Category: Municipal

There ain’t no such thing as free infrastructure: Part 3, Partnership

12 October, 2007 (08:55) | Markets, Municipal, Theory | No comments

[Continued from the previous Part 1 and Part 2.]
 
So far we’ve seen that when cities grow big enough, they need to install municipal infrastructure, especially water and sanitation; and that expecting the private sector to cover all this cost, for all a city’s denizens, is unrealistic.
 

 
Instead, places like Philadelphia and San Francisco announced “private/public” partnerships. […]

There ain’t no such thing as free infrastructure: Part 2, downstream

11 October, 2007 (10:10) | Markets, Municipal, Theory | No comments

[Continued from yesterday’s Part 1 .]
 
Yesterday we explored the challenge of financing public-good infrastructure – big capital expenditures that create networks valuable to all of us.
 
In the US, we’re familiar with this via our friendly municipal power company,
 

 
or its close cousins, the water and sewer company.  So inextricably linked are they in American minds that […]

There ain’t no such thing as free infrastructure: Part 1, why

10 October, 2007 (09:05) | Markets, Municipal, Theory | No comments

Way back in my benighted youth, when I occasionally played very-late-night poker against future captains of industry, our game of choice (Texas Hold ‘Em then being unknown outside Vegas) was table-stakes pot limit six-card high-low card with a draw. 
 

You pay to look; lessons come extra
 
One player in particular had a mantra, if the bet […]