector for the most part, with at most government regulation instead of outright government ownership.
However, this does not really seem like something that is "fixed in stone". Just looking at other Anglosphere countries, for example, shows a much different ownership pattern, with many utilities owned and not just regulated by the government during much of the 20th century, and even in the United States there were, here and there, different patterns of behavior, as with water systems or roads. It is definitely imaginable, to me at least, that the United States might evolve a political culture that considers such ownership to be normal for utilities, even if it remains generally pretty capitalist--I could imagine arguments of "the government can keep prices for these essentials lower without a profit motive and so benefit free enterprise," for example, or "the government can keep taxes lower by profiting from service provision" (yes, I am aware that these are contradictory!) being persuasive, for instance.
Therefore, my challenge is this: what PoD or PoDs might lead the United States--both public society and government--to consider state ownership of public utilities to be normal, with most such utilities being run either by government departments or state-owned corporations? I'm putting this in the before 1900 forum to open up possibilities, but post-1900 PoDs are really fine too.
Here are a few suggestions from me:
However, this does not really seem like something that is "fixed in stone". Just looking at other Anglosphere countries, for example, shows a much different ownership pattern, with many utilities owned and not just regulated by the government during much of the 20th century, and even in the United States there were, here and there, different patterns of behavior, as with water systems or roads. It is definitely imaginable, to me at least, that the United States might evolve a political culture that considers such ownership to be normal for utilities, even if it remains generally pretty capitalist--I could imagine arguments of "the government can keep prices for these essentials lower without a profit motive and so benefit free enterprise," for example, or "the government can keep taxes lower by profiting from service provision" (yes, I am aware that these are contradictory!) being persuasive, for instance.
Therefore, my challenge is this: what PoD or PoDs might lead the United States--both public society and government--to consider state ownership of public utilities to be normal, with most such utilities being run either by government departments or state-owned corporations? I'm putting this in the before 1900 forum to open up possibilities, but post-1900 PoDs are really fine too.
Here are a few suggestions from me:
- An early railroad in the United States (I suggest the Pennsylvania, since it was intimately connected to the state-financed Main Line of Public Works) is financed and owned by a state. Later on, during Populist agitation against the railroads, several states "nationalize" railroads in their states using their eminent domain powers, and this gradually spreads to encompass the whole country. "Traction" companies, that is public transit operators, are likewise municipalized in the early 20th century in emulation of this movement as the public becomes fed up with their abuse of their monopoly position.
- The Post Office is organized as a state-owned enterprise (or something similar) at the beginning of the country instead of a direct government department. It finances the construction of toll roads (turnpikes) with profits from mail transport. When electrical telegraphs are introduced, it uses the right-of-ways it owns to build out a telegraph system, becoming the main U.S. telegraph operator; later, it does the same with telephones. Thus, it emulates the Post, Telegraph, and Telephone ministries of other countries...as well as building and owning, at least for a while, many U.S. highways.
- Similar to the first point above, municipalization of transit companies becomes popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to deal with abuses of their power, similar to other "good government" Progressive reforms of the time. As many traction companies were linked to electrical companies, perhaps electrical provision is also swept into this.
- Part of the New Deal reforms involves encouraging municipalization of transit and electricity companies, rather than just breaking them up as IOTL.