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> I have been amazed, and also disappointed, by the amount of people that want this to be the fault of “stupid conservative Texas” and absolutely refuse to even

> I have been amazed, and also disappointed, by the amount of people that want this to be the fault of “stupid conservative Texas” and absolutely refuse to even entertain the idea that anything other than “Texas is dumb” could have been a contributor. In my opinion this is the result of a mentality that sees the government as the obvious solution to problems, so when you see problems existing in a place where people seem to have a different philosophy of government, its clearly the fault of those morons who don’t realize that all problems can be solved by sufficient application of government force. > if we actually want to fix things we need to stop playing these ridiculous partisan games and be honest with ourselves with the full picture of issues. Some people actually do want to fix things on some level, but they are quite confident in their understanding of the problem and they believe that the indicated solution is clear, and anyone who doesn’t agree with them is either stupid, or evil, or both. So they’re unwilling to abandon what they see as a perfectly correct solution because a bunch of evil morons want to argue about “unintended consequences” or “agent-principal problems.” Other people are more interested in signaling their ideological alignment with the above, and the object level issue provides them with opportunities to signal.

krapp 6y ago
Don't swallow Rick Perry's horseshit about Texans preferring to go cold and starve than suffer the burden of regulation or government. This was not the philosophy of Texas governance succeeding as intended, it was clearly a monumental failure. None of us are trying to die for the glory of a sociopathic libertarian ideal.
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago
  > Texans preferring to go cold and starve than suffer the burden of regulation or government. This was not the philosophy of Texas governance succeeding as planned, it was clearly a monumental failure. Authoritarian government also has failures that result in millions of deaths; I’m unsure how you can be so confident that no one in Texas (of all places) would rather freeze to death than willingly accept the risk of being frozen to death by a tyrannical government that promises things then breaks promises. To be clear this isn’t about the object-level issue of preferring starvation under one ideology to starvation under another. This is about the inability of other people to comprehend that anyone could possibly feel differently than they do about who starves you to death. > None of us are trying to die for the glory of a sociopathic libertarian ideal. None of us are trying to die for the glory of a psychotic marxist ideal but we still pay taxes.
  - leesalminen 6y ago
    > None of us are trying to die for the glory of a psychotic marxist ideal You sure about that?
    - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
      For certain values of ‘us’ ;)
  - mindslight 6y ago
    > that no one in Texas (of all places) would rather freeze to death than willingly accept the risk of being frozen to death by a tyrannical government that promises things then breaks promises These are the exact same pathology. You're drawing a distinction based on whether one is "government", but they're the same type of lethargic entrenched entity, regardless of how they were chartered. The actual problem is the lack of accountability. The free market philosophy points us to exit as an ideal of accountability. Sometimes exit works very well - switching electric providers during quiescent times to get pricing that better matches your usage. And sometimes relying on exit fails terribly, like this rare event where it is easier to balk at obligations rather than have prepared enough to fulfill them. If we care about exit in general, then it behooves us to recognize when it fails.
    - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
