I've noticed that often in American governments, especially municipally, services are provided in a way that's neither public (government-run) nor privatized (government pays a company to run it). Instead, property owners are required to provide the service themselves.
For instance, in (most of?) the US, whoever owns a building is also responsible for maintaining the sidewalk in front of that building. If it gets into a certain state of disrepair, or is not cleaned, the owner gets a fine; but otherwise the city stays out of things. Similarly, the developer of a large apartment or office building might be required to maintain a small park nearby, or include a certain percentage of "affordable" units in the development.
The problem, obviously, is that either the services in question don't have any reliability or uniform quality, or a bunch of money gets wasted on a system of regulatory enforcement. This seems closely related to the way employers are required to pay for health insurance under the ACA.
So like, what's this dumb system called? Anyone know?
