Ohio separates distribution from supply. You can't select the distributor who connects your home to the gas mains, but you can choose from dozens of suppliers who put gas into those mains.
Same in the EU. Or at least I think so, it's the case over here and it's EU-wide for electricity providers. Water, sewage and garbage disposal are municipal responsibility though there's no network/provider separation there.
What's actually missing is a municipal-level telecom monopoly -- again, with separate providers. The last-mile network is just as much a natural monopoly for telecom as it is for other wires or pipes.
it's the case over here and it's EU-wide for electricity providers
I find it interesting that this is a good thing in the US and most of Europe, but in France this majorly fucked our electricity market by forcing the (mostly) state funded electricity producer into selling their electricity to some companies that provide no value aside from being an intermediate between the producer and the consumer (they are not required to produce their own electricity to buy some from EDF at a discount, and they are even allowed to sell it to consumers for less money than the lowest price EDF is allowed to charge when they are doing the same thing, because of some dumb regulations I can't remember).
All in the name of the free market because "monopoly bad", even though electricity production and especially distribution is, as you said, a natural monopoly.
Yeah you can't combine a market mechanism while telling a production (quasi-)monopolist that they need to fix prices.
Reminds me of the good ole GDR: They would subsidise bread so that people could always afford it, a completely laudable goal. People also had chickens in their backyard because eggs and meat and when it came to feeding those chickens, they had a look at the prices -- and, yeah, the state subsidised bread. Not grain. So they fed the chickens bread as it was cheaper. It's an easy enough fix, just shift the subsidies but nope, governmental inertia or something prevented them from doing it.
This is the same for both gas and electricity (both import and export for those who can) in the UK.
It generally works quite well, and could be pretty competitive if you knew to shop around. Since Vlad's 3 days began and natural gas prices spiked the entire market (the companies that survived) has pretty much been at the government price cap. There are some deals starting to re-appear but the main reason to switch right now is customer service. Amazing how much brand loyalty let's the big firms treat people like shit and get away with it.
The best deals tend to be time of use for people with smart meters.
And when government fucked up those management, you as a citizen should held your government liable. People shouldn't be afraid of their government, the government should be afraid of their people. Also, the government's main priority is NOT to make a profit but rather serve the people. So there is a (theoretical) obligation for the government to make sure every citizen has access to their service even if at a loss.
First world countries tend to not be run for the benefit of all. Not that third world countries are either, mind you, but generally removing the profit motive from basic necessities seems to have very positive results on levels of freedom and social mobility.
Except when corrupt officials just pocket the money and invest nothing into infrastructure
Monopolys aren't good either but living in a third world country I can tell you you can find worse problems with state controlled systems than with private companies that at least have to keep you as a client somehow
Yes. Services like gas and water are natural monopolies - it doesn't make sense to roll out two or three separate lots of distribution pipes, so you always just have one service available to you. The best option is to have them as government owned services.
Quite simple actually. The supplier knows how much water it puts in the pipes, and consumers have meters that measure how much water they take out of the pipes.
Water is water... It doesn't matter if you're not getting the exact same water molecules put in by your supplier.
Think of it like this... You have a jug of water. The supplier puts in a glass of water, and you (the consumer) take out one glass of water. The quantity of water in the jug stays the same, but you pay the supplier for how much water you took out.
Tap water is not just water. Water has a bunch of other things in it besides water. The main reason I can think to choose a different water supplier than the cheapest is the water quality. If the cheap supplier is gonna crap up all the water for everyone else, what's anyone incentive not to go with the cheap supplier? Doesn't that pretty quickly devolve into a monopoly?
With electricity, it is just electricity and people have opinions about how that electricity is generated. But even there, it's usually not a good thing. It leads to high pressure, scammy sales tactics that result in higher bills for no benefit.
If you're all using the same wires, you're subjected to those problems even if you don't contract with them. So multiple suppliers doesn't fix the issue. It just introduces more suppliers who can have those problems.
That would destroy the entire grid and a lot of equipment. It's why texas had rolling blackouts a few winters ago, it's a fine balance between supply and demand to maintain stable voltage and frequency. Failure to do so can result in a LOT of damage. If you don't have enough supply, you have to reduce demand.
Can be solved by putting a certain quality requirement for putting water into the pipes. Suppliers can compete on price.
