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There's still a dark balancing act going on. We don't have the collective power to save everyone, and if we overextend ourselves trying to do that, then there

There's still a dark balancing act going on. We don't have the collective power to save everyone, and if we overextend ourselves trying to do that, then there is a risk that the whole system collapses for everyone, or partially collapses and causes more pain than might have happened without spreading ourselves too thin. We obviously need to struggle to make a good world for everyone, but nature is fucking brutal and it doesn't care about our sense of ethics.

PaulHoule 5y ago
Back before electricity deregulation we were paying more for electricity but in the process of rate setting we were looking at it from a systems perspective in which reliability was considered holistically. (The lower rates were not just from ‘efficient markets’ but also it being possible for high cost producers such as steam turbine coal fired power plants to go bankrupt in the fracked gas age w/o bankrupting the whole utility.)
cortesoft 5y ago
> We don't have the collective power to save everyon Except we do? We have plenty of resources if they were distributed more evenly. In this particular example, other states are able to provide energy during rare events because they did not choose to go with a pure market based system. They aren’t on the verge of collapse.
magicalist 5y ago
This is a platitude ignoring the actual facts of what went on. Producers of natural gas and electricity didn't implement the winterization mechanisms they needed to, in spite of the rest of the country doing so and decades of recommendations to do so. No one required them to do it, though, so they didn't.
Retric 5y ago
The grid is a tiny fraction of our economy but the economy is extremely dependent on it. Ensuring the Texas grid could survive a winter storm costs less than 1% as much as even a single large scale blackout in cold weather. The difference is simply who needs to pay. Grid operators only see the costs they don’t see the benefits thus an inefficient allocation of resources is guaranteed.
8note 5y ago
Saving everyone isn't even a consideration. Saving the wealthy's profits is, and we can't save all the wealthy people's profits, so we prioritize the richest's

PaulHoule 5y ago

Back before electricity deregulation we were paying more for electricity but in the process of rate setting we were looking at it from a systems perspective in which reliability was considered holistically. (The lower rates were not just from ‘efficient markets’ but also it being possible for high cost producers such as steam turbine coal fired power plants to go bankrupt in the fracked gas age w/o bankrupting the whole utility.)

cortesoft 5y ago

> We don't have the collective power to save everyon Except we do? We have plenty of resources if they were distributed more evenly. In this particular example, other states are able to provide energy during rare events because they did not choose to go with a pure market based system. They aren’t on the verge of collapse.

magicalist 5y ago

This is a platitude ignoring the actual facts of what went on. Producers of natural gas and electricity didn't implement the winterization mechanisms they needed to, in spite of the rest of the country doing so and decades of recommendations to do so. No one required them to do it, though, so they didn't.

Retric 5y ago

The grid is a tiny fraction of our economy but the economy is extremely dependent on it. Ensuring the Texas grid could survive a winter storm costs less than 1% as much as even a single large scale blackout in cold weather. The difference is simply who needs to pay. Grid operators only see the costs they don’t see the benefits thus an inefficient allocation of resources is guaranteed.

8note 5y ago

Saving everyone isn't even a consideration. Saving the wealthy's profits is, and we can't save all the wealthy people's profits, so we prioritize the richest's