ustries may be taken as the basic infrastructure of the economy, industries which serve the rest of the industrial base by providing needed energy, communications, and means of transportation.
The economic characteristics are what need to be brought under control of a country's infrastructure is to be effective, economical, and serviceable in the future. Howe and Rasmussen note that the public utilities are natural monopolies and that this fact has been a chief justification for their extensive regulation:
The chief prerequisite of a natural monopoly is that decreasing unit costs or economies of scale prevail over the entire output range of the market. These economies of scale also must be internal to the firm; economies of scale must accrue to the firm itself, as opposed to the industry as a whole, as it expands (Howe and Rasmussen, 19).
Government regulation of the infrastructure may impinge on real and perceived economic freedoms and opportunities. The problems facing governments in
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