[ExI] Fwd: question

[William Flynn Wallace]

I wonder what is going to happen in Texas.  People are getting bills for
one month's worth of electricity that, well, one I saw was for $16000.
Something has to hit the fan here.  That could wipe a lot of people out.
bill w

On Sat, Feb 27, 2021 at 7:51 AM BillK via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On Sat, 27 Feb 2021 at 01:54, Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat
> <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> >
> > The Texas energy crisis isn’t an example of an unfettered free market.
> Instead, it’s a matter of a state-level regulated energy sector, where it’s
> regulated, it seems, on behalf of big energy providers. (By the way, this
> is how much regulation works: big players lobby for regulations to keep out
> competition and basically rent-seek. Sometimes ‘secondary revaluations’
> come in to play. This is new regulations attempt to mitigate the problems
> of earlier regulations — and often these are done to protect consumers or
> small players. But these are usually bandaids on a system regulated for the
> big players and connected interests.)
> >
> > Deregulation is sometimes advocated by some so called. liberals too. The
> Carter administration oversaw and promoted airline and trucking
> deregulation. That seems to be one reason for low airfares and the kind of
> rapid delivery services that happened afterward. Of course, the devil is in
> the details. Sometimes a particular deregulation is really nothing more
> than allow big players to do as they please in an override heavily
> regulated industry. (Think of banking and securities. Both heavily
> regulated, yet loosing some rules usually doesn’t mean promoting a free
> market in either, but usually just allowing big players to do stuff they
> wouldn’t be able to do in an actual free market. Of course, bailouts don’t
> help this either.)
> >
> > Dan
> > _______________________________________________
>
>
> Agreed. As Dan says the big problem in Texas is regulatory capture by
> large companies.
> This has grown to be a major problem throughout the USA in many industries.
> 'Profits before people' is the result.
>
> The Texas power industries have been warned time after time that a
> disaster could happen, but they negotiated a system where if there is
> a shortage of power the price to consumers escalates hundreds of
> times. They claimed this would encourage the companies to supply more
> power. Well, it didn't. What it encouraged was the companies to allow
> shortages of power where they made huge profits. People dying and
> homes ruined by burst pipes were just collateral damage.
>
> Nothing personal, it's just business.
>
>
> BillK
>
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