It's not realistic to have multiple pipe systems covering the same area. Digging pipes is very expensive. Digging multiple networks of pipes is insane. This solution is the best compromise to have multiple suppliers serve in the same area.
If the only difference is price, how does that not just devolve into a monopoly or shitty sales tactics to try to trick people into paying more for the same product?
You're choosing from vendors to deal with the regional vendor. You're just paying someone to pay the company in your area. The company you pay in this scenario literally offers you zero value. They simply exist to extract money from you.
Alternatively, these services could be provided to you at a lower cost as part of your annual tax bill under a collaborative cooperative.
You’re choosing from vendors to deal with the regional vendor. You’re just paying someone to pay the company in your area.
That's not how it works.
The price you pay has 2 main components: a fixed component for network costs. This part is always the same and only depends on the type of hookup you have (e.g. an industrial power connection would cost more than a residential one). It goes to the owner of the physical power network (this depends on where you live) who uses it for things like maintenance (and of course a little profit). The network operator does not provide power themselves.
The variable component is based on your usage and goes to the power company. The power companies provide the actual power to the national grid. While it may be true that the power coming out of my outlets wasn't produced by the company I'm contracted with, that doesn't really matter. Electricity is electricity. What matters is that each power company has to provide the amount of energy used by their customers to the national grid. Say company A has 100 customers that on average used 1 kilowatt-hour each, and company B has 50 customers that used the same amount on average. Then company A has to provide 100 kilowatt-hours to the national grid and company B has to provide 50 kilowatt-hours.
How they provide that power is up to them, and usually varies. The larger energy companies have their own power plants, wind and solar farms. Smaller companies may buy energy in bulk from the larger ones and try to sell it at a profit to consumers. Energy companies may also buy or sell to/from other countries, depending on capacity and demand.
Point is that they don't just forward you the bill from a local company, they actually have to provide the power and outside of a few small 'virtual' energy companies they do produce that power.
DOZENS? Dozens. For real, dozens??? Please list for me every utility company that will actually provide electricity service to your home. If it's actually more than two I will donate $25 to a charity of your choice right now. Not ones that operate in your state/county, but ones that will actually service your home. No cap, my Visa is ready. I'll post the receipt.
I'm gonna commit to this. How does this work? I looked and according to the Internet TenneT is the sole operator of the national electrical grid in the Netherlands. Do you have 52 power lines running to your home? What do these companies do if they don't actually produce the electricity or operate the grid?
I have precisely one power company that services about 5 million residents here where I live. No other options. This is the case for almost all Americans as far as I'm aware, outside of a few specific municipality-run power organizations, but those are exceedingly rare.
In Australia, and I assume the Netherlands, the transmission network is separately owned and run by government corporations. While multiple private companies are allowed to generate power and sell to customers on the government owned grid.
Interesting, I've never heard of this before but I suspect you're right. Was it always this way in Australia? I can't for the life of me figure out how America could be convinced to make its way towards this, but this sort of arrangement seems like a pretty ideal middle-ground.
How does this work? I looked and according to the Internet TenneT is the sole operator of the national electrical grid in the Netherlands. Do you have 52 power lines running to your home?
TenneT runs the what is called the ‘koppelnet’ (linking network). This is a high-voltage network that links the power stations together and also links to the europe-wide electrical high voltage network. Locally, the distribution networks form the link between the high-voltage net and your home. It first goes to a medium-voltage network and finally a low-voltage network. In my case the distribution network is owned by Enexis.
Neither Enexis or TenneT produce power. TenneT is owned by the government, Enexis is a private company but these are heavily regulated (e.g. there are caps on how much profit they are allowed to make).
As a consumer, you pay a fixed amount per day for use of the distribution network. You pay this through your normal energy bill. This is specified separately on the bill. In my case this means I pay €426,95 a year to Enexis. This fee is purely based on the size of my connection to the grid, in my case 3 phase 25 amps. It doesn’t change if I use more or less power.
As for where my electricity comes from? I don’t know, because it changes constantly and with how electricity works, I’m not even sure if this question makes sense. All power producers together keep the grid supplied with enough power. Power stations across the country are linked together and how the generated power is distributed is monitored and adjusted constantly. This also includes capacity from other European countries, as those grids are linked too.
Lots of people have solar panels nowadays and if they produce more than they need they can supply that back to the grid as well and get paid for it (it basically means their electricity meter runs backwards).
What do these companies do if they don't actually produce the electricity or operate the grid?
