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I wonder at what point California will just nationalize their grid/energy infrastructure. These “markets” always end up as some private monopoly with all the co

I wonder at what point California will just nationalize their grid/energy infrastructure. These “markets” always end up as some private monopoly with all the corresponding terrible incentives around upgrades and maintenance. If it was actually controlled by the state, it could be mandated to build out renewable-centered, decentralized systems as well.

chrisco255 7y ago
Well, in order to nationalize their power they would first need to be a nation. To be honest I don't know why one giant utility for an entire state is a desirable thing. In most places I've lived in, each community runs their own utility company. I've had cooperatives, city owned utilities, and private utilities. The best experience by far was the co-op. Since the customers owned the utility, we would get the profits back as credits on our bills usually during the middle of summer when power usage is highest in Florida.
- CameronNemo 7y ago
  >in order to nationalize their power they would first need to be a nation A nation is a social construct that California could certainly fit into. Hell, Jerry Brown called it one. Examples of nations: Palestine, the Kurdish nation, Tibet. The legal construct is called statehood. States can bind themselves into larger legal entities by giving up some of their own rights. Examples include: the US federal government, the European Union, and the United Kingdom.
  - chrisco255 7y ago
    Sorry, no. A nation is a legal construct, and California is not a sovereign nation. If it's a social construct then I'm founding my own nation tomorrow. I don't know anything about Jerry Brown but he doesn't sound very bright.
    - selimthegrim 7y ago
      I believe J. Biafra wrote a song or two you might want to look into
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
    - CameronNemo 7y ago
      >A nation is a stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, history, ethnicity, or psychological make-up manifested in a common culture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation I studied these topics at a university level. A nation is not a legal entity. Sovereignty is a legal property, and it can be applied to nations.
      - chrisco255 7y ago
        California is part of the United States. The nation is United States. Sorry, I know Texans and Californians both think they're big enough to be exceptions, but they're still just states. The stable community is the USA. We share highways, military resources, language, government, traditions, laws, etc. This is a ridiculous argument.
        briandear 7y ago
        Interestingly, the Texas grid is independent.
        CameronNemo 7y ago
        >The stable community is the USA I highly disagree with this sentiment. Very few of the US institutions are well designed, and I suspect that there will be a decline of American hegemony worldwide.
        perl4ever 7y ago
        People can, and frequently do, make distinctions between nations and states. Hence the term "nation-state" to refer to those nations which are also states. If there wasn't a distinction, the combined term wouldn't be necessary.
- SI_Rob 7y ago
  > one giant utility for an entire state PG&E is big, but it doesn't cover the entire state. For example, much of San Diego is served by SDG&E, much of LA is served by SoCal Edison, and several larger LA satellites like Riverside (~400k pop) have their own city-managed power utilities.
  - mullen 7y ago
    Technically, all of San Diego County is served by SDG&E.
tomc1985 7y ago
They were nationalized, once, and were privatized by the electorate something like 20 years ago. I remember people debating it as a kid edit - I'm looking this up and having trouble finding evidence of this outside of AB 1980 (proposition to break the state-sanctioned monopoly and allow competition among energy suppliers), which was from 1996
- claudeganon 7y ago
  Interesting. Didn’t know that history. Kind of wonder what the arguments in favor of privatization were given that doing so doesn’t seem to have resulted in any meaningful upgrades or better outcomes.
  - flukus 7y ago
    "Private companies are more efficient" is one of those things that's been said often enough that it becomes a "truth". This obviously doesn't pan out when you've got a monopoly or captive audience. Around me we have a choice of energy retailers, so we get to deal with the "efficiency" of several competing bureaucracies instead of the "bloated" government one. Politicians love it because it abstracts them from any accountability to the people, even our left wing parties are pro-privatization these days.
    - ew6082 7y ago
      A private monopoly on its absolute worst day would still operate more efficiently than a federal or state power agency. One still has a bottom line, the other just has meetings to look busy.
      - TeMPOraL 7y ago
        Not really. A dysfunctional private monopoly will go as bad as they can go without having people just abandon a product/service category entirely. Which, in case of captive audience or a necessity, can be really bad. Oh, and with falling quality prices can still go up - it's a monopoly, after all, it's not like customers can go elsewhere.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Pinckney 7y ago
I'm curious, do you think taxpayers ought to be on the hook when a state-run electric company burns down a town, or should California invoke sovereign immunity when that happens?
K0SM0S 7y ago
Seriously, don't do that. We tried nationalizing in Europe, within a capitalist framework: it just doesn't work. The TL;DR of 70 years of that experiment is that the State (gov and legis) is an extremely bad steward of any business endeavor; whereas lack of competition basically means no innovation and rent situations (it becomes sort of a tax in disguise to just hike prices or keep them stable when they should decrease). Most unregulated big markets devolve into some kind of cartel after concentration, though, so that's yet another dead end after a 50-year cycle generally (telecom shows it well, TV as well, construction too). What seems to work, for now, is a sort of regulated hybrid framework: - networks and transport (of elec, data, whatever) is opened to a few companies, which can only sell access to said infrastructure to other actors, not market it to end clients. - classic "operators" thus rent infrastructure capacity to these major actors and sell it to customers. This allows very small actors to emerge (like "virtual" ISPs and telcos, we now have very small energy companies all over Europe). It's a recent development but these new startups provide great customer service and modern end/site equipment (easy to monitor, plug to some IS, etc). The infrastructure caretaker status is typically "slightly public", with a non-profit mandate to maintain the infrastructure and develop it, using influx of for-profit investments by the operators, some citizen oversight, special status by law, etc. Basically, we try to make sure it costs as little as it should (it doesn't always work, rails are in a very bad situation for instance, and the caretaker is so deep in debt it's a failure, but the oversight of that dates to 100% public times with government-appointed CEOs). TL;DR / conclusion: find the right medium between "private/unregulated" and "public/monopoly". Both are disastrous, but there are sweet spots in-between. Note that I have no idea how to pull off such change in the US, elec or telco markets are simply too entrenched / congress too corrupted it seems. We have that problem too but currently we're circumventing most democratic systems (whether citizen opinion or lawmakers corruption) by invoking the EU: “we must do it, no choice, it's EU law now”. That works most of the time and is the reason why the EU is so hated yet so quintessential. I'm not sure the Federal level would carry as much authoritarian weight in US States.
- duckymcduckface 7y ago
  A counter example would be Quebec's grid which was nationalized in the 40s. Hydro Quebec owns generation, transmission and distribution for the province and provides the lowest residential rates in North America while operating at a profit. Admittedly we have access to stupid amounts of hydro power and a population that's a lot smaller than California.

