SACRAMENTO, CA - Fabian Nunez, the Speaker of the California Assembly, recently went on record with a statement that invites not only examination but widespread application.

"Monopolies are never good, particularly in the area of consumer products," Nunez told the Sacramento Bee last month. He was discussing Assembly Bill 2987, which would allow companies such as AT&T and Verizon to compete in the huge home-entertainment market dominated by cable companies. These now operate under a franchise system that allows one company virtually to monopolize an urban area. The Speaker wants to change that.

"I want customer choice, I want quality, and I want to lower the cost of the service,'' Nunez told reporters in May. Based on experience in other states, the competition he wants would achieve those goals. Cable companies are against it, for obvious reasons, and so are cities, which have become used to extracting from cable companies goodies such as movies, trees, and swimming pools. But the Speaker is adamant that monopolies are never good.

"You don't just buy your refrigerator from GE," he told the Sacramento Bee. That is also true -- and it invites a look at California's K-12 education monopoly. That system, in effect, requires everyone to purchase a refrigerator from GE, even if it fails to meet their particular needs. They can buy from another company by opting for a non-government school, but if they choose to do so they still must fund GE, the education monopoly. This is never good for students and parents but government employee unions like it because it quashes competition and the money, lots if it, keeps coming regardless of results.

In higher education, by contrast, the money follows the student, who chooses where he or she will go. Speaker Nunez, for example, could have enrolled at San Diego State University, but opted for Pitzer College, a private,
non-government school.

Few legislators appear to share the Speaker's belief that monopolies are never good because they keep pushing for new ones. State senator Sheila Kuehl is advancing a scheme for government monopoly health care (SB 840) that would make the United Nations seem a model of efficiency. Under this plan, advertised as "single payer," private alternatives will fade away and Californians, in effect, will buy their health care only from GE. They will also wait longer for treatments, the most notable feature of government monopoly health care. Politicians like it because it quashes competition and increases their control over people's lives. It also feeds the illusion that they can do wonderful things for millions of people, at little or no cost to the people themselves. They
can't.

In entertainment, education, and health care, Californians want choice, quality, and lower costs. Government monopolies promise more than they can deliver, and produce rigidity, mediocrity, and higher costs. As they debate these issues, legislators and policy makers should remember the Nunez principle, with a wider application. Monopolies are never good, particularly when they deal with government services better handled by the market.

K. Lloyd Billingsley is Editorial Director at the Pacific Research Institute. He can be reached via email at
lbillingsley@pacificresearch.org.