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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

#201

Post by walthamstow »

forgetfreeman wrote: post #196
wisty wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mi…

I think it's very important to define who's being optimally served when declaring a market ideology "best". Free markets are demonstrably better at servicing capital, but I'm pretty sure that doesn't equate to optimum outcomes for the proletariat (why isn't there a better word for this, I can just see the redbaiting coming from a mile away).

FDR's VP Henry Wallace used the term 'the common man' which I always liked.

Re: Cities can cost effectively start their own utilities

#202

Post by hansvm »

rmason wrote: post #86

I used to live in a small town in Michigan which had city provided power using a dam. It was inexpensive and highly reliable. But every couple of years the big power company in the state would try and get the city to sell them the utility. After I moved a city council for whatever reason ended up selling. As a result the cost of electricity immediately doubled and power outages occurred regularly due to reduced maint…

I've lived in a few dozen cities (most very, very rural) in the US, and The Bay has, by far, the worst electricity out of any of them. We have longer outages as a planned practice than I'd have from ice storms knocking down half the forest or waves partially flooding the town.

As an outside observer, the fact that PG&E can lie to the state and request money for maintenance, subsequently sending that money to shareholders, looks like a likely candidate for many of the problems.

It's especially annoying that it's the lowest quality power while it's working (compared to a pure sine signal), has the highest count of days with some power blip, the highest number of full days without power each year, it's 2.5x more expensive than anywhere else I've lived, and they don't even have snow or ice or the same levels of wind and rain as the other places with better power. Plus they're servicing more people per square mile. It ought to be more efficient.

Maybe CA really is special somehow, but it looks like ordinary corruption.

Re: Cities can cost effectively start their own utilities

#203

Post by vlovich123 »

abathur wrote: post #193
vlovich123 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (Edit: In case I'm being obtuse, I at least think I agree that "investing" surplus in hiring and retaining great employees is a surplus-invested, and not a profit-taken.) So the executive compensation packages that many people hate on then are just a mechanism to reduce the profits of the company. And it’s not clear to me that Apple saving up profits so they can make larger investments without taking out loans is a…

(It feels like you are talking like you're gotcha-ing me, but I don't feel like I am trying to address any of these problem at the level you are focused on.) I wouldn't say surplus held to be invested, even for many years to support a large capital project, is profit-taken. The surplus isn't being taken. (But, as before, I do still think it may be worth discriminating between related/unrelated, because this is somewh…

I’m confused. What do you think companies do with profits?

Re: Cities can cost effectively start their own utilities

#205

Post by mmooss »

jmyeet wrote: post #151
mmooss wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure, but most of the innovation was in private companies and in open source projects (which I should have included in the first place).

> Usenet

That is FOSS and P2P collaberative (at least on the server level). Is that somehow connected with government?

Re: Cities can cost effectively start their own utilities

#206

Post by heylook »

wisty wrote: post #180
dv_dt wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Profit margins don't reflect how efficiently they manage costs. It could as easily be the case the PG&E mismanages resources and costs more to deliver the same power.

Possibly due to overregulation. The power company wants to cut corners. The government wants to prevent that. So there is constant lawfare between governments and highly regulated companies, with neither really caring if it leaves the customer out of pocket (since regulators can blame the bills on the company). The company outsmarts the regulators so the regulators carpet bomb them with so much regulation that they h…

[flagged]

Re: Cities can cost effectively start their own utilities

#207

Post by mmooss »

Ekaros wrote: post #152
mmooss wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Minitel is just one project, a successful one but eclipsed by the rest of the IT world. Does that mean the French government could have done what SV did? Why didn't they?

Re: Cities can cost effectively start their own utilities

#209

Post by kevinburke »

nocoiner wrote: post #188
kevinburke wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm the author here. The cost savings come from not having people who live in cities pay for undergrounding lines and maintaining power lines in rural areas. Maintaining the city networks is much cheaper. This is why Santa Clara, Palo Alto and Alameda's power companies can deliver power for half of what PG&E can. You can just copy their cost structure.

Cool. Now you’ve just undone 70 years of rural electrification in the United States. Optimizing for factors other than universal service is completely valid, but I’m guessing each of those municipal power systems pre-dated rural electrification and thereby get to somewhat free ride on the system more than anyone would reasonably allow Walnut Creek to do in the year 2025.

Not just rural areas but places like Orinda and the Berkeley Hills where I will pay to underground lines at massive expense.

There is also a huge moral hazard problem where we make it cheaper than it should be to live in fire zones by subsidizing electricity and insurance. So people build a lot of houses in fire territory that burn down.

In the meantime we make it more expensive to live in the safe places. We should stop doing that

Re: Cities can cost effectively start their own utilities

#210

Post by krallja »

hansvm wrote: post #202
rmason wrote: post #86

I used to live in a small town in Michigan which had city provided power using a dam. It was inexpensive and highly reliable. But every couple of years the big power company in the state would try and get the city to sell them the utility. After I moved a city council for whatever reason ended up selling. As a result the cost of electricity immediately doubled and power outages occurred regularly due to reduced maint…

I've lived in a few dozen cities (most very, very rural) in the US, and The Bay has, by far, the worst electricity out of any of them. We have longer outages as a planned practice than I'd have from ice storms knocking down half the forest or waves partially flooding the town. As an outside observer, the fact that PG&E can lie to the state and request money for maintenance, subsequently sending that money to sharehol…

Californians blame it all on Enron, but that can't be the only reason, right?
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