re XOM's products
Unless and until XOM becomes a regulated utility, I don't see the distinction. Americans need petroleum products and can get them from Shell, BP, ExxonMobile, and others. Americans need computers and phones and can buy them from Dell, HP, Acer, Apple, and others. Americans also need software, and can buy it from Microsoft, get it free from OpenOffice or the BSD teams or the GNU folks, or buy it from Apple.
The only reason I think things like electricity have become regulated public utilities is the earlier foray of local governments into municipal trading, in which former competition was quashed in favor of a government monopoly, that proved not to be particularly efficient (surprise, surprise). When the companies were privatized, the monopoly status endured and regulation was necessary to remedy the ill caused by government intervention (to create a monopoly). Now, we have a return of competition (at least in Texas) and less need for regulation as competition offers some help in setting prices. On the other hand, as California discovered, non-regulation can lead to short-term profit maximization by bonus-focused management and a detrimental neglect of long-term capacity development -- a situation that can be remedied either with price protection (heavy-handed regulation) or tax incentives or public financing support or other techniques to reduce the cost of capital needed to support big infrastructure projects. This actually has some application to the problems facing petroleum producers, whose production capacity will be replaced only if price protection makes development cost-effective, or government applies industry-specific tricks to reduce the cost of capital for capacity development projects.
Apple is in the happy position that its capital requirements are substantially below its cash on hand, and its margins are consistently better.
If one wanted to pick an industry offering windfall profits, one might look at the margins of Apple, Oracle, Microsoft, and other companies whose revenues derive more from IP than from capital investment (yes, R&D investment is critical to keeping IP current, but it's not like a 20-year power plant development project).
If you wanted to look for something to socialize, you might consider power plant blueprints: saving the engineering costs by spreading designs across the country's new plants would both cheapen the new plants and make skills more transferrable -- to the benefit of employees, trainers, regulators, and the cost-appreciative public. A public project to design an "open source" nuclear plant might enable extremely significant cost improvements. Local customization might be needed only to ensure adequate foundations (we build on mud in Houston) and cooling (different sites will have different water sources with different access requirements).
Just a few thoughts ...
Take care,
--Tex.
