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Griddy didn't have to beat the bricks like most REP's in Texas. Smart consumers aware of the risk beat a path to their door. Unfortunately, as with anything lik

Griddy didn't have to beat the bricks like most REP's in Texas. Smart consumers aware of the risk beat a path to their door. Unfortunately, as with anything like this, the followers and fools soon showed up (reminiscent of $GME) and a good thing somehow suddenly became "a scam".

renewiltord 6y ago
> Unfortunately, as with anything like this, the followers and fools soon showed up (reminiscent of $GME) and a good thing somehow suddenly became "a scam". Haha, isn't this just the thing? It's the same thing as with Kickstarter, Bountysource, numerous Google betas, etc. The risks are just sitting there visible as all heck, and fools will jump in blind and then scream when the scary event happens. It has been the best argument for paternalism I've ever seen: not to keep people safe from themselves, but to keep fools away from the rest of us so that we can make intelligent risky decisions. In fact, I've shifted my view of the accredited investor thing. I am so glad a bunch of blind followers can't just do something dumb and then ruin everything for the rest of us.
bitcurious 6y ago
Given that neither the power companies nor the regulatory bodies correctly anticipated this risk I think it’s a huge stretch to say that consumers did.
greedo 6y ago
Nice victim blaming.
- emteycz 6y ago
  Stop using this term for people who were not victims of anyone other than themselves, it hurts actual victims.
  - talentedcoin 6y ago
    The reason why we have things like regulations and consumer protection laws is exactly to prevent people from, as you put it, becoming victims of themselves. If everyone had this kind of attitude, we'd still be driving cars with no seatbelts.
    - emteycz 6y ago
      Yeah, except that car manufacturers started to put seatbelts into cars before regulation. Similarly with all other protection systems. Regulation made it ubiquitous and that's great, but don't mislead like this. It's very easy to become a "victim" of yourself even in a regulated world and I assure you the number of people who do will not go down, only the means of doing so will change. Perhaps we should focus on education instead of regulation.
  - greedo 6y ago
    There's a reason that we term things like power and water "public" utilities, and that decent, well run governments regulate them. One, it's to ensure safe, reliable supplies. And two, to make sure that they're fairly priced. What happened in Texas shows the complete and utter failure in this regard. Sure the citizens of Texas voted for this complete clusterfsck, but not everyone, and those who end up with the short end of the stick shouldn't be blamed because the majority were a bunch of idiots fed lies for decades.
GCA10 6y ago
I'm not sure we can really say "smart consumers aware of the risk." Isn't it more like "Opportunistic customers who hoped the risks were immaterial beat a path . . . " Out of morbid curiosity, during a long drive this weekend, I listened to 20 minutes of an AM radio guy's pitch for some retirement annuity system that sounded quite sweet at first. As he kept talking, though, I realized that he was being very evasive about what happens if you die early. Connecting the dots - he keeps all your assets. No survivor benefits at all. I used to do financial investigative reporting. I was looking for the catch. And it nearly glided past me. Ditto for disclosing the full details about the maximum caps on your electricity charges. These promoters are masters at smooth, low-candor discussions of risk. They're what make the pendulum keep swinging back and forth between deregulation and re-regulation.
- ryanmarsh 6y ago
  I consulted for a large existing REP to help analyze the market and suggest strategies for launching their own Griddy competitor brand. So when I say "smart consumers aware of the risk" that is exactly who the research showed the customer was. The initial customers were people perfectly capable of the arbitrage. They even had customers using IFTTT to turn up the thermostat (summer months) when prices would spike (in 15 min increments). I literally built a prototype competitor product to Griddy and I'm downvoted for explaining exactly how this shit works.
  - talentedcoin 6y ago
    I didn't downvote you, but comparing this situation to what happened with GME (as in your previous comment) is, at best, a stretch. At least with GME one could argue that people signing up for margin accounts to buy stock options should know what they're doing ... which is maybe a different subject ... but as others have indicated in this thread, a lot of providers like these employ some fairly aggressive/shady strategies to get consumers to sign on, and don't candidly discuss worst-case scenarios like these.
  - bumby 6y ago
    Can you elaborate on how the research was conducted and specifically how the risk was measured by consumers? There’s an awful lot of research that implies humans are very poor estimators of low probability / high severity events
guyzero 6y ago
" a good thing somehow suddenly became "a scam"." Does Griddy push real-time cost information to consumers to enable them to react to situations like this? "Scam" might be harsh, but their model clearly failed.
- baldeagle 6y ago
  I'm not a customer - but I've seen screenshots of their app for doing just that, along with alerting.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

