Natural monopolies are not at all natural

Among the many people there is a myth that natural monopolies connected with infrastructure objects are the most optimal organized structures and their reforming will lead only to additional expenses. This applies to roads, railways, electric grids, gas and oil pipelines, and so on.

To maintain this myth, managers of natural monopolies spend a lot of resources in order to propagate it, they lobby their interests in parliaments and trade in the threat of infrastructure collapse, intimidating governments. The logic is something like this: concentration of assets allows you to command in manual control of each part of the system, our management is the most effective, give us more money, get a rollback.

The problem is that there are certain restrictions in the management, the way out for which always leads to increased costs and just the big monopolists fall into this trap. Their losses, of course, they shift to consumers, thereby creating black holes in the pockets of citizens. It turns out a very "efficient" business to increase losses at the expense of society.

Of course, many governments are trying with varying success to fight natural monopolies, they are trying to control their budgets. The exception is undemocratic countries, for example, like Russia, where such control is impossible because of the non-participation of citizens in the governance of the country.

In backward countries, natural monopolies create barriers in the form of excessive and unjustified tariffs, which blocks economic growth and reproduces the constant poverty of the population.

In the United States, the railways were private from the very beginning of construction, there are private gas and oil pipelines, electric grids and electricity generating producers independent of the state, this kills monopolies and eliminates monopoly rents. That is why for several decades in the US there is sustained economic growth.

In Russia, the opposite is true. Ever since Soviet times, natural monopolists have held the first Russian government behind the throat, have now successfully integrated into Putin's system, scooping out huge amounts of money from Russian people's pockets for a comfortable life.

They uncontrollably spend resources bleeding economy and generate inflation annually through tariff increases. There is simply no incentive to reduce costs. This system is one of the reasons for the stagnation in Russia. The most effective way to limit natural monopolies is to eliminate them.

This is facilitated by technological progress in control systems, thanks to a variety of modern technologies, inefficient natural monopolies for electronic control systems can be replaced.

Roads

The system of reading car plates allowed taxing in large European cities citizens prone to move on private vehicles instead of public ones, which leads to traffic jams, gas contamination and damages people's health. The introduction of the tax has allowed to reduce stoppers, to clear cities of exhaust gases.

The system of recognition of numbers allowed collecting fees in an automatic mode without the participation of many workers and employees. Forward in reducing management costs, cities advanced where auctions were held between private companies involved in the installation and maintenance of equipment. The huge effect of the number recognition system was received by the society to create a safe environment.

Thanks to the storage of information about the movement of people, the opportunity was opened for the rapid disclosure of the illegal actions of terrorists and violators of the law. The increase in the rate of crime detection revealed the number of crimes in these cities, it crept down sharply.

If the attackers know that their actions are under the sights of many cameras, then there is simply no one wishing to commit unlawful acts. In Russia, now there are many mechanisms of extortion from auto carriers and motorists. Hundreds of thousands of supervisors monitor the collection of taxes and collect them instead of creating added value.

They are just devouring a large part of the fees and taxes, leaving a small part of the money for building and repairing roads. In Russia, perhaps the most inefficient administration of road taxes. And private-state partnership on robbing truckers of trucks can be written down in history as the most ingenious corruption scheme. Roads need to be built, money is needed for this, they should be paid by those who use roads.

But this money must be collected in the cheapest way and fully controlled by society at expenditure. Otherwise, all citizens begin to pay a kind of tax on bad roads in the form of loss of time, large costs for repairing cars and so on. There is nothing easier than creating a system for reading numbers on all roads in Russia through auctions for installing equipment by private companies.

Due to this the system will include a tax on cars depending on the tonnage and mileage without exceptions and participation of people. In addition, the base will allow the police to increase the detection of crimes to reduce violence in society. If you tie the system to spectral analyzers, you can identify carriers of drugs, weapons and ammunition. But something I absolutely dreamed of ...

The most railway in the world ...

I transported loads of goods by rail and often communicated with railwaymen. They always joked that the Russian railway is the most iron railway in the world ...

The efficiency of railways in the US is 24 times higher than in Russia, which allows producers to minimize transportation costs and generate sustainable economic growth. In Russia, the railway, like other monopolies, is a tool to increase losses for plundering budget money.

Of course, there is a great world experience in reforming railways. The experience of reforming railways in England and Sweden was unsuccessful. The carriers were separated from the rails, competition and cost cutting between the transport companies was to begin, but it was not there.

Most of the traffic, up to 90%, was captured there and there by large companies, this killed the competition at the root and railroad reforms did not yield an economic effect. But in Mexico, the government sold not only transportation, but the entire infrastructure to four vertically integrated companies.

In a short time, the cost of transportation fell three times. This gave a powerful economic effect in combination with other factors. Due to lower shipping costs, American car companies began to move the assembly of cars to Mexico. Then they decided that the factories for component parts were also better manufactured in Mexico. Chemical and mining industries were immediately pulled up.

Thanks to the increase in wages in China and remoteness from the American continent, the reduction of freight costs has sharply increased industrial production. Technological capital was further tightened up. Wages in industry were higher than in agriculture, but required knowledge of the exact sciences.

There was a demand for education, and such that the salaries of teachers in Mexico became almost the largest in the world. So, it would seem, a simple solution - selling to the four vertically integrated companies segments of the railway, the emergence of competition between them led to a reduction in costs and dragged the entire economy behind it. Last year, Mexico overtook Russia in innovation!

In Russia, the reform of the railroad has gone along the most inefficient way, following Sweden. Half of the rolling stock went to Yakunin senior, the other - to Yakunin Jr., the emerging small private carriers occupy an insignificant share of the market and can not compete with these monsters.

Competition did not appear, only bribes for using the services of the railway were legalized.And the freight companies generate profits, and the costs of operating the railways shift to the budget, which from our pockets ensures their happy and fun life.

The socialization of losses and the privatization of profits are banal corruption that destroys economic growth. There is nothing easier than to repeat the successful experience of Mexico, to sell 20 vertically integrated companies to the European part of Russia's railways, to create competition rules between these companies in order to reduce transportation costs.

This immediately attracts European investments: it will be profitable to produce energy-intensive and resource-consuming components for European producers in Russia.

Then Europe will become really dependent on Russia through the creation of technological chains between different industries and with it will be considered throughout the world ...