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US unprepared for an electrical grid collapse, but it costs only $300M

themoneyillusion.com

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Re: US unprepared for an electrical grid collapse, but it costs only $300M

#221

Post by ashtonkem »

T-A wrote: post #218
piva00 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can "easy verify and submit" hide taxes from the public? Here in Sweden I receive my tax form pre-filled in a digital mailbox (basically a PDF of the tax form I'd get through snail mail on a website), I can see on the first page the total amount of tax paid, how much I owe or will receive as tax return and then another section with more details about interest I've paid, how much of that was deducted from my taxes…

https://capx.co/swedens-great-tax-hoax-a-story-of-fiscal-ill...

While the discussion of direct vs indirect taxes is interesting, the article just flatly asserts that Swedes are unaware of their tax burden without a shred of proof. That’s not convincing.

Re: US unprepared for an electrical grid collapse, but it costs only $300M

#222

Post by BurningFrog »

predictmktegirl wrote: post #127
BurningFrog wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be a good investment for anyone to stockpile some of these things, assuming you can sell them for 100x what you paid when The Event happens. Which, if my made up math is correct, means several entities probably already have done so.

Not sure it makes any sense to be prepared for anything when FEMA will just raid your inventory and send it to a donor-lead private company for "efficient redistribution". Someone will get 100x, just not you. Our entire system of governance is revealing itself to be deeply flawed if corrupt leaders are tasked with crisis management. We need changes in both governance as well as preparation.

You'd probably want to store them outside the US.

Though this discussions seems a bit provincial. Won't the sun knock out the same things all across the planet? Why are we only talking about the US?

Re: US unprepared for an electrical grid collapse, but it costs only $300M

#223

Post by roywiggins »

JoshuaDavid wrote: post #133
steve19 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are any black swans going to be black swans in hindsight? Did anyone anticipate it enough to put their money where their mouth was? A fortune, and a major service to humanity, could have been made by a private individuals stockpiling PPE in vast quantities. You say anyone with half a brain anticipated it. I didn't. Did you buy 500k N95 masks and put them in a warehouse? Knowing someone will happen is easy. I know for…

> Did anyone anticipate it enough to put their money where their mouth was? A fortune, and a major service to humanity, could have been made by a private individuals stockpiling PPE in vast quantities. The response to this pandemic has actually worried me quite a lot on this front, because it seems likely now that anyone who stockpiled PPE at pre-pandemic prices and tries to resell during the pandemic at a price high…

Even without the prospect of seizure, it's not free to maintain a stockpile, or maintain a short. So you're also making a bet that it will happen sooner rather than later- if it takes 100 years, your equipment will be rusted or obsolete and you'll probably be dead by then. And you'll have paid every year to maintain it, money you could have put into a slightly less risky and more liquid investment that would have long since paid out.

All the day-to-day costs and risks can just totally swamp the potential upside, even before the regulatory risk of seizure or being forced to sell your stockpile at pre-crisis prices. Price-gouging laws are already on the books, so it's not like it would be that much of a surprise.

Re: US unprepared for an electrical grid collapse, but it costs only $300M

#224

Post by zimpenfish »

Feuilles_Mortes wrote: post #216
zimpenfish wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let it burn That may well be ok for you to say but thousands of people have already died as a direct consequence of Trump's presidency. Hundreds of thousands more have been penalised for their race, beliefs, sexuality, etc. Generations to come will suffer because of the regulations they're undoing and the courts they've packed with Federalist wingnuts. Have some compassion, c'mon.

Thousands in the Middle East died from Obama's presidency. At a certain point you start to think that the "lesser of two evils" strategy just shifts the playing field to be ever-increasing in its evil across the board.

[flagged]

Re: US unprepared for an electrical grid collapse, but it costs only $300M

#225

Post by roywiggins »

steve19 wrote: post #102
roywiggins wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to be all Word of God, but Nassim Taleb does not consider COVID19 a black swan at all. https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-pandemic-is... It's not a black swan because everyone with half a brain could say that there would eventually be a global pandemic respiratory disease. H1N1 was technically one, it just happened to be mild. We thought there was going to be one in 1976 and raced to vaccinate every…

Are any black swans going to be black swans in hindsight? Did anyone anticipate it enough to put their money where their mouth was? A fortune, and a major service to humanity, could have been made by a private individuals stockpiling PPE in vast quantities. You say anyone with half a brain anticipated it. I didn't. Did you buy 500k N95 masks and put them in a warehouse? Knowing someone will happen is easy. I know for…

Everyone knows that the stock market will eventually drop a lot, due to some crisis or other. It will happen, to a near certainty. But the cost of maintaining a short position long term will exceed the payout, that's why it's really hard to make money off short selling. Otherwise it would be free money every decade or so.