A bunch of them do produce the electricity, but as I said the power plants are connected to the nation-wide linking network. There is no direct relation between any of these power plants and my home. They can also pay someone else to produce it for them. This could be someone in a completely different country. A bunch is produced locally through solar panels and sold to the power company by consumers.
Some smaller companies may not produce anything themselves and just buy it somewhere, but where als can vary day by day and hour by hour. They will buy it wherever they can get the best deal at that time.
All that matters is that they make sure they provide enough energy to the national grid to cover the use of their customers. How it’s actually distributed is completely separate.
Note that due to how the energy market works, electricity prices change hour by hour. In my case I have a contract with a fixed price for a certain amount of time (1 year, but you can get longer contracts), but it’s also possible as a consumer to get a completely flexible contract. That means the price you pay for electricity changes every hour, based on the actual market price (plus a markup for the energy company of course). Especially during the day when lots of solar power is available, the price can drop a lot. There have even been cases where the price was negative for a short while (i.e. you got paid to use electricity) due to overproduction. If you have a flex contract, your energy company usually has an app that will tell you the current price and the expected price for the next couple of hours.
I have precisely one power company that services about 5 million residents here where I live. No other options.
So if their power plant goes down 5 million people are without power? That sounds extremely fragile.
So I've been thinking a lot about this. With a few exceptions you're actually pretty close to describing what we have in the States. There is more than one power producer in my state, and all the producers feed into the same grid whose infrastructure is regulated by the government. If a producer fails to produce, I can still get access to the electricity on the grid, but the key difference is that most of the delivery infrastructure is fully owned and operated by the same companies that do the production. I think we're getting hung up on the difference between provider and producer, which in America is mostly always the same thing.
It sounds like the Netherlands does in fact have two power providers then in the form of Enexis and TenneT, at least as I understand the term "provider" as we use it here. Or do you also maintain contracts/payments with individual power production firms that you haven't already described? What is the benefit of maintaining a contract with any of these companies if they already sold the power to Enexis/TenneT and they don't do any other administration services?
Our system is indeed fragile and I wish we could figure it out. I was a little off, DTE Energy services 2.3 million customers for power. We regularly experience outages affecting people into the hundreds of thousands. There's no incentive for them to improve the infrastructure
since they're a monopoly. Most of the power here is delivered via free-standing poles instead of underground lines, which are obviously prone to issues related to wind/snow/trees. It fucking sucks. Even just separating the delivery system from private business would be a monumental shift.
the key difference is that most of the delivery infrastructure is fully owned and operated by the same companies that do the production
That used to be the case here as well, but these companies got split up into a network company and a power company when the government decided to open up the energy market for competition.
It sounds like the Netherlands does in fact have two power providers then in the form of Enexis and TenneT, at least as I understand the term "provider" as we use it here. Or do you also maintain contracts/payments with individual power production firms that you haven't already described? What is the benefit of maintaining a contract with any of these companies if they already sold the power to Enexis/TenneT and they don't do any other administration services?
You misunderstand. Power companies do not sell their power to TenneT or Enexis. It’s the other way around: power companies pay TenneT and the local network owner (Enexis is just one of them) for transporting the power they generate to their customers. These are the fixed network costs that get passed on to the consumer.
TenneT, Enexis and the other network companies own the power distribution infrastructure, and they basically charge for access to their network.
Saying there is only one power company because Enexis delivers the power to my house is like saying there is only one online shop because the postal service delivers all my online orders to my door.
Just like I can order something from Amazon, or bol.com, or CoolBlue, I can also buy power from any of these 52 power companies. It all gets transported by TenneT and Enexis just like all my packages are transported by PostNL. And just like when I order something online, I don’t have a contract with the delivery service: the delivery service is contracted by the seller. Just like the PostNL shipping costs show up on my bill, so do the energy transport costs. I still only have a contract with the energy company.
The energy company either generates the power themselves (analog to Amazon shipping from their own warehouse) or they can pay someone else to generate the power they sold me (analog to Amazon drop-shipping a purchase). The company I currently buy my power from (Essent) has several power plants, but they may buy additional power on the open market, or sell it if they have spare capacity. This varies hour by hour.
