Customers are better off if just one system is built and maintained, as long as the company that runs the system is prohibited by regulators from using its monopoly power to drive up prices.
It would be more expensive to build more than one system of electric wires or natural gas pipelines to deliver power and fuel to every home in a state. While monopolies have more power to charge higher prices than firms in competitive markets, there are times when it makes sense to allow them if their prices are regulated. Most customers cannot choose their provider. State law gives electric utilities, including Georgia Power, exclusive rights to serve customers in designated areas of the state.
GEORGI APOWER FREE
The electricity market in Georgia is not a free market. “It certainly isn’t anything personal, but one of our core values is promoting the free-market system,” said Julianne Thompson, a co-founder of the Atlanta Tea Party. But relatively few have endorsed so specific an energy platform in their own backyards, much less promised to campaign on it.
Other tea party groups have condemned the adoption of “smart” utility meters - which transmit information about customer usage - due to concerns that they would intrude on customers’ privacy, or have broadly backed less reliance on foreign energy. The group’s action in Georgia seems relatively rare among the loosely linked tea party organizations nationally.
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