[whimsicalism]

If I hire a local babysitter in my area and thus bid up the price of babysitters, is some babysitter cartel “passing the costs” on to other parents or are we describing the standard approach of how buying and selling things works

[bigbadfeline]

Your analogy is wrong, here's the right version: You hire another babysitter in the community but she needs a car to commute, then under the guise of "public utility", all other babysitter customers are obliged to equally share the cost of the car and insurance although it would be serving you exclusively. I can see why you'd want something like that and why corrupt economists would pretend it's a fair game.

We're talking about capital and interest expenses for the benefit of a single customer but paid for by all other customers too. And also about Billions of $$ of commercial risk shifted to the shoulders of the public.