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> It is both unethical and pointless to exploit inelastic demand WELL PUT.. the logic on this debate is astonishly bad.. "Charge more for essential services"

> It is both unethical and pointless to exploit inelastic demand WELL PUT.. the logic on this debate is astonishly bad.. "Charge more for essential services" just sounds terrible and you are correct, inelastic demand needs to be affordable, and subsidized if it is NOT affordable. i dont understand how someone would advocate that "essential services has higher value to me and should cost more". Essential services like heating my home does not have a higher value, it is an absolutely essential service to prevent death from cold temperatures.. This person should try living in -24C without heat and see if it changes their views.

toast0 4y ago
If I lived in -24C, it would be extremely valuable for me to have heat. As it is, I live in a climate that does dip below 0C from time to time, and having access to heat is important, so I have a backup generator for the house, and another for the well, because water is important too. When I use them, just the energy cost is much higher than utility power, so I don't use them when utility power is available. There's capital cost and operational costs to pay too. Many people who live around me don't have generators, so they have to hope outages won't be too long, or that they can make it to a warming center --- but outages are often coincident with locally heavy snowfall and our roads are always steep, so that makes it difficult to travel even short distances to get to warmth. In my area, the issue isn't rolling blackouts, it's usually lines broken due to falling trees. Paying more for uninterupted utilities wouldn't fix that, but if it were rolling blackouts, I would certainly prefer to pay more for utility power for essential loads rather than paying more for local generation for essential loads.