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> How would moderating electricity use help in this situation? From grid officials' perspective it's to avoid a peak in demand that couln't be produced. Peopl

> How would moderating electricity use help in this situation? From grid officials' perspective it's to avoid a peak in demand that couln't be produced. People can/could now literally make money by wasting electricity. And we are told that this is how it should be when companies profit from people's mistakes. > I understand that a faceless corporation suffering massive losses gives you the warm and fuzzy feelings. But if the grid happens to go down because of this, is that a preferable outcome? Companies clearly "hate" many many people so much to risk hurting and risking many many people in the whole country, and planet, all the time. Of course companies don't hate anything. They just don't care. A corporation can't care, nor suffer. Even if this one goes under, mostly the same people will run another. People in charge of these decisions will likely go on leading very priviliged lifes. It's the system, not the individuals or even individual companies. If a blackout is needed to change the system, so be it. Preferably would change without such crises but that doesn't tend to happen.

pmontra 3y ago
> A corporation can't care, nor suffer. I really dislike the "limited responsibility" concept. If we remove it entrepreneurial people will still want to create stuff and they will but they'll have to care more about how they do it.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  It's extremely hard to make a company by any means, and there are already lots of regulations, and we need competition to make everything better. If you can think of a new regulation that would be a net benefit, propose it. But it's silly to annihilate the creation of new companies.
  - jampekka 3y ago
    We don't need competition to make everything better. Our (and literally our) schools, hospitals, police, road network, water and sewage system and military among others don't have competition and seem to work just fine.
    - robertlagrant 3y ago
      I understanding you're straw manning me, and know what I mean when I say that making it harder to start companies hurts competition, which is bad, but also: Those organisations all use things made/done by private companies extensively. Ultimately, even a state-funded organisation picking a new employee (a private entity) is a competitive process.
      - jampekka 3y ago
        I don't see any fundamental reason why they should use things made/done by private companies. And not so long ago a lot less of the things were made by other than private companies. One can probably see almost everything as competition with certain colored glasses. With scarce resources you do need some way of allocating them of course. But there are many other ways of allocation. E.g. hospitals (at least in sane system) allocate by need or urgency for care. To get a seat in a bus a lane on the highway or food from a cafeteria or breadline you queue. In national elections the voting power is allocated vote-per-person. In state funded organizations employees are sometimes hired based on the employees needs. From each according to their ability to each according to their need is just a way of allocating resources. And a very typical way of doing so among e.g. families and friends and volunteer run organizations.
        robertlagrant 3y ago
        > But there are many other ways of allocation. E.g. hospitals (at least in sane system) allocate by need or urgency for care. To get a seat in a bus a lane on the highway or food from a cafeteria or breadline you queue. Medical urgency - yes, but this is imperfect, and still is a millions of times more constrained problem than the general problem of allocating resources in an economy. Queues- but how does that help with, say, oil selling? Who decides who gets the oil? Does each person queue and get their own free barrel of oil? What if I need a hundred barrels because I'm making plastic things, whereas Fred just wants to heat his home? How does it help with allocating people? Does each company get one employee at a time? Or do they queue for their own employees, and keep coming back for more? > From each according to their ability to each according to their need is just a way of allocating resources. And a very typical way of doing so among e.g. families and friends and volunteer run organizations. Yes, because the likelihood of the parental figure doing the allocating being awful is low, and the blast radius of them being awful is small (while tragic when it does happen). Scale it up and the "your ability meets my need" will also scale up, as that parental role has unbelievable amounts of direct power allocated to it. That's why some tens of millions died in poverty in the USSR and communist China, and why tragically Venezuelans are starving today, due to the state utterly mismanaging the largest oil supply in the world. I really can't understand looking at the state as a giant parental figure. If we were to make it one, it will attract power-hungry people to it, and it will fail to hire on competence (what if the incompetent people's need for a job is greater?) As seems to have happened in the past every time it's been tried.
- AmericanChopper 3y ago
  > entrepreneurial people will still want to create stuff and they will but they'll have to care more about how they do it. More likely they’ll just go to some place that allows them to do it.
  - jampekka 3y ago
    Good riddance.
  - psd1 3y ago
    I see this as neoliberal dogma. There may be some truth to it, but I assert that unfettered neoliberalism will turn a country into an unpleasant shithole within a generation or two; and if you're willing to entertain that idea for the purpose of debate, can you honestly say that entrepreneurial types are going to flock to your country merely to save some red tape?
    - AmericanChopper 3y ago
      Well for starters people do this all the time. But I’m not talking about immigrating to avoid high local taxes or anything that onerous. If a jurisdiction is hostile to capital, then the capital will just move somewhere else. That’s a simple as transferring an account balance to a brokerage account in another country. If an advanced economy decided to do away with the concept of LLCs, then yes, I’d assert very confidently that almost nobody would want to do any business there at all, and all of the capital in that economy would migrate to basically any other advanced economy in the world.
      - jampekka 3y ago
        This is why many countries used to have strict controls of importing and exporting capital. People did plenty of business regardless. Those were thrown out in the neoliberal craze and the race to the bottom got into full speed. Jurisdiction without e.g. any labor protection is very friendly to capital. Capital indeed used to benefit tremendously from being able to outright own the laborer.

