4 ms·
No offense, but what makes you think this would be any different if it was a zero-profit government monopoly instead of an "allowed rate of return" government m
by chris_va 8y ago
No offense, but what makes you think this would be any different if it was a zero-profit government monopoly instead of an "allowed rate of return" government monopoly?
And, to be honest, any cause less than ~1000 deaths per year (and PGE is about ~20) would barely even register as a blip on the top 50 causes of death in the state. It's a tragedy, but it's hardly the greatest threat to safety and health.
- wyattpeak 8y agoSince the shortcuts appear to all be about cost minimisation, there would seem to be every reason to think that a zero-profit government monopoly would have handled things differently.
- jjeaff 8y agoHow much more money should we be willing to spend to save those 20 lives a year? A million per person, a billion? A trillion? How many lives could we save if we put that money elsewhere?
- wyattpeak 8y agoYou're moving the goalposts. You asked "what makes you think this would be any different". That's what makes me think it would be different. The question of cost isn't at issue.
- rz2k 8y agoProbably somewhere between 60 and 200 million for the yearly lives lost. More than would mean the money is better spent on safety elsewhere such as better safety features on highways. Less than that, and spending on safety elsewhere becomes wasteful compared to spending on power infrastructure safety. The "value of a statistical life" has less to do with making thing whole in terms of not caring about deaths than it has to do with efficiently allocating safety spending. Then you have percentage of the yearly wildfires attributable to PG&E. So some percentage of let's say a couple billion in fire fighting per year, and maybe 10-50 billion in property lost. Anyway, the point is that it isn't a slippery slope discussion, and it isn't impossible to come up with an approximate number.
- dragonwriter 8y ago> No offense, but what makes you think this would be any different if it was a zero-profit government monopoly instead of an "allowed rate of return" government monopoly? The fact that we have a number of public power agencies in the non-PG&E parts of California and it is different there. It's not a hypothetical.
- aerostable_slug 8y agoThose publicly owned utilities collectively have a fraction of the transmission & distribution infrastructure of PG&E alone. Most essentially serve as brokers to buy power and pay T&D charges over other people's lines. They are simply not comparable.
- InclinedPlane 8y agoWell fuck me, time to move to California and setup shop as a serial killer. According to you I can get into three digits before anyone should even bother to care! Do I really need to explain the problems with your math?
- chris_va 8y agoI'm not really a huge fan of hyperbole--I don't think it makes for useful conversations online (which are hard enough already, even on HN), and I don't believe any reasonable interpretation of my comment above supports your argument. Feel free to explain the problems with my math, whatever math there was. Tell me how ~20 people a year is the greatest public safety threat CA faces.
- InclinedPlane 8y agoYou just white washed the death of "fewer than a thousand people" with a specious argument, and you don't think that counts as hyperbole? Again, explain to me how your line of argument wouldn't also excuse a serial killer?
- chris_va 8y agoI said the death of 20 people a year does not make it the greatest threat to public safety in the state, not that it isn't a tragedy to be mitigated. Objectively this is true, does that make you upset?