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Do rich people pay more to get priority access to water and electricity during high usage periods? I'm not talking about just paying higher rates (i.e. poorer p

by pyre 9y ago

Do rich people pay more to get priority access to water and electricity during high usage periods? I'm not talking about just paying higher rates (i.e. poorer people will ration their usage while rich people will just pay more and no care). I'm talking about "rolling brown-outs" or "water usage rationing" scenarios. Do rich people get to pay more to not have to ration usage during those periods?

CWuestefeld 9y ago
This is a good question, and it also touches on the question of "gouging". Imagine some natural disaster, and everyone is being evacuated. The local convenience store is selling out of ice, as folks try to pack up enough food and stuff for their time away. It comes down to the last bag of ice, and we've got two customers. A frat boy got in line first, wanting that ice to keep his beer cold. He takes the ice for $2 and leaves, happy. The last guy is diabetic. He'd have willingly paid ten or even a hundred times that amount to keep his insulin fresh. But because the convenience store wants to keep pricing fair for everyone, the guy who REALLY needs the stuff wasn't able to signal the greater value he puts on the ice, and so the system fails him. The ability to use pricing to communicate value, including the ability to substitute other goods or downstream value of goods incorporating a resource, is crucial to the functioning of the market. And the most obvious problem with socialism is that it attempts to forgo this information, making the decisions by fiat or by guess, when it's impossible to centralize the knowledge that pricing derives through an emergent distributed calculation. Read more in Hayek's "The Use of Knowledge in Society": http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw1.html http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw1.html
- throwawayjava 9y ago
  > and so the system fails him. At least in the USA, this is a solved problem. The federal, state, and/or local government step in and provide disaster relief, including access to ice and/or medications. And the diabetic gets to live without parting with his life savings for a cup of ice. > through an emergent distributed calculation. Diabetics are not electrons in a calculator. There's a general pattern to both the argument you're making here and the argument you made about remote surgery. You're dreaming up a completely non-existent and totally hypothetical possible harm that the status quo already has exception handling mechanisms for, and providing it as a reason for ignoring much more systemic and plausible harms.
  - CWuestefeld 9y ago
    You're dreaming up a completely non-existent and totally hypothetical Yes, my examples were only intended as illustrations. But isn't that also the case with the topic under discussion, net neutrality? I mean, it is not the case that any carrier has unfairly shaped traffic to the extent that they're determining winners and losers, and innovation with new products becomes impossible. This fear is totally hypothetical as well. the status quo already has exception handling mechanisms for, and providing it as a reason for ignoring much more systemic and plausible harms I think you're falling victim to fundamental attribution error. It seems like you're damning your opponent for a particular problem, while excusing the same problems for your own team: The federal, state, and/or local government step in and provide disaster relief, including access to ice and/or medications. Yes, but the official channels have been frequently shown not to work. Consider Hurricane Katrina. The FEMA help was ... not so helpful, and much of the initial response was actually courtesy of WalMart. I recall one store manager, trying to help people in critical need of medication actually taking a bulldozer and knocking down a wall of the store to get at it. The government contingencies didn't work. The private sector doesn't always work out either, but much of the time it does a better job. It's silly to pretend that the private sector cannot do it, and the government can be depended on with complete confidence. But my example of ice in a disaster was all just one example to show the thought process. There are of course examples in plenty other places. Regarding my example of remote surgery data transmission, the responses from other folks here regarding QoS protocols was pretty constructive. However, I'm left with the view that none of us fully understands how Net Neutrality affects (or doesn't affect) its usage.
    - throwawayjava 9y ago
      > But isn't that also the case with the topic under discussion, net neutrality? I mean, it is not the case that any carrier has unfairly shaped traffic TFA: "Censorship by ISPs is a serious problem. Comcast has throttled Netflix, AT&T blocked FaceTime, Time Warner Cable throttled the popular game League of Legends, and Verizon admitted it will introduce fast lanes for sites that pay-and slow lanes for everyone else-if the FCC lifts the rules. This hurts consumers and businesses large and small." > to the extent that they're determining winners and losers The saga goes something like this: NN has been the assumed default since at least the late 90's. ISPs recently started to seriously test that presumption. FCC stepped in, and here we are. The NN rule started in 2015, but has been the default behavior of ISPs for decades. ISPs have been chomping at the bit to take advantage of their monopoly for decades. Comcast and Verizon are blatantly gearing up for this play, including via huge acquisitions. The "wait until they really screw you" argument is an uncompelling call to non-action. > This fear is totally hypothetical as well. Again, no, it's not. ISPs are coming out and saying publicly "yes, we will do this". > ...Hurricane Katrina... The government contingencies didn't work. Counter-point: the literally thousands of well-handled hurricanes, floods, and tornadoes. > The private sector doesn't always work out either, but much of the time it does a better job. The private for-profit sector doesn't provide systematic disaster relief, anecdotes of charity whipped into a frenzy by mega-corp's PR firms aside. For-profit FEMA just Does. Not. Exist. Here's a catalog of various forms of actual disaster relief provided after Katrina: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Katrina_disaster_relief#Other_organizations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Katrina_disaster_rel... Read -- actually read -- the overview of that article. Even when the government abjectly fails at disaster relief it still does several orders of magnitude more than private for-profit enterprises. Katrina was a failure of early warning and evacuation protocols, not a failure of disaster response mechanisms. Which makes sense -- aside from price gouging, there's no profit to be made on emergency response.
- c517402 9y ago
  So, the diabetic guy goes to McDonalds and they are out of ice as well. He explains his predicament to the manager who says, "Sure, we will sell you a bag of ice when our machine has made more." But, then there is a nice big competitive market for ice. So, your tear jerker story about ice is probably a poor choice for comparison.

