Didn't have a heart to start another thread, so I figured I'd recycle this thread to bring up semi-related questions which I got the idea from threads re: GMO popping up lately.
Now, people over there don't like the GMO for whatever reasons but that's boring details. What I want to know is that there's the problem of GMO farm infecting the neighboring organic farm with the pollens. Therefore, it would be next to impossible to have a sizable organic farm that's not in proximity to more mainstream farms.
Now, property rights says that whatever spills over into others' property demands a just compensation. But on other hand, the free market seems to favors GMO. Who wins?
Then there's question of who gets to intervene if it shouldn't be the government? Wouldn't a class action lawsuit be essentially the same thing as a government regulation?
And I'm afraid I'm kind of still hung up on the concept of privatizing roads. Could it be argued that the entry barrier for this kind of market is too high to tolerate competition, even between two giant firms? Wouldn't we just end up with same system we have with local phone system; they have monopoly over a certain area but not because of exclusive contract with the government but rather because they own everything in that area for phone service.
therealj777 already mentioned that in free market, such monopoly would want to rent the unused portions in order to make money. I just remembered my old frustrations with DSL ISP. There are several independent DSL ISPs out there but for my area, they ultimately depend on Qwest (my local phone company) providing the line and as a consequence, I'd be paying two bills and more for service when Qwest can provide their own ISP at better price. The difference between Qwest as the ISP and independents are too marginal to be worth it; I already did the math and the best bang per buck would be with Qwest alone, with exception of customer service. It was no surprise that customer service were crappy; after all, Qwest has no incentive to "keep" their customers. Basically, you live in their area, you are their bitch.
Mind, therealjjj777 already pointed out in first page that this can be entirely bypassed by having Clearwire, Cellular services (there are more people who chose to not have a landline at all nowadays), so there's a way out for the telecommunication. But can this be said of electricity, roads and railroads? Didn't we have that problem with railroad company price gouging in 19th century? So, if entry barrier are too high, wouldn't there a risk that the people will suffer under a free-market utility monopoly?