This post covers similar ground to the previous one on road privatisation, although it was prepared a while ago. I'm letting it stand separately however since it deals with the issue for a slightly different perspective.
The standard libertarian response to the sorts of issues and problems I described in this post is generally either private property or less government – or both. As you might expect I’m not convinced that the answer is so simple. The main problem on this project was not public ownership or regulation – at least directly - but the large number of organisations with a stake in what was going on. With three different local authorities involved, ownership was relevant but it was a minor issue compared to the problems of securing agreement between all the stakeholders.
If you consider a modern shopping mall like say the MetroCentre in Gateshead or Cribbs Causeway in Bristol these are in single ownership. Shop tenants will have rights and duties set out in tenancy agreements covered by contract law. If the mall needs refurbishment, whether for physical or marketing reasons, services provided within the mall like power and phones will be owned – or at least managed - by the property company.
Making the wider world like a managed shopping mall is however simply not practical. Properties are owned in a complex web of relationships extending in three dimensions. In any one street you are will have water, sewers, telephone, electricity, gas, perhaps cable. There may be ‘trunk’ lines as well as services to individual properties. In addition to the cables or pipes, there will be switch boxes, manholes, inspection covers etc above ground. These will have been altered and changed over the years so that none of them are quite where they are supposed to be. They may be a metre or so to the side of where they are supposed to be and they may be only a few centimetres below ground level instead of the metre or so they are meant to be. All this adds up to a nightmare for anyone doing work. A few weeks ago I was without a landline for about three days because Wessex Water damaged the phone line through the village in the course of replacing some storm drains.
The owners of these utilities have the right to turn up, dig a hole for ‘operational purposes’ and then fill it in and move on. They are supposed to reinstate as it was before but for all sorts of reasons, some of which are even reasonable, this doesn’t always happen. Think of the rows that erupted wherever cable companies were in operation laying cable and you get the idea.
When work in the highway is required there are procedures to follow that allow the organisation involved to check what else might be happening. For example if the highway authority intend to resurface they notify the other companies to make sure that they won’t come along a week after work finishes and dig it up again. That’s important - I recall a job some years ago, where the contractors were still working at one end of a street, when the gas company turned up at the other end and followed them along ripping out what had just been done to replace the gas pipes. If the work is an emergency – water or gas leak for example - then the standard procedures don’t apply.
Libertarians are usually dismissive of the activities of public bodies, arguing that they are attempts to interfere with the smooth operation of the market. In the case I described would transferring the ownership of the streets to private companies reduce complexity? I don’t think so - in fact it seems highly likely that there would be an increase.