chrisco255 7y ago

Well, in order to nationalize their power they would first need to be a nation. To be honest I don't know why one giant utility for an entire state is a desirable thing. In most places I've lived in, each community runs their own utility company. I've had cooperatives, city owned utilities, and private utilities. The best experience by far was the co-op. Since the customers owned the utility, we would get the profits back as credits on our bills usually during the middle of summer when power usage is highest in Florida.

CameronNemo 7y ago
>in order to nationalize their power they would first need to be a nation A nation is a social construct that California could certainly fit into. Hell, Jerry Brown called it one. Examples of nations: Palestine, the Kurdish nation, Tibet. The legal construct is called statehood. States can bind themselves into larger legal entities by giving up some of their own rights. Examples include: the US federal government, the European Union, and the United Kingdom.
- chrisco255 7y ago
  Sorry, no. A nation is a legal construct, and California is not a sovereign nation. If it's a social construct then I'm founding my own nation tomorrow. I don't know anything about Jerry Brown but he doesn't sound very bright.
  - selimthegrim 7y ago
    I believe J. Biafra wrote a song or two you might want to look into
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - CameronNemo 7y ago
    >A nation is a stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, history, ethnicity, or psychological make-up manifested in a common culture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation I studied these topics at a university level. A nation is not a legal entity. Sovereignty is a legal property, and it can be applied to nations.
    - chrisco255 7y ago
      California is part of the United States. The nation is United States. Sorry, I know Texans and Californians both think they're big enough to be exceptions, but they're still just states. The stable community is the USA. We share highways, military resources, language, government, traditions, laws, etc. This is a ridiculous argument.
      - briandear 7y ago
        Interestingly, the Texas grid is independent.
      - CameronNemo 7y ago
        >The stable community is the USA I highly disagree with this sentiment. Very few of the US institutions are well designed, and I suspect that there will be a decline of American hegemony worldwide.
      - perl4ever 7y ago
        People can, and frequently do, make distinctions between nations and states. Hence the term "nation-state" to refer to those nations which are also states. If there wasn't a distinction, the combined term wouldn't be necessary.
SI_Rob 7y ago
> one giant utility for an entire state PG&E is big, but it doesn't cover the entire state. For example, much of San Diego is served by SDG&E, much of LA is served by SoCal Edison, and several larger LA satellites like Riverside (~400k pop) have their own city-managed power utilities.
- mullen 7y ago
  Technically, all of San Diego County is served by SDG&E.