pmontra 3y ago

> A corporation can't care, nor suffer. I really dislike the "limited responsibility" concept. If we remove it entrepreneurial people will still want to create stuff and they will but they'll have to care more about how they do it.

robertlagrant 3y ago
It's extremely hard to make a company by any means, and there are already lots of regulations, and we need competition to make everything better. If you can think of a new regulation that would be a net benefit, propose it. But it's silly to annihilate the creation of new companies.
- jampekka 3y ago
  We don't need competition to make everything better. Our (and literally our) schools, hospitals, police, road network, water and sewage system and military among others don't have competition and seem to work just fine.
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    I understanding you're straw manning me, and know what I mean when I say that making it harder to start companies hurts competition, which is bad, but also: Those organisations all use things made/done by private companies extensively. Ultimately, even a state-funded organisation picking a new employee (a private entity) is a competitive process.
    - jampekka 3y ago
      I don't see any fundamental reason why they should use things made/done by private companies. And not so long ago a lot less of the things were made by other than private companies. One can probably see almost everything as competition with certain colored glasses. With scarce resources you do need some way of allocating them of course. But there are many other ways of allocation. E.g. hospitals (at least in sane system) allocate by need or urgency for care. To get a seat in a bus a lane on the highway or food from a cafeteria or breadline you queue. In national elections the voting power is allocated vote-per-person. In state funded organizations employees are sometimes hired based on the employees needs. From each according to their ability to each according to their need is just a way of allocating resources. And a very typical way of doing so among e.g. families and friends and volunteer run organizations.
      - robertlagrant 3y ago
        > But there are many other ways of allocation. E.g. hospitals (at least in sane system) allocate by need or urgency for care. To get a seat in a bus a lane on the highway or food from a cafeteria or breadline you queue. Medical urgency - yes, but this is imperfect, and still is a millions of times more constrained problem than the general problem of allocating resources in an economy. Queues- but how does that help with, say, oil selling? Who decides who gets the oil? Does each person queue and get their own free barrel of oil? What if I need a hundred barrels because I'm making plastic things, whereas Fred just wants to heat his home? How does it help with allocating people? Does each company get one employee at a time? Or do they queue for their own employees, and keep coming back for more? > From each according to their ability to each according to their need is just a way of allocating resources. And a very typical way of doing so among e.g. families and friends and volunteer run organizations. Yes, because the likelihood of the parental figure doing the allocating being awful is low, and the blast radius of them being awful is small (while tragic when it does happen). Scale it up and the "your ability meets my need" will also scale up, as that parental role has unbelievable amounts of direct power allocated to it. That's why some tens of millions died in poverty in the USSR and communist China, and why tragically Venezuelans are starving today, due to the state utterly mismanaging the largest oil supply in the world. I really can't understand looking at the state as a giant parental figure. If we were to make it one, it will attract power-hungry people to it, and it will fail to hire on competence (what if the incompetent people's need for a job is greater?) As seems to have happened in the past every time it's been tried.
AmericanChopper 3y ago
> entrepreneurial people will still want to create stuff and they will but they'll have to care more about how they do it. More likely they’ll just go to some place that allows them to do it.
- jampekka 3y ago
  Good riddance.
- psd1 3y ago
  I see this as neoliberal dogma. There may be some truth to it, but I assert that unfettered neoliberalism will turn a country into an unpleasant shithole within a generation or two; and if you're willing to entertain that idea for the purpose of debate, can you honestly say that entrepreneurial types are going to flock to your country merely to save some red tape?
  - AmericanChopper 3y ago
    Well for starters people do this all the time. But I’m not talking about immigrating to avoid high local taxes or anything that onerous. If a jurisdiction is hostile to capital, then the capital will just move somewhere else. That’s a simple as transferring an account balance to a brokerage account in another country. If an advanced economy decided to do away with the concept of LLCs, then yes, I’d assert very confidently that almost nobody would want to do any business there at all, and all of the capital in that economy would migrate to basically any other advanced economy in the world.
    - jampekka 3y ago
      This is why many countries used to have strict controls of importing and exporting capital. People did plenty of business regardless. Those were thrown out in the neoliberal craze and the race to the bottom got into full speed. Jurisdiction without e.g. any labor protection is very friendly to capital. Capital indeed used to benefit tremendously from being able to outright own the laborer.