Since all electricity is the same, there is no need to transport the exact energy produced by my energy company to my house. Or to use the packages analogy: imagine every online shop only sold 1, identical product. Online store A sold 3 products to customer 1, 2 and 3, and online store B sold 2 products to customer 4 and 5. Since all products are exactly the same, they don’t bother putting address labels on them, company A just sends 3 unmarked packages to the postal service warehouse, and company B sends 2 unmarked packages. Since it’s all the same, the postal service just tosses all the incoming packages onto one big pile. They then deliver a random package from that pile to customers 1 through 5, it doesn’t matter which as they’re all the same anyway. Why keep track when there is no point? The only thing that matters is that if company A tells the postal service to deliver 3 packages to their customers, they should also send 3 packages to the postal services’ warehouse. No need to keep track of individual packages, but number of packages in and out must match for each online store.
We regularly experience outages affecting people into the hundreds of thousands.
Power outages are extremely rare here and usually only affect a small group of houses. With the exception of the high-current linking network, all our power lines are underground so they aren’t affected by things like falling trees and the like.
I gotta be honest, your replies are very wordy and I'm having trouble following.
I would in fact say that you have only one (well, two) power providers. You have one mail delivery service, presumably random-online-shop.com isn't providing you mail service right? That's the same thing here. Your "provider" doesn't produce the energy. They, like in the packages example you used, are simply handing off the "packages" to your power provider (the mail service) who then administers and provides you with your power (delivers your mail). They have the power at that point, it's on their grid, and you want the power, so they give you the power. You're still paying the other company, to pay Ennexis, to provide the power. These companies just make it.
And again, if all the packages are the same, there's no difference and it doesn't matter, why would you sign a contract with any of these companies specifically? Why doesn't the entire NL just buy from the cheapest company if it's all the same to you as an end-user of the network?
Anyway at this point I'm just happy to be able to push a new idea on other folks here. The concept of govermment-run programs is still scary for some reason, but we do public/private partnerships very well here. It could just be that we have different understandings of the word "provide", which I'm fine with. Who am I to tell the Dutch what words mean lol. Feel free to redeem your Charity Coupon™️ if you'd like. Thanks for the chat.
You have one mail delivery service, presumably random-online-shop.com isn’t providing you mail service right? That’s the same thing here.
No, it's not. The power company is analog to Amazon or another webshop. The network company is analog to the postal service.
Your “provider” doesn’t produce the energy.
They actually do produce the energy, the network company doesn't. The power company owns the power plants that actually generate the electricity, or they sub-contract to a company that does (this is a simplification, in reality it's more dynamic than that).
They, like in the packages example you used, are simply handing off the “packages” to your power provider (the mail service) who then administers and provides you with your power (delivers your mail).
You're playing semantic games here.
The network company only transports the energy, it's not theirs. Just like the postal service doesn't own the contents of the packages they deliver. It's briefly in their possession, but it's not their property. And just like with the postal service they are only paid for transport. If I order a €10 bag of cat litter on Amazon, the postal company gets paid €5,95 to deliver it to my door. If I order a €2000 laptop, they also get paid €5,95. If I use 1 watt-hour of energy on a particular day , Enexis gets €1,16 for delivery it. If I use 1000 watt-hours on that day, they also get €1,16.
Let me put it this way: let's say you got a new pair of sunglasses. You meet a friend and he says, "cool shades, where did you get them?". What will you answer?
"I got them from the postal service"
"I got them on Amazon"
And again, if all the packages are the same, there’s no difference and it doesn’t matter, why would you sign a contract with any of these companies specifically? Why doesn’t the entire NL just buy from the cheapest company if it’s all the same to you as an end-user of the network?
Because while the actual power is the same, the contracts aren't. There is no "cheapest company", there is maybe a cheapest company for my particular situation. There are many differences between power companies and the products they offer.
I may want to contract with a company the only produces renewable energy (in fact, I do).
I may want to have a contract with a guaranteed fixed price for the next, 1, 3, or 5 years. Prices differ for these between companies due to their prediction of how their costs (to either produce or buy) will change in that period. They also change over time. So if my fixed-price contract is up today, company A may be the cheapest option to renew, but if I had to renew 4 months from now, it could be company B.
I may want a contract with variable pricing, where the price is adjusted based on the price of energy on the European market every 3 months.
I may want a completely dynamic contract, where the prices vary on an hour-by-hour basis. Even within this there are differences. For examples: some companies will just let you pay the actual market price plus a small markup. This may be risky for the consumer is there is a suddenly a huge spike in price for a few hours (which has happened in the past). Some offer dynamic pricing based different rules, e.g. an average over the last day or so. Which takes away some of the risk for spikes but also means you don't get a lot of savings when the price is suddenly super low or even negative (which has also happened in the past).