      > These are the exact same pathology. You're drawing a distinction based on whether one is "government", but they're the same type of lethargic entrenched entity, regardless of how they were chartered. One type of lethargic entrenched entity survives on the basis of consensual interactions, the other survives on the basis of economic values extracted by threats of violence. The pathology is in forcing the people who want to benefit from consensual interactions to support a system of coercion. > The actual problem is the lack of accountability. The free market philosophy points us to exit as an ideal of accountability. Sometimes exit works very well - switching electric providers during quiescent times to get pricing that better matches your usage. And sometimes relying on exit fails terribly, like this rare event where it is easier to balk at obligations rather than have prepared enough to fulfill them. If we care about exit in general, then it behooves us to recognize when it fails. I can agree with this.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
konjin 6y ago
>In my opinion this is the result of a mentality that sees the government as the obvious solution to problems, so when you see problems existing in a place where people seem to have a different philosophy of government, its clearly the fault of those morons who don’t realize that all problems can be solved by sufficient application of government force. It has nothing to do with the government and everything to do with beliefs. Your post is doing exactly that. Pointing out simple facts like that all grids have been under invested in for 50 years, that we need to spend trillions to bring them up to todays standards and that we need to diversity power sources is met with derision and downvotes.
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago
  > It has nothing to do with the government and everything to do with beliefs. Government is not separable from the beliefs of the people who inhabit it and participate in its processes. > Pointing out simple facts like that all grids have been under invested in for 50 years Surely you can see that this is a belief and not a “fact” > that we need to spend trillions to bring them up to todays standards and that we need to diversity power sources is met with derision and downvotes. Well if people disagree then I feel it would be better for them to discuss. But it seems like there’s this perception that there is no room for reasonable disagreement and that’s what I was pushing back on. We can agree that the grid needs more investment and still have differences of opinion on how to generate that investment.
  - konjin 6y ago
    >Surely you can see that this is a belief and not a “fact” The belief is that every American should have uninterrupted access to electricity. The fact is that we are woefully under investing to keep that state of affairs. You can have your own beliefs, you can't have your own facts. For some reason people who want to spend less money on infrastructure don't mention that they wouldn't mind if 50% of people don't have access to roads, hospitals, or electricity.
    - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
xxpor 6y ago
Ensuring the electric grid doesn't collapse when it gets below 20 degrees is in fact exactly the sort of thing that can be fixed with enough application of force. Spend the money, or we'll take it from you. Done.
- leesalminen 6y ago
  Can you point me to a specific current federal regulation that would’ve prevented this issue? TFA posits that there aren’t. So, you’ll take money to enforce a non-existent regulation?
  - davidgay 6y ago
    The trivial proof of the GP's statement is that there are regions of the world and the US that regularly drop below 20F and have a functioning electrical grid (say, for instance, Alaska).
    - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
      Thats probably a result of superior management of infrastructure rather than “application of enough force.”
    - makomk 6y ago
      That's not proof at all. Building grid infrastructure that can function below 20F in regions that reach that temperature regularly is easier in important ways - in particular, if a new piece of infrastructure gets built that can't cope, the problem will happen early on and either get fixed or worked around, whereas somewhere like Texas can build up decades of new infrastructure that can't cope with the cold before anything happens to demonstrate that.
  - maxerickson 6y ago
    It is clearly stated as a hypothetical application of political will, not a reference to a particular regulation.

