Are the benefits of replacing the regulation of rates and services with competitive markets worth the current transition problems?
Yes. Throughout the United States competitive markets have replaced traditional bureaucratic utility regulation of rates and services in the areas of airlines, telecommunications, trucking, and natural gas production. While transitions of these markets from monopoly to competitive structures typically included certain difficulties, these industry changes have generally reduced costs and enhanced services. Although electricity markets are more complicated for a number of reasons, increased efficiencies have resulted from restructuring the electricity market from the regulation of rates and services to competitive markets in other countries. For example, Chile restructured its power system in roughly this fashion in 1980, while New Zealand did so in 1987, the United Kingdom in 1990, and Argentina in 1992. While there are differences in how each of these markets were structured, all of which had to be fine-tuned over time, a major difference between these markets and the one in California
