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> 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 plan

> 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.
  - mindslight 6y ago
    > One type of lethargic entrenched entity survives on the basis of consensual interactions So goes your theory, but not in actual practice. For the qualities under discussion, generation companies have seemingly acted in lockstep, therefore it makes sense to view them as a singular entity. And it's not productive to call signing up for electric service consensual in any meaningful way. The ability to technically opt out isn't worth much when it would significantly impact your life, as evidenced by the vanishingly small amount of people who do so. You can also come at the reduction from the other direction and define how interacting with the "government" is technically consensual as well. eg don't pay taxes, do the work required to not have your income flows surveilled, etc. Or in this case, don't sign up for the (de jure) government power grid, and go your own way. Which is equivalent to what you would have had to do in the first scenario anyway - both scenarios end up with people who devoted their lives to being independent from the electrical grid being fine, and those who didn't freezing. The point is that all frameworks ultimately have their limits - they are only good when their reasoning power holds. True understanding requires being able to switch between them as appropriate, rather than shoehorning everything into one and insisting that it must fit.

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.
- mindslight 6y ago
  > One type of lethargic entrenched entity survives on the basis of consensual interactions So goes your theory, but not in actual practice. For the qualities under discussion, generation companies have seemingly acted in lockstep, therefore it makes sense to view them as a singular entity. And it's not productive to call signing up for electric service consensual in any meaningful way. The ability to technically opt out isn't worth much when it would significantly impact your life, as evidenced by the vanishingly small amount of people who do so. You can also come at the reduction from the other direction and define how interacting with the "government" is technically consensual as well. eg don't pay taxes, do the work required to not have your income flows surveilled, etc. Or in this case, don't sign up for the (de jure) government power grid, and go your own way. Which is equivalent to what you would have had to do in the first scenario anyway - both scenarios end up with people who devoted their lives to being independent from the electrical grid being fine, and those who didn't freezing. The point is that all frameworks ultimately have their limits - they are only good when their reasoning power holds. True understanding requires being able to switch between them as appropriate, rather than shoehorning everything into one and insisting that it must fit.