by pyre 9y ago

CWuestefeld 9y ago

This is a good question, and it also touches on the question of "gouging". Imagine some natural disaster, and everyone is being evacuated. The local convenience store is selling out of ice, as folks try to pack up enough food and stuff for their time away. It comes down to the last bag of ice, and we've got two customers. A frat boy got in line first, wanting that ice to keep his beer cold. He takes the ice for $2 and leaves, happy. The last guy is diabetic. He'd have willingly paid ten or even a hundred times that amount to keep his insulin fresh. But because the convenience store wants to keep pricing fair for everyone, the guy who REALLY needs the stuff wasn't able to signal the greater value he puts on the ice, and so the system fails him. The ability to use pricing to communicate value, including the ability to substitute other goods or downstream value of goods incorporating a resource, is crucial to the functioning of the market. And the most obvious problem with socialism is that it attempts to forgo this information, making the decisions by fiat or by guess, when it's impossible to centralize the knowledge that pricing derives through an emergent distributed calculation. Read more in Hayek's "The Use of Knowledge in Society": http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw1.html http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw1.html

throwawayjava 9y ago
> and so the system fails him. At least in the USA, this is a solved problem. The federal, state, and/or local government step in and provide disaster relief, including access to ice and/or medications. And the diabetic gets to live without parting with his life savings for a cup of ice. > through an emergent distributed calculation. Diabetics are not electrons in a calculator. There's a general pattern to both the argument you're making here and the argument you made about remote surgery. You're dreaming up a completely non-existent and totally hypothetical possible harm that the status quo already has exception handling mechanisms for, and providing it as a reason for ignoring much more systemic and plausible harms.
- CWuestefeld 9y ago
  You're dreaming up a completely non-existent and totally hypothetical Yes, my examples were only intended as illustrations. But isn't that also the case with the topic under discussion, net neutrality? I mean, it is not the case that any carrier has unfairly shaped traffic to the extent that they're determining winners and losers, and innovation with new products becomes impossible. This fear is totally hypothetical as well. the status quo already has exception handling mechanisms for, and providing it as a reason for ignoring much more systemic and plausible harms I think you're falling victim to fundamental attribution error. It seems like you're damning your opponent for a particular problem, while excusing the same problems for your own team: The federal, state, and/or local government step in and provide disaster relief, including access to ice and/or medications. Yes, but the official channels have been frequently shown not to work. Consider Hurricane Katrina. The FEMA help was ... not so helpful, and much of the initial response was actually courtesy of WalMart. I recall one store manager, trying to help people in critical need of medication actually taking a bulldozer and knocking down a wall of the store to get at it. The government contingencies didn't work. The private sector doesn't always work out either, but much of the time it does a better job. It's silly to pretend that the private sector cannot do it, and the government can be depended on with complete confidence. But my example of ice in a disaster was all just one example to show the thought process. There are of course examples in plenty other places. Regarding my example of remote surgery data transmission, the responses from other folks here regarding QoS protocols was pretty constructive. However, I'm left with the view that none of us fully understands how Net Neutrality affects (or doesn't affect) its usage.
  - throwawayjava 9y ago
    > But isn't that also the case with the topic under discussion, net neutrality? I mean, it is not the case that any carrier has unfairly shaped traffic TFA: "Censorship by ISPs is a serious problem. Comcast has throttled Netflix, AT&T blocked FaceTime, Time Warner Cable throttled the popular game League of Legends, and Verizon admitted it will introduce fast lanes for sites that pay-and slow lanes for everyone else-if the FCC lifts the rules. This hurts consumers and businesses large and small." > to the extent that they're determining winners and losers The saga goes something like this: NN has been the assumed default since at least the late 90's. ISPs recently started to seriously test that presumption. FCC stepped in, and here we are. The NN rule started in 2015, but has been the default behavior of ISPs for decades. ISPs have been chomping at the bit to take advantage of their monopoly for decades. Comcast and Verizon are blatantly gearing up for this play, including via huge acquisitions. The "wait until they really screw you" argument is an uncompelling call to non-action. > This fear is totally hypothetical as well. Again, no, it's not. ISPs are coming out and saying publicly "yes, we will do this". > ...Hurricane Katrina... The government contingencies didn't work. Counter-point: the literally thousands of well-handled hurricanes, floods, and tornadoes. > The private sector doesn't always work out either, but much of the time it does a better job. The private for-profit sector doesn't provide systematic disaster relief, anecdotes of charity whipped into a frenzy by mega-corp's PR firms aside. For-profit FEMA just Does. Not. Exist. Here's a catalog of various forms of actual disaster relief provided after Katrina: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Katrina_disaster_relief#Other_organizations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Katrina_disaster_rel... Read -- actually read -- the overview of that article. Even when the government abjectly fails at disaster relief it still does several orders of magnitude more than private for-profit enterprises. Katrina was a failure of early warning and evacuation protocols, not a failure of disaster response mechanisms. Which makes sense -- aside from price gouging, there's no profit to be made on emergency response.
c517402 9y ago
So, the diabetic guy goes to McDonalds and they are out of ice as well. He explains his predicament to the manager who says, "Sure, we will sell you a bag of ice when our machine has made more." But, then there is a nice big competitive market for ice. So, your tear jerker story about ice is probably a poor choice for comparison.