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No, their argument is sound. It’s just missing the point of utilities. They’re saying that the cost of providing electricity to the cities, where everything is

No, their argument is sound. It’s just missing the point of utilities. They’re saying that the cost of providing electricity to the cities, where everything is densely located and there are fewer trees and fewer overhead lines needing under grounding is lower so they should charge less to city consumers. They imply that the bulk of the cost is delivering power to the richer consumers further out because there’s a lot of line miles that need under grounding. That’s probably accurate. But utilities are restricted from pricing like that because you don’t want utilities triaging customers that are less profitable. The article here makes the argument that the far away and expensive customers are rich, therefore fuck ‘em. I’m not familiar with California but I doubt this is true across the board. There are surely notably rich communities far from the city but surely there are also poorer areas further from the city that are relatively cheaper because the commute is worse.

jeffbee 2y ago
Maybe, but it's also clear that rural electrification was a huge error. People should live in clusters of at least a handful of structures where it's practical and affordable to provision electric lines (and telecommunications), or they should be off the grid altogether. What we built in the 20th century was the worst possible thing: mile after mile of transmission and distribution equipment serving dispersed houses in forests. This should never have been built and we should not perpetuate it with subsidies: https://www.google.com/maps/@38.4638277,-120.656418,3a,75y,303.07h,100.82t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sfib7zJBdnKVsH3yzgIV0Jw!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fcb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26pitch%3D-10.821915535625621%26panoid%3Dfib7zJBdnKVsH3yzgIV0Jw%26yaw%3D303.0698026053538!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MDIwNS4xIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D https://www.google.com/maps/@38.4638277,-120.656418,3a,75y,3...
- hypothesis 2y ago
  Eh, but we should not leave people without basics of civilization. Yes, it’s a subsidy, but benefits outweigh hoarding of wealth.
  - jeffbee 2y ago
    But we wouldn't have been "leaving" anyone. All this garbage was built in the 1970s because we incentivized it with subsidized roads and utilities. If we hadn't established those subsidies, all of these people would have lived in the established towns of Jackson or Ione, upon which they are totally dependent anyway.
    - fooker 2y ago
      > all of these people would have lived in the established towns And I assume your food would be conjured magically?
      - jeffbee 2y ago
        None of the people in the area to which I referred are undertaking anything productive. Food comes from farms, like always.
        b112 2y ago
        Which are in rural areas. Which means the lines have to go there. Which means they pass less rural area to get there. Rural areas aren't just a farm all by itself. Farmers need schools, stores, supplies, workers, you know, rural areas. As well, when we electrified our nations, most people lived on farms. At the start of the 20th, as an example, most Canadians lived in rural areas. The reverse is now true. This conversation is absurd. Hydro Quebec runs power lines through areas far more rural than California, through weather more severe and wide ranging, over greater distances, with more wild land, and just as much danger of fire. It does so at the cheapest rates, shows a profit, maintaining its lines and clearing vegetation. PG&E is a pathetic company, and if people look outside of California, you can see how cheap rural electrification is Really, cities cost more to electrify. Burying lines is mega expensive, stringing power lines on poles os quiet cost effective. You can easily run miles of lines, for the cost of a crew digging up a street and repaving. Lastly, rural people pay for hookups. Each house often pays thousands per pole.
- chasd00 2y ago
  Who cares about the way things should be when it comes to utilities. There’s no feasible way you’re going to cut power to rural communities and people. Deal with it.
  - thinkcontext 2y ago
    That's what the article is about.
- Nimitz14 2y ago
  Interesting perspective. I guess even in very rural areas it would have pushed people to build villages. On the other hand people already were living far apart and lack of electricity meant they had to do massively more work. LBJ's biography has a section on this, explaining that life on west texas farms was incredibly hard without electricity (and as congressman LBJ worked very hard to expand that to rural people).
  - ghaff 2y ago
    It sort of has. Lots of people you think of as living in fairly rural locations are still in small towns rather than the middle of nowhere.
- apercu 2y ago
  That basically describes my area. There are 3 streets (2 connect, the 3rd doesn't). There are 11 houses on my (dead end) street and maybe 25 on the other two streets. Because of this clustering - I live in a pretty rural area - but have natural gas and cable internet (only one option, so not that awesome). But, I also have a well and a septic system. And I'm very thankful. As I was moving back to the US after 2 decades in a city, I did a winter with no high speed internet (used a mofi router with a SIM card as Starlink was overprescribed in the area) and propane for heat. It was a small house but heating with propane is crazy expensive.