krapp 6y ago

Don't swallow Rick Perry's horseshit about Texans preferring to go cold and starve than suffer the burden of regulation or government. This was not the philosophy of Texas governance succeeding as intended, it was clearly a monumental failure. None of us are trying to die for the glory of a sociopathic libertarian ideal.

chordalkeyboard 6y ago
> Texans preferring to go cold and starve than suffer the burden of regulation or government. This was not the philosophy of Texas governance succeeding as planned, it was clearly a monumental failure. Authoritarian government also has failures that result in millions of deaths; I’m unsure how you can be so confident that no one in Texas (of all places) would rather freeze to death than willingly accept the risk of being frozen to death by a tyrannical government that promises things then breaks promises. To be clear this isn’t about the object-level issue of preferring starvation under one ideology to starvation under another. This is about the inability of other people to comprehend that anyone could possibly feel differently than they do about who starves you to death. > None of us are trying to die for the glory of a sociopathic libertarian ideal. None of us are trying to die for the glory of a psychotic marxist ideal but we still pay taxes.
- leesalminen 6y ago
  > None of us are trying to die for the glory of a psychotic marxist ideal You sure about that?
  - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
    For certain values of ‘us’ ;)
- mindslight 6y ago
  > that no one in Texas (of all places) would rather freeze to death than willingly accept the risk of being frozen to death by a tyrannical government that promises things then breaks promises These are the exact same pathology. You're drawing a distinction based on whether one is "government", but they're the same type of lethargic entrenched entity, regardless of how they were chartered. The actual problem is the lack of accountability. The free market philosophy points us to exit as an ideal of accountability. Sometimes exit works very well - switching electric providers during quiescent times to get pricing that better matches your usage. And sometimes relying on exit fails terribly, like this rare event where it is easier to balk at obligations rather than have prepared enough to fulfill them. If we care about exit in general, then it behooves us to recognize when it fails.
  - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
    > These are the exact same pathology. You're drawing a distinction based on whether one is "government", but they're the same type of lethargic entrenched entity, regardless of how they were chartered. One type of lethargic entrenched entity survives on the basis of consensual interactions, the other survives on the basis of economic values extracted by threats of violence. The pathology is in forcing the people who want to benefit from consensual interactions to support a system of coercion. > The actual problem is the lack of accountability. The free market philosophy points us to exit as an ideal of accountability. Sometimes exit works very well - switching electric providers during quiescent times to get pricing that better matches your usage. And sometimes relying on exit fails terribly, like this rare event where it is easier to balk at obligations rather than have prepared enough to fulfill them. If we care about exit in general, then it behooves us to recognize when it fails. I can agree with this.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

konjin 6y ago

>In my opinion this is the result of a mentality that sees the government as the obvious solution to problems, so when you see problems existing in a place where people seem to have a different philosophy of government, its clearly the fault of those morons who don’t realize that all problems can be solved by sufficient application of government force. It has nothing to do with the government and everything to do with beliefs. Your post is doing exactly that. Pointing out simple facts like that all grids have been under invested in for 50 years, that we need to spend trillions to bring them up to todays standards and that we need to diversity power sources is met with derision and downvotes.

chordalkeyboard 6y ago
> It has nothing to do with the government and everything to do with beliefs. Government is not separable from the beliefs of the people who inhabit it and participate in its processes. > Pointing out simple facts like that all grids have been under invested in for 50 years Surely you can see that this is a belief and not a “fact” > that we need to spend trillions to bring them up to todays standards and that we need to diversity power sources is met with derision and downvotes. Well if people disagree then I feel it would be better for them to discuss. But it seems like there’s this perception that there is no room for reasonable disagreement and that’s what I was pushing back on. We can agree that the grid needs more investment and still have differences of opinion on how to generate that investment.
- konjin 6y ago
  >Surely you can see that this is a belief and not a “fact” The belief is that every American should have uninterrupted access to electricity. The fact is that we are woefully under investing to keep that state of affairs. You can have your own beliefs, you can't have your own facts. For some reason people who want to spend less money on infrastructure don't mention that they wouldn't mind if 50% of people don't have access to roads, hospitals, or electricity.
  - chordalkeyboard 6y ago

xxpor 6y ago

Ensuring the electric grid doesn't collapse when it gets below 20 degrees is in fact exactly the sort of thing that can be fixed with enough application of force. Spend the money, or we'll take it from you. Done.

leesalminen 6y ago
Can you point me to a specific current federal regulation that would’ve prevented this issue? TFA posits that there aren’t. So, you’ll take money to enforce a non-existent regulation?
- davidgay 6y ago
  The trivial proof of the GP's statement is that there are regions of the world and the US that regularly drop below 20F and have a functioning electrical grid (say, for instance, Alaska).
  - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
    Thats probably a result of superior management of infrastructure rather than “application of enough force.”
  - makomk 6y ago
    That's not proof at all. Building grid infrastructure that can function below 20F in regions that reach that temperature regularly is easier in important ways - in particular, if a new piece of infrastructure gets built that can't cope, the problem will happen early on and either get fixed or worked around, whereas somewhere like Texas can build up decades of new infrastructure that can't cope with the cold before anything happens to demonstrate that.
- maxerickson 6y ago
  It is clearly stated as a hypothetical application of political will, not a reference to a particular regulation.