They provide different levels of service. For example: they offer discounts on certain power-saving products, from LED bulbs to heat exchangers.
If you have solar panels, you can sell the excess power they generate back to the power company. The amount they pay also varies per power company. If you barely use any power at night and you over-produce a lot during the day, you may want to choose a company not based on how much they charge for power, but how much they pay.
Then there's companies that offer additional stuff. For example: there was at least one that installed solar panels on your roof, and then you'd use the money you'd save in energy usage to pay for the panels in X years.
Other services that are offered by power companies are things like home inspection to see if there are areas where you cold save power, e.g. by improving insulation.
So it entirely depends on your preferences as a consumer. Do you want a guaranteed price or do you want to take a little bit more risk? How much risk? What kind of service do you want? Just the bare minimum or do you want more?
I think it's cute that people in a so-called solar"punk" community are against freedom. No freedom to start a business, no freedom to choose service providers. Did hexbear migrate to solarpunk?
It's not the people in the solarpunk community (because of federation posts get federated throughout the fediverse) but rather people not noticing the community
If the government decides to privatize utilities like electricity/gas or whatever, then sure it is freedom for some rich business owners to open up new businesses. However, this also results in those utilities becoming profit driven (as opposed to being for the public), and literally everyone in the country having to pay much more than they were paying previously.
My country had electricity privatized around 4 years ago, and in result we have to pay a lot more, not to mention about numerous fraud cases that were all over the news during and after the privatization period.
If you think that rich business owners being able to open up a couple of business at the expense of fucking over the public is a good thing and being against it is some weird hexbear delusion, then I'd advise you to get out of the libertarian bubble and look at the real world instead.
Please enlighten me on how I can start a utilities company? Make sure you give me details on how I can maximize profits to my shareholders while fucking over my customers.
Or maybe I should start a non-profit utilities company, and the cost of your services is subsidized by taxpayers' money. That way, I don't have to constantly chase capitalism and make life better for my community instead of my shareholders.
Nothing says punk more than enabling for profit corporations to hold sole ownership of the utilities that we need to continue living in a bare minimum standard of living. /s
Good point but I would say it's hard to monopolize solar power since it's easy to just buy your own panels.
Wheras it's not feasible to buld your own power plant.
I never said that. Small scale power is always the way to go! Be it small hydro or solar panels!
It's very different to have small localized power and distribution networks than controlling a whole country's power and then giving that whole network to a private company to manage.
Those things are natural monopolies, so the choice isn't monopoly vs free-market it's profit-driven-monopoly vs public-good-driven-monopoly.
Unlike what's said by the mindless pseudo-Economics bollocks a lot of prople have been indoctrinated with, the upsides for consumers of a Free Market only exist in the subset of markets were there are natural conditions for high levels of competition - which is most definitelly not gas provision to households - and even in those there are still systemic problems such as negative externalities that require some level of regulation.
Distribution is a natural monopoly. Supply is not. Every supplier is putting the same, standardized product in the pipes. If they put a cubic foot in, and I take a cubic foot out, I can call them my supplier, even if they are putting it into the pipeline a thousand miles away from me and there is zero chance I will ever be burning the actual gas they supplied.
Indeed, and separating distribution from production is how decent competition is introduced in such markets (there are still barriers to entry related to infrastructure, but they're nowhere as bad as the ones when the distribution infrastructure is owned by the gas company).
However, often that's not how things are in the markets for gas, power and water supply as well as internet access.
Not only that but in markets were those things are separate the supply companies will try as hard as they can to get their hands on the distribution side (for obvious reasons), and, well, neoliberal politicians are usually happy to let them. The natural tendency in an unregulated market in those things is for sooner or later to end up in a winner-takes-all situation were one of the suppliers got it's hands on the distribution side and used it to create a monopoly position, if only locally.
It's a funny thing about the so-called "Free Market" in domains were it is possible for businesses to directly or indirectly create the conditions for natural monopolies: without actual intervention from an outside strong and independent actor (i.e. a governmental power with the will to intervene) such markets sooner or later end up naturally not being free anymore.
Market actors activelly and constantly seek a dominant position so if there are conditions for a monopoly (the most dominant position there is) one will eventually succeed and if there aren't but there are for the next best thing (a cartel) a handful of them will eventually succeed.