- sgarland 2y ago
  This has to be the most confidently incorrect take I’ve ever read here. The Rural Electrification Act not only brought power to rural areas, but also jobs to Americans when they were most needed, and countless follow-on benefits: increased farm productivity, longer lifespans and higher quality of life, etc. It’s also not that subsidized compared to many other industries; the entire point of co-ops is purchasing something in bulk, with no one taking the profits. They get loans, yes, but the default rate on them is absurdly low. And on that point, electric co-ops consistently produce reliable power at a lower cost than privately-owned utilities. I’ve experienced both, in multiple areas of the country, and by far co-ops beat everyone else. This doesn’t even touch on the fact that the infrastructure enabled by the REA is also the only reason high speed internet ever made it to rural areas. Fiber everywhere should absolutely be a goal.
  - lostlogin 2y ago
    > This has to be the most confidently incorrect take I’ve ever read here. It’s funnier if we alter it a little, is it more or less true this way? >> It's also clear that rural voting was a huge error. People should live in clusters of at least a handful of structures where it's practical and affordable to provision government (and telecommunications), or they should be off the grid altogether. What we built in the 20th century was the worst possible thing: dispersed houses. This should never have been built and we should not perpetuate it with subsidies.
    - sgarland 2y ago
      I don’t see how voting works as an analogy. Suburbs would be more apt. I live in one, but I’ll be the first to admit that there’s no defensible reason to do so beyond “I want to.” They’re typically a net negative for counties in terms of tax revenue, they perpetuate car-first infrastructure, they contribute to high housing costs, and they don’t produce anything of value, like rural areas can (farms, land preservation).
      - marcosdumay 2y ago
        Well, people have to live somewhere, and that place will not generate a lot of revenue. US suburbs have problems due to single-use areas and forced low density. But you will aleays have some area that don't pay a lot of taxes.
jltsiren 2y ago
Cross subsidies like that promote inefficiency. They are one of the main reasons why living in California is so expensive. Utilities should be legally required to serve everyone in their area, but they should also be allowed to charge the real costs for the service. If the government thinks that's unfair to people living in rural areas, it's free to use tax money for explicit subsidies. But the subsidies should only be 70% or 80% of the excess costs, to give the people in expensive areas some incentives to find more efficient solutions. It's even worse in housing, where developers are often required to build below market rate units at their own expense. It makes new housing less profitable, and less housing gets built.
- jncfhnb 2y ago
  Using tax money to subsidize higher rates on certain areas is roughly the same as just charging people all a slightly higher rate. “The people” in expensive areas have literally no agency in finding an efficient solution. They don’t have any say about the utilities grid investments. In most parts of the country “these people” are also poorer.
  - jltsiren 2y ago
    Economic efficiency comes from accurate pricing. If grid power is artificially expensive in urban areas, people will install solar panels and batteries in situations where it doesn't really make sense. And if grid power is artificially cheap in rural areas, people will not install solar panels and batteries in situations where it makes sense. Thus incorrect pricing leads to inefficient investments. Many economists even argue that the most efficient form of subsidies is cash that can be used for any purpose. Instead of getting cheaper power in rural areas, you should simply receive $X/month for living there. But the assumptions needed to make that claim are a bit too restrictive for many real situations.
    - jncfhnb 2y ago
      Economic efficiency gains from specific power pricing are vastly undermined by the huge positive externalities of having electricity. Solar panel and battery investments reduce your demand for power from the grid, and in many rate cases will reduce your energy bill, but they _won’t_ reduce the costs of maintaining the distribution grid assets connecting you to the grid that need to exist even if you only use them 0.1% of the time. People with solar panels are the worst offenders as they can end up paying nothing, or perhaps even net receive money, despite still requiring investment from the utility. Accurate pricing of power is very very difficult. Whose energy should cost more? The 10k residents with 5 miles of overhead lines being undergrounded this year? Or the 1k with 15 miles of overhead lines that won’t be under grounded for 5 years? Are you prepared to impose a $50M capital investment cost solely on the consumers that use it? Uh oh. Turns out customers oppose an huge hike in their energy bills and are demanding you DONT underground their lines. Are you going to charge consumers extra because a car ran into a pole that’s specifically on their feeder? The risks of something like a forest fire affect everyone, even if it’s on a line that serves just one person. This stuff is very complicated. The elephant in the room is that under grounding distribution networks in places like California is simply far too expensive for the kind of budgets they have.

