In message , Andy Hall writes
On 2006-11-24 22:31:39 +0000, John Beardmore said:
In message . com,
writes
John Beardmore wrote:
In message , Andy Hall writes
On 2006-11-23 12:05:29 +0000, David Hansen
said:
On Thu, 23 Nov 2006 07:58:01 +0000 someone who may be John Beardmore
wrote this:-

Unless you plan to set up the 'Alternative Bin Emptying
Company'.
A few people have talked about this in various places, to replace
the "missing" council collections.
I haven't heard of these enterprises taking off. Given the amount of
(local) mass media coverage they got when they were talked about I
would expect to have heard if they were a success. I suspect that
those who talked loudly discovered that they are not as
representative of the public's view as they thought they were.

It would simply take removal of the council monopoly to address
that issue.
Do the council have a monopoly ?
Lets give you another example then, should make it easier to see.
Lets
say you were forced to pay for breakfast at a certain eatery on the way
to work, you had to pay whether you used the service or not, and once
you'd paid you cold eat as much and often as you wanted, or not at all.
But you paid the same. Now, having paid, you're likely to eat there.
This is a monopoly in practice. Sure someone else could sell you food,
but since you've already been forced to pay for this place, its
monopolistic. This is how council garbage collection works.
Agreed. But while its an anti competitive practice, it's not
strictly a monopoly I guess.

In effect it is because the customer is, in effect, in a situation
where has to take what is non-optionally provided or has to pay twice.
To all intents and purposes, and for most people, it is a monopoly.

OK - so the situation is analogous to private education.

You can send your children to private school, but if you do, you don't
get a tax rebate.

You can have no children at all, and still get no tax rebate.

There is plenty of history of this kind of thing, but people don't
generally think of state education as a monopoly.


The same is true of education and of healthcare. The difference
with those is that people view those rather more seriously and are
willing to pay twice to get a proper service.

Quite so - demonstrating that it's not a monopoly.


Cheers J/.
--
John Beardmore