tomc1985 7y ago

They were nationalized, once, and were privatized by the electorate something like 20 years ago. I remember people debating it as a kid edit - I'm looking this up and having trouble finding evidence of this outside of AB 1980 (proposition to break the state-sanctioned monopoly and allow competition among energy suppliers), which was from 1996

claudeganon 7y ago
Interesting. Didn’t know that history. Kind of wonder what the arguments in favor of privatization were given that doing so doesn’t seem to have resulted in any meaningful upgrades or better outcomes.
- flukus 7y ago
  "Private companies are more efficient" is one of those things that's been said often enough that it becomes a "truth". This obviously doesn't pan out when you've got a monopoly or captive audience. Around me we have a choice of energy retailers, so we get to deal with the "efficiency" of several competing bureaucracies instead of the "bloated" government one. Politicians love it because it abstracts them from any accountability to the people, even our left wing parties are pro-privatization these days.
  - ew6082 7y ago
    A private monopoly on its absolute worst day would still operate more efficiently than a federal or state power agency. One still has a bottom line, the other just has meetings to look busy.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      Not really. A dysfunctional private monopoly will go as bad as they can go without having people just abandon a product/service category entirely. Which, in case of captive audience or a necessity, can be really bad. Oh, and with falling quality prices can still go up - it's a monopoly, after all, it's not like customers can go elsewhere.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

Pinckney 7y ago

I'm curious, do you think taxpayers ought to be on the hook when a state-run electric company burns down a town, or should California invoke sovereign immunity when that happens?

K0SM0S 7y ago

Seriously, don't do that. We tried nationalizing in Europe, within a capitalist framework: it just doesn't work. The TL;DR of 70 years of that experiment is that the State (gov and legis) is an extremely bad steward of any business endeavor; whereas lack of competition basically means no innovation and rent situations (it becomes sort of a tax in disguise to just hike prices or keep them stable when they should decrease). Most unregulated big markets devolve into some kind of cartel after concentration, though, so that's yet another dead end after a 50-year cycle generally (telecom shows it well, TV as well, construction too). What seems to work, for now, is a sort of regulated hybrid framework: - networks and transport (of elec, data, whatever) is opened to a few companies, which can only sell access to said infrastructure to other actors, not market it to end clients. - classic "operators" thus rent infrastructure capacity to these major actors and sell it to customers. This allows very small actors to emerge (like "virtual" ISPs and telcos, we now have very small energy companies all over Europe). It's a recent development but these new startups provide great customer service and modern end/site equipment (easy to monitor, plug to some IS, etc). The infrastructure caretaker status is typically "slightly public", with a non-profit mandate to maintain the infrastructure and develop it, using influx of for-profit investments by the operators, some citizen oversight, special status by law, etc. Basically, we try to make sure it costs as little as it should (it doesn't always work, rails are in a very bad situation for instance, and the caretaker is so deep in debt it's a failure, but the oversight of that dates to 100% public times with government-appointed CEOs). TL;DR / conclusion: find the right medium between "private/unregulated" and "public/monopoly". Both are disastrous, but there are sweet spots in-between. Note that I have no idea how to pull off such change in the US, elec or telco markets are simply too entrenched / congress too corrupted it seems. We have that problem too but currently we're circumventing most democratic systems (whether citizen opinion or lawmakers corruption) by invoking the EU: “we must do it, no choice, it's EU law now”. That works most of the time and is the reason why the EU is so hated yet so quintessential. I'm not sure the Federal level would carry as much authoritarian weight in US States.

duckymcduckface 7y ago
A counter example would be Quebec's grid which was nationalized in the 40s. Hydro Quebec owns generation, transmission and distribution for the province and provides the lowest residential rates in North America while operating at a profit. Admittedly we have access to stupid amounts of hydro power and a population that's a lot smaller than California.