jeffbee 2y ago

Maybe, but it's also clear that rural electrification was a huge error. People should live in clusters of at least a handful of structures where it's practical and affordable to provision electric lines (and telecommunications), or they should be off the grid altogether. What we built in the 20th century was the worst possible thing: mile after mile of transmission and distribution equipment serving dispersed houses in forests. This should never have been built and we should not perpetuate it with subsidies: https://www.google.com/maps/@38.4638277,-120.656418,3a,75y,303.07h,100.82t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sfib7zJBdnKVsH3yzgIV0Jw!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fcb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26pitch%3D-10.821915535625621%26panoid%3Dfib7zJBdnKVsH3yzgIV0Jw%26yaw%3D303.0698026053538!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MDIwNS4xIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D https://www.google.com/maps/@38.4638277,-120.656418,3a,75y,3...

hypothesis 2y ago
Eh, but we should not leave people without basics of civilization. Yes, it’s a subsidy, but benefits outweigh hoarding of wealth.
- jeffbee 2y ago
  But we wouldn't have been "leaving" anyone. All this garbage was built in the 1970s because we incentivized it with subsidized roads and utilities. If we hadn't established those subsidies, all of these people would have lived in the established towns of Jackson or Ione, upon which they are totally dependent anyway.
  - fooker 2y ago
    > all of these people would have lived in the established towns And I assume your food would be conjured magically?
    - jeffbee 2y ago
      None of the people in the area to which I referred are undertaking anything productive. Food comes from farms, like always.
      - b112 2y ago
        Which are in rural areas. Which means the lines have to go there. Which means they pass less rural area to get there. Rural areas aren't just a farm all by itself. Farmers need schools, stores, supplies, workers, you know, rural areas. As well, when we electrified our nations, most people lived on farms. At the start of the 20th, as an example, most Canadians lived in rural areas. The reverse is now true. This conversation is absurd. Hydro Quebec runs power lines through areas far more rural than California, through weather more severe and wide ranging, over greater distances, with more wild land, and just as much danger of fire. It does so at the cheapest rates, shows a profit, maintaining its lines and clearing vegetation. PG&E is a pathetic company, and if people look outside of California, you can see how cheap rural electrification is Really, cities cost more to electrify. Burying lines is mega expensive, stringing power lines on poles os quiet cost effective. You can easily run miles of lines, for the cost of a crew digging up a street and repaving. Lastly, rural people pay for hookups. Each house often pays thousands per pole.
chasd00 2y ago
Who cares about the way things should be when it comes to utilities. There’s no feasible way you’re going to cut power to rural communities and people. Deal with it.
- thinkcontext 2y ago
  That's what the article is about.
Nimitz14 2y ago
Interesting perspective. I guess even in very rural areas it would have pushed people to build villages. On the other hand people already were living far apart and lack of electricity meant they had to do massively more work. LBJ's biography has a section on this, explaining that life on west texas farms was incredibly hard without electricity (and as congressman LBJ worked very hard to expand that to rural people).
- ghaff 2y ago
  It sort of has. Lots of people you think of as living in fairly rural locations are still in small towns rather than the middle of nowhere.
apercu 2y ago
That basically describes my area. There are 3 streets (2 connect, the 3rd doesn't). There are 11 houses on my (dead end) street and maybe 25 on the other two streets. Because of this clustering - I live in a pretty rural area - but have natural gas and cable internet (only one option, so not that awesome). But, I also have a well and a septic system. And I'm very thankful. As I was moving back to the US after 2 decades in a city, I did a winter with no high speed internet (used a mofi router with a SIM card as Starlink was overprescribed in the area) and propane for heat. It was a small house but heating with propane is crazy expensive.
sgarland 2y ago
This has to be the most confidently incorrect take I’ve ever read here. The Rural Electrification Act not only brought power to rural areas, but also jobs to Americans when they were most needed, and countless follow-on benefits: increased farm productivity, longer lifespans and higher quality of life, etc. It’s also not that subsidized compared to many other industries; the entire point of co-ops is purchasing something in bulk, with no one taking the profits. They get loans, yes, but the default rate on them is absurdly low. And on that point, electric co-ops consistently produce reliable power at a lower cost than privately-owned utilities. I’ve experienced both, in multiple areas of the country, and by far co-ops beat everyone else. This doesn’t even touch on the fact that the infrastructure enabled by the REA is also the only reason high speed internet ever made it to rural areas. Fiber everywhere should absolutely be a goal.
- lostlogin 2y ago
  > This has to be the most confidently incorrect take I’ve ever read here. It’s funnier if we alter it a little, is it more or less true this way? >> It's also clear that rural voting was a huge error. People should live in clusters of at least a handful of structures where it's practical and affordable to provision government (and telecommunications), or they should be off the grid altogether. What we built in the 20th century was the worst possible thing: dispersed houses. This should never have been built and we should not perpetuate it with subsidies.
  - sgarland 2y ago
    I don’t see how voting works as an analogy. Suburbs would be more apt. I live in one, but I’ll be the first to admit that there’s no defensible reason to do so beyond “I want to.” They’re typically a net negative for counties in terms of tax revenue, they perpetuate car-first infrastructure, they contribute to high housing costs, and they don’t produce anything of value, like rural areas can (farms, land preservation).
    - marcosdumay 2y ago
      Well, people have to live somewhere, and that place will not generate a lot of revenue. US suburbs have problems due to single-use areas and forced low density. But you will aleays have some area that don't pay a lot of taxes.

