271–280 of 281 posts
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Elon Musk is another Trump in the making. Only difference is Elon Musk is smart enough not to foot gun himself when he actually asserts his power.
He was not born in America so he cannot be a president.
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The transmission grids aren’t connected like that.
Is it only because there's US East and US West? I.e. Maine and New Hampshire can share power generation, and Arizona and New Mexico can share power, we just can't share across the East/West divide, wherever that is?
> The Eastern Interconnection and the Western Interconnection are the largest. Three other regions include the Texas Interconnection, the Quebec Interconnection, and the Alaska Interconnection. Each region delivers power at a nominal 60 Hz frequency. The regions are not usually directly connected or synchronized to each other, but there are some HVDC Interconnectors.
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It's not the infrastructure that (temporarily) costs this much. It's the power that runs through it. There was simply no power. > Unusually frigid temperatures knocked out nearly half of the state’s power plants in mid-February They were short on the futures/forward contracts, i.e. they had to provide electricity, but there was none. When shit hits the fan someone has to foot the bill, and here it is them (among othe…
I mean that the power that is still online doesn’t suddenly cost 500x more to produce. The plants are paid extra for.. not being prepared? This is why regulations exist.
Otherwise you can have a command-and-control economy, like the Soviet Union had (I'm not being sarcastic). Then a person/group in charge would decide who gets the remaining supply, rather than the price-driven market.
Energy has always been a very delicate piece of engineering, sensitive to short term disruptions. Whether or not that energy is distributed via capitalist markets or not, whether it's electrical energy, gas or oil or whatever else.
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The 13 billions pre-tax income seems to be domestic and not foreign. https://www.statista.com/statistics/241835/amazon-operating-...
What you can tell from that source is that most of the income is attributable to AWS—which is global—with most of the remainder being from sales at amazon.com, amazon.ca, and amazon.com.mx. Even if we simplify and assume that revenue from sales at amazon.com is strictly domestic, and the sales from the Canada and Mexico web sites are negligible, that says nothing about pre-tax income for the purpose of calculating US…
This is the side of privatisation that gets ignored. When private companies screw up, who gets left with the bill? Private companies have no incentive to be ready for really big problems because they know they’ll get bailed out, or just not have to pay. Privatise the profit, socialise the losses.
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I mean that the power that is still online doesn’t suddenly cost 500x more to produce. The plants are paid extra for.. not being prepared? This is why regulations exist.
Yes, it did in fact cost 500x more to buy, temporarily. Price is not determined by the cost of production but by supply and demand. Haven't you seen the extent of damage in Texas? What do you think people were willing to pay for electricity to not have this damage? Otherwise you can have a command-and-control economy, like the Soviet Union had (I'm not being sarcastic). Then a person/group in charge would decide who…
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The infrastructure to produce food is pretty vital, but I think it's also mostly market-driven and works well. I think the issues around power utilities are more to do with a lack of competition, and legislation that creates perverse incentives. (I don't know what the current perverse incentives are, but at least as of 2010, an energy startup founder said[1] that power companies were legislated monopolies that were "…
> The infrastructure to produce food is pretty vital, but I think it's also mostly market-driven and works well. Have you seen the amount of subsidies that exist for Ag? It's Market based in name only, futures contracts for pork bellies or bushels of wheat is so far removed from the day to day of farming that they might as well be pixie dust to a horticulturalist or a rancher, seldom does that morass of speculation e…
Yeah, you're right. I think agriculture historically (and in many nations) has been one of the more powerful special-interest groups and has gotten lots of legislation passed on their behalf. As Catch-22 has it:
His specialty was alfalfa, and he made a good thing out of not growing any. The government paid him well for every bushel of alfalfa he did not grow. The more alfalfa he did not grow, the more money the government gave him, and he spent every penny he didn’t earn on new land to increase the amount of alfalfa he did not produce. Major Major’s father worked without rest at not growing alfalfa. On long winter evenings he remained indoors and did not mend harness, and he sprang out of bed at the crack of noon every day just to make certain that the chores would not be done. He invested in land wisely and soon was not growing more alfalfa than any other man in the county.
Still, in spite of the distortions to the market, my impression is that it's still a functioning market, the barriers to entry are not very high, there's sufficient competition, and we are not in any danger of shortages. (Finding healthy food at a decent price may be another matter...)
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The same people, without losing the profits.
What do you mean by "without losing the profits"? A tax-funded electric firm would surely not share its profits with anyone, and even if it did it would still be at a net loss to the tax payers. (Since _all_ the funding would come from the tax bill - so its entire turnover is socialised.) A private firm would actually contribute _more_ to our common because it would be a net tax payer.
Yes, it would not be a net tax payer (on paper), but it would be less of a community drain, and not siphon money out of the common.
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These private companies also pay taxes year after year
So does everyone else. The point here is: should ""investors" be shielded from liability, or is it a recipe for creating monsters?
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Yes, it did in fact cost 500x more to buy, temporarily. Price is not determined by the cost of production but by supply and demand. Haven't you seen the extent of damage in Texas? What do you think people were willing to pay for electricity to not have this damage? Otherwise you can have a command-and-control economy, like the Soviet Union had (I'm not being sarcastic). Then a person/group in charge would decide who…
Again, this is why regulation exists, in many markets. It’s nothing new and as far as I know how the majority of states operate. As a society we don’t want the vulnerable to be looted in times of need. Equating that to communism, is well, plain stupid, so I’ll refrain from commenting further.