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Cities can cost effectively start their own utilities

kevin.burke.dev

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Re: Cities can cost effectively start their own utilities

#151

Post by jmyeet »

mmooss wrote: post #119
jmyeet wrote: post #54

It never ceases to amaze me how often people will make socialist economic arguments (that are objectively correct) yet eschew the label "socialism". An enterprise, like providing a utility, has revenues and it has costs. The difference between the two can be called the "surplus labor value". What happens to that depends on the economic system. In capitalism, capital owners own that enterprise (utility) and they sipho…

Do you think public ownership would have yielded the development of modern IT, for example?

The Internet was quite literally a government invention. Google was invented at Stanford. Linux was created by a volunteer who organized on Usenet.

Re: Cities can cost effectively start their own utilities

#152

Post by Ekaros »

mmooss wrote: post #119
jmyeet wrote: post #54

It never ceases to amaze me how often people will make socialist economic arguments (that are objectively correct) yet eschew the label "socialism". An enterprise, like providing a utility, has revenues and it has costs. The difference between the two can be called the "surplus labor value". What happens to that depends on the economic system. In capitalism, capital owners own that enterprise (utility) and they sipho…

Do you think public ownership would have yielded the development of modern IT, for example?

Something akin to it very likely. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel is one example of early IT done by government owned enterprise.

Re: Cities can cost effectively start their own utilities

#153

Post by dartos »

Ekaros wrote: post #108
tmnvix wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps I'm too cynical, but somehow I doubt that those with decision making power that were in favour of selling at the time regret much. Our modern political economy is almost entirely focused on ensuring that everything that can be sold to private entities (read, the market) is. In this ideology the sale would be viewed as a success regardless of any practical downsides.

I think this is just the end-stage failures of social democracies. Fund the things now, even if it means selling anything that can generate slight profits in long term. Or provide basic services at reasonable rates. Eventually everything is sold and out sourced, money has been wasted on buying votes and the debt is maxed out. Then the system will fail...

Selling almost any state function to a private entity is almost the opposite of what social democrats want to do…

I think you mean neoliberal democracies.

Re: Cities can cost effectively start their own utilities

#154

Post by [deleted] »

Aurornis wrote: post #73
AnotherGoodName wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Less than 20c per kWh for my local city power - https://www.cityofpaloalto.org/files/assets/public/v/5/utili... About half the price of PG&E. This is in an otherwise PG&E area. People should be demanding their city handle power. It leads to half the price.

> People should be demanding their city handle power. It leads to half the price. My power is significantly cheaper than yours but it comes from a private company. Picking random cities doesn’t tell us anything at all about costs or efficiency. Different areas have different costs and expenses. You have to compare apples to apples.

[deleted]

Re: Cities can cost effectively start their own utilities

#155

Post by musicale »

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #91
Aurornis wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People should be demanding their city handle power. It leads to half the price. My power is significantly cheaper than yours but it comes from a private company. Picking random cities doesn’t tell us anything at all about costs or efficiency. Different areas have different costs and expenses. You have to compare apples to apples.

This is a PG&E area as stated charging ~40c per kWh as stated by the post above?

It's interesting that 1) there are PG&E areas in Palo Alto (such as the Stanford University campus) and 2) PG&E manages the transmission grid for the whole SF Bay Area.

Stanford endured lengthy PG&E power outages while the municipal utility continued to operate. However, the university probably has negotiated rates that are lower than what regular PG&E customers pay in Palo Alto.

Re: Cities can cost effectively start their own utilities

#157

Post by tired-turtle »

UncleEntity wrote: post #95
aqueueaqueue wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They made the point that this is the plan. Encourage people to live in cities.

The more people that leave the rural areas for the cities makes it less profitable to serve the existing rural folks. I grew up in the Bay Area, lived in 'rural' Humboldt and Placer counties, and can say I would never move back to the bay no matter how much the technocrats would desire it. Pretty happy with my ~30k town nowhere near California TBH...

That’s fine that you want to stay put, but GP is suggesting (I think) that others shouldn’t have to subsidize your choice to live in a rural area where power service is (currently) more expensive.

Re: Cities can cost effectively start their own utilities

#158

Post by novok »

UncleEntity wrote: post #95
aqueueaqueue wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They made the point that this is the plan. Encourage people to live in cities.

The more people that leave the rural areas for the cities makes it less profitable to serve the existing rural folks. I grew up in the Bay Area, lived in 'rural' Humboldt and Placer counties, and can say I would never move back to the bay no matter how much the technocrats would desire it. Pretty happy with my ~30k town nowhere near California TBH...

And you should be charged the actual cost of maintaining the costs of that small town too.

Re: Cities can cost effectively start their own utilities

#159

Post by [deleted] »

kevinburke wrote: post #14
hypothesis wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No can do, they are going to start taxing (hard to call that billing at that point) you based on your income. At least that was the plan last summer or so.

All utilities have usage based costs and large fixed costs. Historically, all utilities have charged solely on usage. The problem is when you have solar, or solar + battery, your usage goes way down. Unfortunately the grid still needs to be maintained and power plants at peak times (maybe a bit lower, but still high) still need to be paid for. With usage based bills, people with solar pay less than their fair share f…

[deleted]

Re: Cities can cost effectively start their own utilities

#160

Post by wisty »

treyd wrote: post #139
Ekaros wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is just the end-stage failures of social democracies. Fund the things now, even if it means selling anything that can generate slight profits in long term. Or provide basic services at reasonable rates. Eventually everything is sold and out sourced, money has been wasted on buying votes and the debt is maxed out. Then the system will fail...

It's the end state of neoliberal policies . That's the ideological tendency that actually has the obsession with markets and strangling government capacity to do anything other than be a spigot for tax dollars. Scandinavian social democracies aren't perfect but they don't suffer from these entirely predictable problems to nearly the same degree.

Neoliberalism fails because of what economists call "the theory of the second best". Neoliberalism fundamentally assumes that the best practical system is as close as possible to an ideal free market, but it's not, due to local minima (often ones we've already found!) often being better.

The best system is a free market, if possible. But the second best system may not be close to the best system, it may be a local minima that is very different.

A classic example is that small companies and no unions is theoretically best, but monopoly unions vs monopoly companies is the second best (since there's no single monopoly, so they negotiate something close to the theoretical ideal).

Free markets are best, but if the government is going to heavily subsidise and regulate the power companies (as they are natural monoplolies, so they either get regulated or they abuse their position) then maybe it's best to just cut out the middle man.

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