Letter: Free enterprise doesn’t work for power customers

Wednesday, June 13, 2001 | 9:25 a.m.

I keep trying to figure out the logic for power deregulation. Perhaps you can help me figure out the sensibility of selling power plants to a competitor, so you are compelled to buy what was your power, back at an exorbitant cost, because you are now suffering a shortage of the commodity. It does not make sense to me at all.

Now the utility companies have to build more power plants so they can once again be self-sustaining. The "free market" doesn't seem to work when it is a utility that is an absolute necessity.

Please tell me how free enterprise can work for the benefit of the power customers when huge corporate monopolies control the entire market, when they know the product is something every household absolutely needs, when their profit margin is dictated by their stockholders, and most of the profit goes to pay off the stockholders. This is crazy.

The city of Los Angeles owns its own power and is a "public utility." With no stockholders to pay off, the city builds its own plants, maintains its own plants, and still comes out ahead.

Our free enterprise system has flown out the window. The farmers now must compete with large corporate farming. Banking will soon be done with one national bank! Gasoline is now controlled by a couple of huge controlling corporations.

This is good for small business and the American people? Oh, we're not people, we are consumers. Just ask George Bush!

MABLE M. HARRIS