Aftermath of a wildfire: A special interest vs. the public interest, part 2

Part 1 described a routine fight between a special interest, a powerful utility, and the less-powerful public. The following is some context, comments and a conclusion.

Context: SDG&E's alleged faults included not properly maintaining its power lines, which is expensive. Dealing with maintenance lowers profits and that does not have to be a priority for a monopoly with no competition and little oversight, i.e., there is no incentive to maintain safety. The regulatory agency had ignored customer requests for a pubic hearing in 2009, but ignored that. Intense public pressure in 2012 plus some complaints from a country supervisor finally got the CPUC to reluctantly allow two hearings. Most of San Diego's local government officials didn't care enough to lift a finger in the public's interest - Sempra, SDG&E's parent company, is a major campaign contributor to local politicians. If the public had not forcefully demanded a hearing, the CPUC was set to settle with SDG&E behind closed doors with no public input whatever. SDG&E itself blocked a full investigation as to the causes of the wildfires and then defended itself by arguing that a proper investigation was never conducted.

Not a criticism of business doing business: Despite that context, those comments are no criticism of SDG&E for doing what it did. They do business in their own interest. What they did and are trying to do apparently is legal. People who buy stock in SDG&E do it to maximize profits, not to protect the public interest. To the extent there is public benefit in private pursuits, it is usually a coincidental overlap. There is no law of nature that says a private interest has to overlap with any public interest. Only laws of men can require consideration of the public interest, e.g., child labor laws, safety laws, clean water and air laws, etc. There are shareholders who would not hesitate a second sue a corporation for acting in the public interest if doing that sufficiently impaired profits. As argued here before, the business of business is business, not protecting the public interest unless that's also business (the accidental overlap).

These are neutral statements of fact or reality. Obviously, special interests will vigorously deny it and some will be able to show occasional true concern for the public interest. However, those occasions are the exceptions, not the rule. At least, that's the California Moderates' perception of reality. One can't blame special interests all that much for doing what they are supposed to do. The business of government, when it works properly, is to protect the public interest with minimal damage to special interests. To be clear: Government functions properly and best when it intelligently balances public interest concerns with special interest concerns.

What about critical infrastructure?

One can reasonably wonder how a critical public infrastructure like a utility could ever wind up in private hands. What good is allowing the profit motive to play such a large role in utilities (or health care insurance for that matter)? Where's the vaunted private sector's ability to always have concern for and always do better than the evil public sector despite all odds? If California Moderates isn't mistaken, that's the prevailing view of private sector loving, government and regulation hating ideologues. Where in any of this is any evidence of even a shred of concern for the public interest?

The conclusion

At present, most federal, state and local governments are largely co-opted by special interests. They act to defend special interests before they defend the public interest. That is a statement of reality and a criticism. Government is largely subverted and broken. As far as California's public interests are concerned, their utility watchdog regulatory agency, the CPUC is co-opted and broken as is most of the rest of its elected politicians. If the public doesn't stand up to defend itself, there will be little or no real defense of its interests. In California (and the rest of the U.S.) the public can stick with the two party system and continue to get the same fine service that got us into the colossal messes we are in. Or, they can walk away and try something different, like the California Moderate Party. The logical choices are pretty clear. Stay with the status quo if you like it, do something different if you don't or do nothing if you don't care. The illogical but probably majority choice is to stick with the status quo if you don't like politics as usual.