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it's a slippery slope to get people used to tiered pricing Yeah. I'm nervous too. I'm also curious. Services like electricity don't have unlimited pricing,

• SwellJoe 18y ago
  Services like electricity don't have unlimited pricing, but they don't gouge either. Anyone know exactly how that works? Is pricing regulated? How do you know they don't gouge? There is no competition in 99% of US cities (there are two cities I know of with competing electric companies), so it's pretty much impossible to say they aren't gouging. And yes, pricing is regulated, even in the cities with competing companies...they can only compete on service (naturally, consumers in those cities report higher satisfaction than average with their power companies). Consumer energy is very similar to the telcos before deregulation. It's actually pretty interesting how the regulation of power pricing effects business decisions in the industry. It has occasionally led to pathologically bad decisions. Nuclear power, for example, was more expensive than coal until very recently...but there was a time when many power companies in the US were building a nuclear plant because it would allow them to raise prices (because pricing is based on the amount it costs to produce the power, and nuclear was, for a time, something that the powers that be wanted to happen). It's really quite unfortunate that it shook out that way, because it gave nuclear a really bad name and so we're still several years away from nuclear being considered a politically viable alternative energy source, despite the fact that it is economically and environmentally the best option many locations have available (compared to coal it's downright miraculous).