Trash Talking

One area where pure free-market ideology has long reigned has been trash pick-up in unincorporated St. Louis County.  Other than requiring you to have it, county governnment has not been involved in it at all.  Homeowners contract with a hauler and the entire thing is handled privately.  Now however, the system is going to change somewhat.  St. Louis County is planning to have haulers bid on providing trash services to the residents of soon-to-be-established trash districts.  The winning bid will then have the monopoly on doing the trash hauling for that area and contracting with the residents and neighborhoods within it.  I think this change could be good for St. Louis County, especially because trash hauling will still be handled entirely by private companies.  The changes will decrease the number of trash trucks on unincorporated roads, which all County taxpayers pay for.  Better to have one company serve an entire neighborhood once a week than four companies serve one-forth of a neighborhood at four different times each week.  The economies of scale produced by a firm serving households closer together than before should reduce costs for all involved.  My only concern is that new start-up companies be allowed to compete fairly for the residential bids, (commerical hauling is still unregulated) without favortism shown to established, union companies.  We will have to wait and see on that.