4 ms·

Serious question, did you read any of the above comments, or TFA? My immediate reactions are "restaurants and power companies are sliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

Serious question, did you read any of the above comments, or TFA? My immediate reactions are "restaurants and power companies are sliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiightly different in their ownership, provision of services, capital costs, financing, profit-margins, regulatory structure, and whether-they're-a-natural-monopoly" and, perhaps more importantly, "we're in a comment section about utility-company capitalists abandoning everyone to their fates, and making billions doing it". We're not in a comments section about a theorycrafted threat of that happening, or a comments section about twiddling incentives to encourage WH-like behaviour, we're in a comments section discussing the consequences of capitalist abandonment: namely, they made billions doing it.

roenxi 5y ago
> officials decided to bypass the market and, on Monday evening, manually set prices at the maximum of $9,000 per megawatt hour You're trying to argue that this quote + greedy heartless capitalism -> give up and let the energy grid go dark. That needs strong evidence. Occam's razor suggests they were genuinely caught off guard and they'll be better prepared next time. $9k/MWh is a very tempting price for someone who can have a generator set up on standby. Some people like making insane revenue. Possibly even some Texans. The price of electricity was basically infinity here.
- revolvingocelot 5y ago
  >strong evidence What actually happened is insufficient for you? Let me know when sweeping changes are made to prepare the gri-- >$9k/MWh is a very tempting price for someone who can have a generator set up on standby Oh, I see -- the solution is to let the market "solve" it. The physical-world issues that led to that tempting price will wreak their havoc on the physical-world infrastructure the next time that tempting price is set, but the kind of physical-world prophylactics that could have prevented that tempting price are "too expensive" to implement. Rather than prevent the catastrophe, instead ensure that someone is poised to swoop in and profit from stabilizing some preventable chaos. >Some people like making insane revenue If the grid didn't go down, why, no one would be able to make $9k/MWh!
  - roenxi 5y ago
    > What actually happened is insufficient for you? Yeah. Duh. That is why I'm arguing that they were genuinely caught off guard and they'll be better prepared next time - because I don't think what happened is reflective of the incentives here. > Rather than prevent the catastrophe, instead ensure that someone is poised to swoop in and profit from stabilizing some preventable chaos. That doesn't make a lost of sense. If someone swoops in at the last minute and prevents the chaos it will still be prevented. And I'm not saying that the Texans are going to do that, just that it is one option. The existing operators might learn from this and harden their infrastructure. As far as I can read this section, you seem to be hypothesising that there are two options: 1. Overengineer the average case. 2. Have a contingency plan. And then asserting that 1 is the solution that is acceptable to you and that 2 would somehow be a bad outcome. I don't really understand your position if so - if having a contingency plan for emergencies is the preferred method of the market then that is cool. Good enough, probably cheap. Overengineering solutions is exactly the sort of thing that the free market is set up to avoid - it is wasteful. If it doesn't make economic sense to overengineer then it is much better to have a contingency plan - the average case is cheaper and there are plans and supplies on hand to deal with a crisis when one occurs.
    - revolvingocelot 5y ago
      >That doesn't make a lost of sense. If someone swoops in at the last minute and prevents the chaos it will still be prevented. And I'm not saying that the Texans are going to do that, just that it is one option. The existing operators might learn from this and harden their infrastructure. No, I said that someone would "swoop in and *profit from stabilizing some preventable chaos*". You even fucking quoted me saying it! The comment is right above us! You even encouraged this outcome ("Some people like making insane revenue. Possibly even some Texans.")! That incredible misapprehension certainly doesn't make any sense to me, unless-- >I don't really understand your position if so It's pretty clear you're doing ideological battle here. You're unwilling to face the recorded facts of the situation, let alone what your conversational interlocutor is actually saying, so you replace that with your own imagination. Indeed, you make an argument that you imagine me making, and then admit that you don't understand it -- isn't this definitionally a strawman? Why bother with this? No matter your position on my position, it's pretty clear we're only ever going to talk past one another: your axiomatic assumption that the free market is the correct way to run a natural monopoly like a utility is IMO as wrong as your position on how the free market should have responded. It's only "overengineering the average case" if your instrumental goal is to "make money by providing power" -- if your instrumental goal is to "provide power, in exchange for money", the calculation changes entirely. Suddenly, it's not about winnowing another few percentage points out of a maintenence budget so some MBA can get a new car -- it's about securing the provision of a necessity of life, for a dollar or two added to the end-user's bill. If you're still interesting in prosecuting our "discussion", I suggest you go answer this guy's question instead [0] -- if you do genuinely think that they were caught off guard, and that they'll improve the (proven to be fabulously profitable!!) situation in future, go explain it to him. It's not about what should happen or what might happen now, it's about what's already happened and what's just transpired. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30018584 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30018584