jltsiren 2y ago

Cross subsidies like that promote inefficiency. They are one of the main reasons why living in California is so expensive. Utilities should be legally required to serve everyone in their area, but they should also be allowed to charge the real costs for the service. If the government thinks that's unfair to people living in rural areas, it's free to use tax money for explicit subsidies. But the subsidies should only be 70% or 80% of the excess costs, to give the people in expensive areas some incentives to find more efficient solutions. It's even worse in housing, where developers are often required to build below market rate units at their own expense. It makes new housing less profitable, and less housing gets built.

jncfhnb 2y ago
Using tax money to subsidize higher rates on certain areas is roughly the same as just charging people all a slightly higher rate. “The people” in expensive areas have literally no agency in finding an efficient solution. They don’t have any say about the utilities grid investments. In most parts of the country “these people” are also poorer.
- jltsiren 2y ago
  Economic efficiency comes from accurate pricing. If grid power is artificially expensive in urban areas, people will install solar panels and batteries in situations where it doesn't really make sense. And if grid power is artificially cheap in rural areas, people will not install solar panels and batteries in situations where it makes sense. Thus incorrect pricing leads to inefficient investments. Many economists even argue that the most efficient form of subsidies is cash that can be used for any purpose. Instead of getting cheaper power in rural areas, you should simply receive $X/month for living there. But the assumptions needed to make that claim are a bit too restrictive for many real situations.
  - jncfhnb 2y ago
    Economic efficiency gains from specific power pricing are vastly undermined by the huge positive externalities of having electricity. Solar panel and battery investments reduce your demand for power from the grid, and in many rate cases will reduce your energy bill, but they _won’t_ reduce the costs of maintaining the distribution grid assets connecting you to the grid that need to exist even if you only use them 0.1% of the time. People with solar panels are the worst offenders as they can end up paying nothing, or perhaps even net receive money, despite still requiring investment from the utility. Accurate pricing of power is very very difficult. Whose energy should cost more? The 10k residents with 5 miles of overhead lines being undergrounded this year? Or the 1k with 15 miles of overhead lines that won’t be under grounded for 5 years? Are you prepared to impose a $50M capital investment cost solely on the consumers that use it? Uh oh. Turns out customers oppose an huge hike in their energy bills and are demanding you DONT underground their lines. Are you going to charge consumers extra because a car ran into a pole that’s specifically on their feeder? The risks of something like a forest fire affect everyone, even if it’s on a line that serves just one person. This stuff is very complicated. The elephant in the room is that under grounding distribution networks in places like California is simply far too expensive for the kind of budgets they have.