On April 20th the Manitou Springs City Council considered adopting an ordinance to limit trash collection to one trash hauler.
The hearing was packed and my friend Steve, a self-described socialist, was in favor. Small and narrow streets mean that three competing companies are causing too much road damage with six collections per week. Much better is a city contract that allows only one trash hauler. Residents won’t be forced to buy the trash service; they will just have to do without. For Steve and many in Manitou Springs, the “greater good” rules.
He didn’t think much of the “libertarians” who argued against the ordinance on the basis of individual rights. Trash hauling isn’t such a big deal after all. One Colorado Springs resident lamented the fact that his city has not three but six trash companies.
Our Constitution comes down on the side of the libertarians. The sole purpose of government is to secure our liberties and provide us with those public goods such as safety and defense that only government can provide. Trash collection or utilities in general? I don’t remember that being one of the enumerated powers. Until the advent of electric utilities in the 1930s, government did not control any utilities: FDR sought to control them at the federal level but largely failed.
Local jurisdictions do run utilities and states have Public Utility Commissions to regulate them. By practice, then, such utilities may fall into a category of public goods that government controls, especially local government.
The idea of the “greater good” is more troubling than the issue of trash collection. It comes from the Utilitarian philosophy of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill and is usually formulated as “the greatest good for the greatest number of people.”
That again is not constitutional in theory: the Constitution is based on respect for individual rights not the collective. The greater good leads to tyranny of the majority in which the majority can trample minority rights. We have numerous protections against this collectivist principle, including the limitations on eminent domain which prevent government from seizing your property unless for a necessary public use and then with fair compensation. (This is under attack as well.)
But the citizens of Manitou Springs don’t seem too concerned. The only thing preventing the ordinance now is a misunderstanding in the terms of the contract between the city and the chosen vendor.
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