4 ms·

Electricity should cost peanuts and that should the goal of every sane government.

tuukkah 4y ago
Electricity prices should include all the negative externalities such as pollution, carbon dioxide, destruction of habitats, geopolitical dependence on Russia etc.
- pixelfarmer 4y ago
  Electricity, like an increasing bunch of other things, is part of the infrastructure. The amount and different levels of infrastructure pretty much define "civilization", do away with infrastructure and your civilization is done for. Which also means that the way a civilization treats its infrastructure tells you a lot about this civilization. If you look at Europe, they messed things up big time. Firstly, running infrastructure like a company will never work, by design. So this whole privatization is a big sham to begin with. It is made worse by the fact that there cannot be a market as such, so they defined rules to create a market. Humans being exactly that are too stupid to include the human factor into rules, so this whole "market" is completely and utterly broken, and pretty much a money transfer machinery (like so many others) from the bottom to the top. Which means in the end, while I can understand your idea/approach, but it will not solve the problem with energy cost.
  - tuukkah 4y ago
    But I think it will, and we see this already happening. Currently, the electricity price is so high that it makes economic sense to build wind and solar that are better for the environment. I'm not saying it should be an unregulated free market - we've seen those don't work (exactly because of the externalities). But this does not mean there cannot be regulated markets and partial markets. The grid is infrastructure that shouldn't be run as a company, but production and storage capacity can be bought from markets as long as the grid rules factor in the externalities.
    - pixelfarmer 4y ago
      But the energy market is not natural, it is completely artificial, based on rules which are more befitting to a non-market setup. For example, Europe has the largest (not in size but connected power) synchronized grid in the world. That means you cannot just run some solar cells and connect them to the network, this is controlled externally. Which completely breaks this "demand and supply" already, not to talk about how the energy price is formed. Read: You cannot even run this as an unregulated market, it wouldn't work. That requires every company having its own electricity grid, and for example the possibility that your house has 10 different power connectors available, so you can actually choose which one to pick. That is conceptually broken. And just the grid as infrastructure doesn't work, either, because of reasons outlined above. Maybe forcing the idea of a market on everything is a dogma which we should eradicate out of our heads, the sooner the better.
- yrgulation 4y ago
  My assumption is that we would ensure that everything you raised is accounted for otherwise it does more harm than good.
fulafel 4y ago
It's easy to implement through regulation, just pass a law that says it costs peanuts. But this easily results in shortages (if production is unsubsidized) or tax hikes / lower living standards (if production or import is subsidized using money that could be spent elsewhere).

Electricity prices should include all the negative externalities such as pollution, carbon dioxide, destruction of habitats, geopolitical dependence on Russia etc.

pixelfarmer 4y ago
Electricity, like an increasing bunch of other things, is part of the infrastructure. The amount and different levels of infrastructure pretty much define "civilization", do away with infrastructure and your civilization is done for. Which also means that the way a civilization treats its infrastructure tells you a lot about this civilization. If you look at Europe, they messed things up big time. Firstly, running infrastructure like a company will never work, by design. So this whole privatization is a big sham to begin with. It is made worse by the fact that there cannot be a market as such, so they defined rules to create a market. Humans being exactly that are too stupid to include the human factor into rules, so this whole "market" is completely and utterly broken, and pretty much a money transfer machinery (like so many others) from the bottom to the top. Which means in the end, while I can understand your idea/approach, but it will not solve the problem with energy cost.
- tuukkah 4y ago
  But I think it will, and we see this already happening. Currently, the electricity price is so high that it makes economic sense to build wind and solar that are better for the environment. I'm not saying it should be an unregulated free market - we've seen those don't work (exactly because of the externalities). But this does not mean there cannot be regulated markets and partial markets. The grid is infrastructure that shouldn't be run as a company, but production and storage capacity can be bought from markets as long as the grid rules factor in the externalities.
  - pixelfarmer 4y ago
    But the energy market is not natural, it is completely artificial, based on rules which are more befitting to a non-market setup. For example, Europe has the largest (not in size but connected power) synchronized grid in the world. That means you cannot just run some solar cells and connect them to the network, this is controlled externally. Which completely breaks this "demand and supply" already, not to talk about how the energy price is formed. Read: You cannot even run this as an unregulated market, it wouldn't work. That requires every company having its own electricity grid, and for example the possibility that your house has 10 different power connectors available, so you can actually choose which one to pick. That is conceptually broken. And just the grid as infrastructure doesn't work, either, because of reasons outlined above. Maybe forcing the idea of a market on everything is a dogma which we should eradicate out of our heads, the sooner the better.
yrgulation 4y ago
My assumption is that we would ensure that everything you raised is accounted for otherwise it does more harm than good.

fulafel 4y ago

It's easy to implement through regulation, just pass a law that says it costs peanuts. But this easily results in shortages (if production is unsubsidized) or tax hikes / lower living standards (if production or import is subsidized using money that could be spent elsewhere).