Dan Walters: California consumer price regulation often protects companies

In the 19th century, California began experimenting with regulating the prices of vital services and commodities. Nearly 150 years later, Californians still don’t know if it’s working as we debate whether to expand the practice.

Years of bitter conflict between Central Valley farmers and the monopolistic Southern Pacific Railroad over freight rates led to creation of a railroad commissioner’s office in 1878. It later became a commission and in 1945 morphed into the California Public Utilities...