Stockpiling costs money, and it costs more money the longer it takes for your bet to pay out, just like a short. Masks expire, rubber perishes. You have to bet on the timing, not just that it will eventually happen. A 100-year event will take 100 years to pay out on average, so how much money can you afford to lock away in anticipation of something that might not happen in your lifetime? The opportunity cost isn't zero.

Re: US unprepared for an electrical grid collapse, but it costs only $300M

#226

Post by jessriedel »

anovikov wrote: post #187
jessriedel wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how likely is simultaneous failure of 9 out of 30 of them? Totally unlikely if you ask me. It's quite possible because their failure probabilities aren't independent. A geomagnetic storm could take most of them out at once. Like respiratory pandemics, this is an event that happens every ~century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_storm

But it will be known well in advance and can be mitigated by simply shutting the grid down for a few hours. Only places which will experience difficulties are those having a large fraction of nuclear power since a reactor can't be quickly restarted once shut down, so power will restore only in some days.

Do you have a cite? My impression was that we do not have sufficient preparations in place to do this.

(E.g., we may have satellites that can be taken as weak indicators, but they are not designed for this, and there is no clear decision authority starting from possibly ambiguous satellite data to prophylactically shutting down power for 300M people against their will. Hopefully, recent events have made clear that "leaders will get their act together and act decisively during an emergency" cannot be the default assumption.)

Re: US unprepared for an electrical grid collapse, but it costs only $300M

#227

Post by harikb »

masonic wrote: post #198
harikb wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some states like CA were prepared, but the federal government can’t leave these things for states to fend for themselves. At some point somebody somewhere will try to save a few million to make a budget match. Federal government burned 10 times that amount, probably the same day, on military [1] https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-03-27/coronavi...

Some states like CA were prepared By what definition of the word was CA "prepared"? There was an improved pandemic infrastructure provided under Schwarzenegger, but that was completely gutted by Brown and left there by Newsom.

my wording was terse, but I quote the same story as the point you are making (the la times link). my point was that CA did what it could, given budget constraint. If federal had bailed out CA with that little money to keep the stockpile maintained, we would have been in much better shape nationwide.

Re: US unprepared for an electrical grid collapse, but it costs only $300M

#228

Post by cglace »

celticninja wrote: post #194
cglace wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck with that. There is a very large portion of the population that believe this administration has left the world better than they found it.

perhaps in the United States, a large portion of the population of the planet certainly does not think so.

Great, and how are they going to vote in the upcoming elections? The parent was not discussing Trump's popularity wrt to the world because frankly, that doesn't matter, what matters is changing public opinion within the US.

Re: US unprepared for an electrical grid collapse, but it costs only $300M

#229

Post by benrbray »

zimpenfish wrote: post #202
benrbray wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had the same thought and it sickens me that we've come to this point. As someone who has made the transition from teenager to young adult during the Trump era, I feel like I've lost a game I never even had the chance to play. We have clearly gone so far off course but very few seem interested in steering us back to reality (between the impeachment "trial", the primaries, and our handling of COVID-19). After four…

> Bernie, maybe, had the chance to. Bernie didn't even inspire people to vote for him in the primary; how was he going to inspire people if he got nominated?

Hence the "maybe". He clearly missed his chance.

Re: US unprepared for an electrical grid collapse, but it costs only $300M

#230

Post by filthycommunist »

closeparen wrote: post #156
s5300 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite tired and ill right now so I'm unfortunately not going to be able to write this out even slightly well... but for some reason, I want to post the thought anyway so I will. (Note: I'm a U.S. citizen) In short: As an engineering student with quite severe chronic illness that also got fucked over by abusive parents/a broken home I couldn't escape even with scholarships... I simply can't come to the moral conclusio…

>some drastic form of change and restructuring will have to happen That's how we got this administration in the first place. There is no rule that smashing the system has to leave you with a better one.

Implying that the system has been smashed.

Trump said he'd smash the system, and I'll admit I thought he would. That was one monumental lie.

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