4 ms·

Well of course, why would anyone even use electricity unless an absentee investor was reaping ROI from it? Duh...

by johnea 2y ago

hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
I know your comment is sarcastic, but yes, of course. I consider myself someone with "liberal values", but I don't understand why so many liberals like to pretend that the reality of economic incentives don't exist. Sure, it would be nice if we could all sing kumbaya together and build things, but the real world largely doesn't work that way. And it's not just "big developers" - most people would choose the more polluting energy source if it saved them 5 cents. Other similar situation: so many people in "liberal cities" like to rail against "big evil developers" when it comes to housing, and as a result they have a giant housing shortage that is responsible for tons of social ills. In Austin we've built a shit ton of housing, especially rental, by letting developers build, and surprise surprise housing and rental costs in Austin have fallen a ton since their (admittedly ridiculous) peak.
- hobs 2y ago
  We're not pretending it doesn't exist, but the failures of Texas power grid have been pretty obvious the last few years with major power failures, rampant price gouging, and deaths attributable to these failures - so the "oh the incentives are fixing it!" when no states needs to have those problems is looking with rose tinted glasses.
  - conradev 2y ago
    Interconnection is a separate issue from deregulation and they're considering it: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/projects/2025/southern-spirit-transmission-line-texas/ https://www.houstonchronicle.com/projects/2025/southern-spir... The Griddy incident wasn't quite "price gouging" if you want to read about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griddy_(company)#2021_Texas_power_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griddy_(company)#2021_Texas_po... > Griddy advised customers to remove themselves from their system during the storm, and says that over 9,700 accounts did by February 15. On February 17, they asked for PUC approval to switch the remaining customers to a traditional energy provider, but the PUC, which was overwhelmed by the situation, was unable to discuss the matter. Outages do cause deaths, that is for sure. PG&E has killed a lot of people by that metric and unfortunately PG&E's problems are a little harder to fix.
  - hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
    These are still problems that can largely be solved by applying the right economic incentives. For example, during the 2021 winter storm and outage, a huge problem was that no power producers had any incentive to weatherize their systems, resulting in a huge chunk of them all going offline at the same time. It seems more than reasonable to require producers to have some minimal level of weatherization, and to provide incentives to producers that have better weatherization. This is kinda my point - I'm not arguing for a totally deregulated free-for-all, as the unregulated free market is notoriously bad at dealing with "black swan" events. But that doesn't mean that sensible regulations can't be put in place that still use economic incentives to achieve their goals.
    - warkdarrior 2y ago
      > These are still problems that can largely be solved by applying the right economic incentives. > > It seems more than reasonable to require producers to have some minimal level of weatherization Regulation on a minimal level of weatherization is not an economic incentive.
      - hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
        This is basically an "all Internet arguments are over semantics" response. I.e., if you want to participate in the electricity producer market in TX, you need to have X level of weatherization. Call that regulation, fine, but essentially every private, non-governmental-run market has a set of rules that all participants need to adhere to in order to participate in the market, and the penalty for non-compliance is getting kicked out of the market. That's basically what I'm arguing for here.

Well of course, why would anyone even use electricity unless an absentee investor was reaping ROI from it? Duh...

by johnea 2y ago

Well of course, why would anyone even use electricity unless an absentee investor was reaping ROI from it? Duh...

I know your comment is sarcastic, but yes, of course. I consider myself someone with "liberal values", but I don't understand why so many liberals like to pretend that the reality of economic incentives don't exist. Sure, it would be nice if we could all sing kumbaya together and build things, but the real world largely doesn't work that way. And it's not just "big developers" - most people would choose the more polluting energy source if it saved them 5 cents. Other similar situation: so many people in "liberal cities" like to rail against "big evil developers" when it comes to housing, and as a result they have a giant housing shortage that is responsible for tons of social ills. In Austin we've built a shit ton of housing, especially rental, by letting developers build, and surprise surprise housing and rental costs in Austin have fallen a ton since their (admittedly ridiculous) peak.

hobs 2y ago
We're not pretending it doesn't exist, but the failures of Texas power grid have been pretty obvious the last few years with major power failures, rampant price gouging, and deaths attributable to these failures - so the "oh the incentives are fixing it!" when no states needs to have those problems is looking with rose tinted glasses.
- conradev 2y ago
  Interconnection is a separate issue from deregulation and they're considering it: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/projects/2025/southern-spirit-transmission-line-texas/ https://www.houstonchronicle.com/projects/2025/southern-spir... The Griddy incident wasn't quite "price gouging" if you want to read about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griddy_(company)#2021_Texas_power_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griddy_(company)#2021_Texas_po... > Griddy advised customers to remove themselves from their system during the storm, and says that over 9,700 accounts did by February 15. On February 17, they asked for PUC approval to switch the remaining customers to a traditional energy provider, but the PUC, which was overwhelmed by the situation, was unable to discuss the matter. Outages do cause deaths, that is for sure. PG&E has killed a lot of people by that metric and unfortunately PG&E's problems are a little harder to fix.
- hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
  These are still problems that can largely be solved by applying the right economic incentives. For example, during the 2021 winter storm and outage, a huge problem was that no power producers had any incentive to weatherize their systems, resulting in a huge chunk of them all going offline at the same time. It seems more than reasonable to require producers to have some minimal level of weatherization, and to provide incentives to producers that have better weatherization. This is kinda my point - I'm not arguing for a totally deregulated free-for-all, as the unregulated free market is notoriously bad at dealing with "black swan" events. But that doesn't mean that sensible regulations can't be put in place that still use economic incentives to achieve their goals.
  - warkdarrior 2y ago
    > These are still problems that can largely be solved by applying the right economic incentives. > > It seems more than reasonable to require producers to have some minimal level of weatherization Regulation on a minimal level of weatherization is not an economic incentive.
    - hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
      This is basically an "all Internet arguments are over semantics" response. I.e., if you want to participate in the electricity producer market in TX, you need to have X level of weatherization. Call that regulation, fine, but essentially every private, non-governmental-run market has a set of rules that all participants need to adhere to in order to participate in the market, and the penalty for non-compliance is getting kicked out of the market. That's basically what I'm arguing for here.