[throwaway892238]

Every American utility company I have ever looked into has numerous crimes and controversies associated with it. It's kind of weird.

I actually suspect it's due to them being publicly traded. They literally are not allowed to do things that would jeopardize the share price, so they will hurt themselves and people in order to make a minor profit increase YOY. You shouldn't need to be a capitalist enterprise (with the whole "infinite revenue growth" thing) if your purpose is just to make sure your customers - who won't ever really grow much, because, you know, only so many babies born etc - have power, water, etc. But as publicly traded companies, their first purpose is just to increase shareholder revenue. If you end up (accidentally) burning down a forest, poisoning some communities, or compromising a state election with a fake candidate, that may just be an unfortunate side effect in the service of increasing the stock price.

[Ferret7446]

"Fiduciary duty" is probably the single most damaging policy/legislative decision that was made in US history. Even though it technically doesn't force companies to chase short term gains above all else, it still creates enough perverse incentives to create a lot of harm.

[asdff]

The public companies also suffer from corruption and such. I guess there just must be some law of a universe where if you have a sufficient sized captive base of income, people who might be inclined to abuse their position to take advantage of the situation will strive to take advantage of the situation. Then it becomes not a matter of if there is any corruption, but when will you end up with a corruptible individual in a position that can be corrupted.

Maybe these organizations or government bodies can be organized like a RAID away. Mirror these positions of power and use redundant pools. Identify corrupt bits by comparing results between these mirrors and hot swap the corrupted positions for a new candidate. Incrementally replace your array on schedule to avoid chance of future corruption and to mitigate batch effect.

[epistasis]

IMHO the problem is that utilities are like no other company in that they have a monopoly but are supposed to be reigned in by regulators. But the vast majority of regulatory bodies are either captured or incompetent at regulation.

Public versus privately traded doesn't matter as much as the fundamental conflict, wherein they profit more when the costs increase, and there's no penalty for literally killing people.

HIPAA violations result in jail time for executives. Meanwhile PGE illegally raids safety fund accounts to pay executive bonuses while regular people are killed due to failing infrastructure.

CPUC and PGE executives need to face serious consequences, and most certainly jail time, for their malfeasance.

[Rygian]

Maybe every publicly traded company should be subject to a fiduciary liability: when convicted, the judge can order an imposed hit on share price, and forbid dividends for a lengthy period.

[whatshisface]

The presumed legal duty to break the law in the interest of shareholders is grossly exaggerated... Nobody can sue you for failing to commit a crime on their behalf.