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I don’t see a reason in your response other than “the political system is bad” I’d be more curious if you had a reason why you think state-owned would be worse

I don’t see a reason in your response other than “the political system is bad” I’d be more curious if you had a reason why you think state-owned would be worse than state-regulated. To me it seems better for sure. A panacea? No, but better than where we’re at today

roenxi 7y ago
The argument was that state owned could end up being the same as state regulated. The government are people too, they might also have made mistakes that caused catastrophic bushfires - instead of greedy and incompetent it would be lazy and incompetent. The dry bush is a significant part of the equation. Just looking over the Wikipedia page [0] it appears PG&E has a guaranteed rate of profit and monopoly status over certain aspects of the infrastructure. The problem with governments owning businesses is that they don't respond to market signals in the form of profits. Under this regulation, PG&E is also buffered from needing to respond to market signals in the form of profits. The intellectual justification for privatising anything is to expose it to the need to fight to make profits which then enforces a sort of discipline on resource use. Regulation that privatises a company then shields it from the need to try hard to succeed is pretty much strictly worse than nationalising. That is a likely perspective from the sort of person who believes that the political system is bad. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Gas_and_Electric_Company#Rates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Gas_and_Electric_Compa...
mensetmanusman 7y ago
One questions is why other states near CA (with similar natural settings) haven’t had the same failure mode as CA? Is it just population density?
- dickeytk 7y ago
  Ok so I’ve lived in these states my whole life and I love geography and know a little bit about this, apologize while I geek out a bit. (I’m also more interested in geography than meteorology per-se, so I’m only 90% confident all of this is right) Oregon, Washington, and BC have bad fires too (not as bad, but bad nonetheless), but the rainy season comes much earlier. Here on the west coast you can set your watch to when the rainy season starts. Washington it starts within a couple weeks of early October, Oregon late October (I grew up there and never remember a dry Halloween, but it was also one of the first rains in months). California is so big it varies, but weatherman down here in the bay is saying mid-November at the earliest. Low population in the forested areas is a factor, but less so. We just have fewer fires and they’re easier to fight. There is also the type of trees, California is full of eucalyptus (arguably an invasive special from Australia) that constantly dumps debris in the form of oil rich bark and leaves and no natural insects are around to break it down. Oregon and Washington don’t have that problem. Arizona and Nevada have nothing to burn. The Nevada border is almost entirely huge mountains. It seems odd that 2 straight lines meeting at Lake Tahoe would be such a dramatic change from wet to dry, but it is. Arizona doesn’t look any different from south-East California, but that’s also probably the only part of California not affected by fires. The Diablo/Santa Ana winds are also a big factor especially in Southern California. Those are ironically caused by the rainstorms in Oregon and Washington. The winds come in, full up the massive Great Basin of Nevada and Utah and eventually spill out over the mountains in California causing super, super dry and hot winds that can be the level of hurricanes. It’s this time of year when Oregon and Washington are getting rain and California is not that is especially precarious. I’ve lived in both the Bay and LA for years now and I’ve actually never been awake for them. They only last a few hours and it seems only at night. I’ve seen the aftermath though, tons and tons of tree debris everywhere. In LA the palm trees even fall over and it looks like a war zone the next day.

roenxi 7y ago

The argument was that state owned could end up being the same as state regulated. The government are people too, they might also have made mistakes that caused catastrophic bushfires - instead of greedy and incompetent it would be lazy and incompetent. The dry bush is a significant part of the equation. Just looking over the Wikipedia page [0] it appears PG&E has a guaranteed rate of profit and monopoly status over certain aspects of the infrastructure. The problem with governments owning businesses is that they don't respond to market signals in the form of profits. Under this regulation, PG&E is also buffered from needing to respond to market signals in the form of profits. The intellectual justification for privatising anything is to expose it to the need to fight to make profits which then enforces a sort of discipline on resource use. Regulation that privatises a company then shields it from the need to try hard to succeed is pretty much strictly worse than nationalising. That is a likely perspective from the sort of person who believes that the political system is bad. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Gas_and_Electric_Company#Rates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Gas_and_Electric_Compa...

mensetmanusman 7y ago

One questions is why other states near CA (with similar natural settings) haven’t had the same failure mode as CA? Is it just population density?

dickeytk 7y ago
Ok so I’ve lived in these states my whole life and I love geography and know a little bit about this, apologize while I geek out a bit. (I’m also more interested in geography than meteorology per-se, so I’m only 90% confident all of this is right) Oregon, Washington, and BC have bad fires too (not as bad, but bad nonetheless), but the rainy season comes much earlier. Here on the west coast you can set your watch to when the rainy season starts. Washington it starts within a couple weeks of early October, Oregon late October (I grew up there and never remember a dry Halloween, but it was also one of the first rains in months). California is so big it varies, but weatherman down here in the bay is saying mid-November at the earliest. Low population in the forested areas is a factor, but less so. We just have fewer fires and they’re easier to fight. There is also the type of trees, California is full of eucalyptus (arguably an invasive special from Australia) that constantly dumps debris in the form of oil rich bark and leaves and no natural insects are around to break it down. Oregon and Washington don’t have that problem. Arizona and Nevada have nothing to burn. The Nevada border is almost entirely huge mountains. It seems odd that 2 straight lines meeting at Lake Tahoe would be such a dramatic change from wet to dry, but it is. Arizona doesn’t look any different from south-East California, but that’s also probably the only part of California not affected by fires. The Diablo/Santa Ana winds are also a big factor especially in Southern California. Those are ironically caused by the rainstorms in Oregon and Washington. The winds come in, full up the massive Great Basin of Nevada and Utah and eventually spill out over the mountains in California causing super, super dry and hot winds that can be the level of hurricanes. It’s this time of year when Oregon and Washington are getting rain and California is not that is especially precarious. I’ve lived in both the Bay and LA for years now and I’ve actually never been awake for them. They only last a few hours and it seems only at night. I’ve seen the aftermath though, tons and tons of tree debris everywhere. In LA the palm trees even fall over and it looks like a war zone the next day.