A lot of markets can't support more than a couple of competitors. And in many cases, you can't easily open a new company because of upfront expenses. E.g.: an emergency room.

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alexpotato 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This is true but to use your example of an emergency room:

It's not uncommon in more rural areas to find a business that is essentially "more than an urgent care but less than an emergency room". e.g. they aren't doing trauma surgery but they can deal with broken limbs, severe lacerations etc that an urgent care couldn't handle.

My point is that while it's true that there are "step functions" in certain services, this is not always the case.

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bell-cot 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

When it's an essential service for "everyone", and the economics make healthy competition unworkable, the traditional solutions have been municipal ownership and publicly regulated utilities. Those include Fire Departments, Water & Sewer Dept's, Electric & Gas companies, ...

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alexpotato 4 hours ago | parent [-]

> Those include Fire Departments

I remember watching a discussion about privatizing the local fire department aka the town pays a private company to run the fire department.

Opposition folks use the line:

"You used to have a shield on your building that denoted you had paid for fire coverage. The old fire departments would drive past the unshielded buildings while fighting the fires."

(this is, of course, no longer the case but love to mention this discussion when ever privatization comes up)

	▲	cyberax 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> (this is, of course, no longer the case but love to mention this discussion when ever privatization comes up) But this very thing happened not that far in the past: https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna39516346