Alberta power bills already did triple!
Not for electricity, but for gas. This happened shortly after 2000. Previously natural gas had been supplied by a combination of private and government held gas wells. This meant that exploration costs for these wells had been paid by Alberta residents. More importantly it insulated home owners somewhat from the wild price swings on the private energy market as the publicly held wells could supply gas at extraction prices, not market prices.
About the year 2000 somebody in the government got hot fingers to engineer a deal. They offered the publicly held gas wells to a private company. The public was bribed by a $400 check to each resident, but most of the profits was kept by the government, and undoubtedly some significant transaction commissions were paid to the executives fixing the deal. The result was that while we got some pocket change from the deal in one year, we now pay about three times more for natural gas every year. To cover up, in addition, the government has added a natural gas rebate program whenever prices go over some threshold. Now of course that just means our own tax money is used to make the gas look cheaper, but the money still flows from us the residents to the private interests.
A similar coup was made in my mothers retirement fund, Friends of Provident. This was a member owned fund, but the exec's sold it out to private interests 10 years ago, again bribing members with a cash payout check in the year of the transaction.
Now I'm not against private enterprise, but I think a balance between public (government, and member co-ops) and private is best. For viable businesses deals go one way. For public companies to go private is quick, but getting them back can be near impossible (unless they go near bankrupt and the government gets them with problems and all). Co-ops grow slowly and it often takes decades of member's commitment and investment before they become significant. Then it seems somehow wrong that some profit hungry exec's can just sell out with a penstroke.
So is private takeover always bad? No! A good example is the recent school reform in Sweden. Now tax money follows the student and will go to the school the student selects instead of just the district school. This has enabled many more private high schools, more varied study courses, and a healthy competition in the education sector. The key thing is that there is a choice, and numerous public schools remain.