renewiltord 6y ago

> Unfortunately, as with anything like this, the followers and fools soon showed up (reminiscent of $GME) and a good thing somehow suddenly became "a scam". Haha, isn't this just the thing? It's the same thing as with Kickstarter, Bountysource, numerous Google betas, etc. The risks are just sitting there visible as all heck, and fools will jump in blind and then scream when the scary event happens. It has been the best argument for paternalism I've ever seen: not to keep people safe from themselves, but to keep fools away from the rest of us so that we can make intelligent risky decisions. In fact, I've shifted my view of the accredited investor thing. I am so glad a bunch of blind followers can't just do something dumb and then ruin everything for the rest of us.

bitcurious 6y ago

Given that neither the power companies nor the regulatory bodies correctly anticipated this risk I think it’s a huge stretch to say that consumers did.

greedo 6y ago

Nice victim blaming.

emteycz 6y ago
Stop using this term for people who were not victims of anyone other than themselves, it hurts actual victims.
- talentedcoin 6y ago
  The reason why we have things like regulations and consumer protection laws is exactly to prevent people from, as you put it, becoming victims of themselves. If everyone had this kind of attitude, we'd still be driving cars with no seatbelts.
  - emteycz 6y ago
    Yeah, except that car manufacturers started to put seatbelts into cars before regulation. Similarly with all other protection systems. Regulation made it ubiquitous and that's great, but don't mislead like this. It's very easy to become a "victim" of yourself even in a regulated world and I assure you the number of people who do will not go down, only the means of doing so will change. Perhaps we should focus on education instead of regulation.
- greedo 6y ago
  There's a reason that we term things like power and water "public" utilities, and that decent, well run governments regulate them. One, it's to ensure safe, reliable supplies. And two, to make sure that they're fairly priced. What happened in Texas shows the complete and utter failure in this regard. Sure the citizens of Texas voted for this complete clusterfsck, but not everyone, and those who end up with the short end of the stick shouldn't be blamed because the majority were a bunch of idiots fed lies for decades.

GCA10 6y ago

I'm not sure we can really say "smart consumers aware of the risk." Isn't it more like "Opportunistic customers who hoped the risks were immaterial beat a path . . . " Out of morbid curiosity, during a long drive this weekend, I listened to 20 minutes of an AM radio guy's pitch for some retirement annuity system that sounded quite sweet at first. As he kept talking, though, I realized that he was being very evasive about what happens if you die early. Connecting the dots - he keeps all your assets. No survivor benefits at all. I used to do financial investigative reporting. I was looking for the catch. And it nearly glided past me. Ditto for disclosing the full details about the maximum caps on your electricity charges. These promoters are masters at smooth, low-candor discussions of risk. They're what make the pendulum keep swinging back and forth between deregulation and re-regulation.

ryanmarsh 6y ago
I consulted for a large existing REP to help analyze the market and suggest strategies for launching their own Griddy competitor brand. So when I say "smart consumers aware of the risk" that is exactly who the research showed the customer was. The initial customers were people perfectly capable of the arbitrage. They even had customers using IFTTT to turn up the thermostat (summer months) when prices would spike (in 15 min increments). I literally built a prototype competitor product to Griddy and I'm downvoted for explaining exactly how this shit works.
- talentedcoin 6y ago
  I didn't downvote you, but comparing this situation to what happened with GME (as in your previous comment) is, at best, a stretch. At least with GME one could argue that people signing up for margin accounts to buy stock options should know what they're doing ... which is maybe a different subject ... but as others have indicated in this thread, a lot of providers like these employ some fairly aggressive/shady strategies to get consumers to sign on, and don't candidly discuss worst-case scenarios like these.
- bumby 6y ago
  Can you elaborate on how the research was conducted and specifically how the risk was measured by consumers? There’s an awful lot of research that implies humans are very poor estimators of low probability / high severity events

guyzero 6y ago

" a good thing somehow suddenly became "a scam"." Does Griddy push real-time cost information to consumers to enable them to react to situations like this? "Scam" might be harsh, but their model clearly failed.

baldeagle 6y ago
I'm not a customer - but I've seen screenshots of their app for doing just that, along with alerting.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]