And really, as there is so much overlap between water control and, say, internet traffic routing and smart electricity grids, that it's inexcusable for a modern city of a million people to have anything but a highly sophisticated, predictive, data-rich utility management system.
Actual political parties have certainly richer utility functions, which include aspects such as "social responsibility", concern for the public opinion, the existence of a reference point (e.g, status quo dependent utilities), or the presence of externalities (e.g. making the decision depending on the ideological composition of the resulting group).
A surge in dividend-rich utility stocks helped push the Standard & Poor's 500 index close to a record Friday.
If low-volatility funds were concentrated in "safer" stocks like dividend-rich utilities and major energy producers in 2011, unless they shifted gears to match market sentiment for this year's favored sectors, they might fall victim to "sector rotation," as professional money managers shift into other industries and sell the favored stocks of the previous year.
Utility-scale solar projects, of the type that SunPower recently contracted to build in the Southwest and New Jersey for FPL Group, have been less affected by the credit crisis since cash-rich utilities have been able to push ahead with projects.
The portfolios look like typical value funds in that they're rich in utilities, financial stocks and firms with controlling shareholders.
In this example, assume that the rich person's utility is equal to one-half the money received and that the poor person's utility is equal to the money received.
To paraphrase loosely Ernest Hemingway's riposte to F. Scott Fitzgerald's famous comment about rich people, sport utility vehicle owners are not like everybody else: they have more money.
But wait: one entry on the Oxford shortlist rings my bell, with its rich etymology, current utility and potential staying power well beyond the nonce.
We can't fight this trend by believing the lies that rich fossil fuel and utility executives tell us.
That's a fairly rich price for a utility but a lot cheaper than Vodafone.
