>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 Texan

>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