roenxi 5y ago

> officials decided to bypass the market and, on Monday evening, manually set prices at the maximum of $9,000 per megawatt hour You're trying to argue that this quote + greedy heartless capitalism -> give up and let the energy grid go dark. That needs strong evidence. Occam's razor suggests they were genuinely caught off guard and they'll be better prepared next time. $9k/MWh is a very tempting price for someone who can have a generator set up on standby. Some people like making insane revenue. Possibly even some Texans. The price of electricity was basically infinity here.

revolvingocelot 5y ago
>strong evidence What actually happened is insufficient for you? Let me know when sweeping changes are made to prepare the gri-- >$9k/MWh is a very tempting price for someone who can have a generator set up on standby Oh, I see -- the solution is to let the market "solve" it. The physical-world issues that led to that tempting price will wreak their havoc on the physical-world infrastructure the next time that tempting price is set, but the kind of physical-world prophylactics that could have prevented that tempting price are "too expensive" to implement. Rather than prevent the catastrophe, instead ensure that someone is poised to swoop in and profit from stabilizing some preventable chaos. >Some people like making insane revenue If the grid didn't go down, why, no one would be able to make $9k/MWh!
- roenxi 5y ago
  > What actually happened is insufficient for you? Yeah. Duh. That is why I'm arguing that they were genuinely caught off guard and they'll be better prepared next time - because I don't think what happened is reflective of the incentives here. > Rather than prevent the catastrophe, instead ensure that someone is poised to swoop in and profit from stabilizing some preventable chaos. That doesn't make a lost of sense. If someone swoops in at the last minute and prevents the chaos it will still be prevented. And I'm not saying that the Texans are going to do that, just that it is one option. The existing operators might learn from this and harden their infrastructure. As far as I can read this section, you seem to be hypothesising that there are two options: 1. Overengineer the average case. 2. Have a contingency plan. And then asserting that 1 is the solution that is acceptable to you and that 2 would somehow be a bad outcome. I don't really understand your position if so - if having a contingency plan for emergencies is the preferred method of the market then that is cool. Good enough, probably cheap. Overengineering solutions is exactly the sort of thing that the free market is set up to avoid - it is wasteful. If it doesn't make economic sense to overengineer then it is much better to have a contingency plan - the average case is cheaper and there are plans and supplies on hand to deal with a crisis when one occurs.
  - revolvingocelot 5y ago
    >That doesn't make a lost of sense. If someone swoops in at the last minute and prevents the chaos it will still be prevented. And I'm not saying that the Texans are going to do that, just that it is one option. The existing operators might learn from this and harden their infrastructure. No, I said that someone would "swoop in and *profit from stabilizing some preventable chaos*". You even fucking quoted me saying it! The comment is right above us! You even encouraged this outcome ("Some people like making insane revenue. Possibly even some Texans.")! That incredible misapprehension certainly doesn't make any sense to me, unless-- >I don't really understand your position if so It's pretty clear you're doing ideological battle here. You're unwilling to face the recorded facts of the situation, let alone what your conversational interlocutor is actually saying, so you replace that with your own imagination. Indeed, you make an argument that you imagine me making, and then admit that you don't understand it -- isn't this definitionally a strawman? Why bother with this? No matter your position on my position, it's pretty clear we're only ever going to talk past one another: your axiomatic assumption that the free market is the correct way to run a natural monopoly like a utility is IMO as wrong as your position on how the free market should have responded. It's only "overengineering the average case" if your instrumental goal is to "make money by providing power" -- if your instrumental goal is to "provide power, in exchange for money", the calculation changes entirely. Suddenly, it's not about winnowing another few percentage points out of a maintenence budget so some MBA can get a new car -- it's about securing the provision of a necessity of life, for a dollar or two added to the end-user's bill. If you're still interesting in prosecuting our "discussion", I suggest you go answer this guy's question instead [0] -- if you do genuinely think that they were caught off guard, and that they'll improve the (proven to be fabulously profitable!!) situation in future, go explain it to him. It's not about what should happen or what might happen now, it's about what's already happened and what's just transpired. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30018584 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30018584