So a monopoly created and run by the state is good, but a privately run is bad? It's more, like, a race to the bottom, which one gets worse faster. One through squeezing customers, the others through rampant inefficiencies and cronyism. The lesson should be that monopolies suck, not that a centrally planned economy makes things better.
Oh shit you're right. There's no such thing as a societal need, everything ought to be turned into for-profit endeavors that enrich private equity! Don't just defund the police, let them compete in the free market! Let's see who has the best ideas! Let's see if we can create a quadrillionaire! Because isn't the invisible hand of the market such an inherently appealing idea that we should ignore its failures? Isn't it fun to think of an economic theory as a great filter?
Oh shit you're right. There's no such thing as competition, everything ought to be turned into a centrally planned economy to enrich the system's elite!
Infrastructure is terrible to use as an example where competition exists.
We can't all have 6 different gas lines run to each building or even to each street to choose who to buy from. The distribution will always be common. So either that has to be installed and maintained by a municipality or a single company which then rents it out.
Competition is also predicated on the concept of low barriers to entry. If it's nearly impossible for small companies to enter the market place, there effectively never will be competition. We also have seen that money talks, that the power inequality of a big company vs small company means the large company can squeeze the small company out by economies of scale and being able to absorb larger losses until either the smaller company quits or sells to the larger company.
We can offset a lot of this by putting in strong regulations, pathways for small businesses to enter the market, create and enforce strong anti-monolopy laws, or take ownership of core infrastructure by municipalities.
You also seem to have the idea that anything state run is inefficient and corrupt, which has just been corporate propaganda. I trust USPS far more than FedEx, UPS, or any other parcel service. They run quickly, efficiently, and against some very harsh regulations which make them fully pre-fund retiree pensions.
We can't all have 6 different gas lines run to each building or even to each street to choose who to buy from.
Can you think of no other ways to deliver gas than running six pipes?
When everything becomes electric, we'll have plenty of utility room to spare. Locking us into a different type of monopoly won't allow room for innovation or advancement.
The next sentence was about shared infrastructure for the pipes. That multiple gas companies could use to distribute, with the caveat that they still would need to be owned by a single entity whether that's a private company or municipality. I'd argue a municipality is the correct answer here.
If we look at electric as an analogous system, the poles and wires are always owned by a single company and then the supply can be "chosen." Even though it's just routing where your cash goes, since electricity is all pooled. The downside, is no matter how much I may not want to support the company that owns the poles and wires, I have no other option and there is no way for a competitive company to build another product to give the consumer a choice.
It's why I advocate largely for the distribution infrastructure to become public owned, paid for and maintained with taxes. I don't necessarily agree with the production of the gas/electricity/water. If the distribution infrastructure if publicly owned, then so long as a new business creates a product that matches the regulated quality they only need to pay for the permits and means to attach to the distribution network. We can lower the barrier of entry to new competitors.
The minimum standards would be set based on regulatory capture in very many municipalities. I don't think it would be worse than jank monopolies, at least. I don't know that the speed (or incentives) of either is something I trust with keeping up technologically.
Moving from a monopoly to a municipality doesn't help when the standards they set are super strict.
We've tried that. What's prone to happen is the corporations spend money to the municipalities to deregulate. Let's stop giving them the chance. It hasn't worked. Let's instead go back to treating utilities as publically beneficial
Or they spend money to make them over regulate. Yeah. If we can't even control local politicians now, how do you propose we do close that bit of fuckery?
Man you really just can't stand the idea of doing something without giving your money to venture capitalists, can you? You really think it's better that random billionaires in Silicon Valley and Jackson Hole control your power supply?
What's the difference between private and government?
We want voluntary associations, yea? So we work with/in our communities. We can choose larger or smaller municipalities or companies, but we don't violate the local, voluntary bits.
Having no masters would be exactly the aim. Ultimate power should lay in the hands of the people and government should only exist to serve the will of said people. I don't fully know what that should look like but I can say for sure we've tested a lot of ideas that aren't that, and that we should try some new things because what were doing now isn't working.
I don't fully know what that should look like but I can say for sure we've tested a lot of ideas that aren't that, and that we should try some new things because what were doing now isn't working.
Meanwhile FedEx consistently says I wasn't home when they tried to deliver which is highly interesting because I work from home and never leave my neighborhood on workdays. If they tried to make a delivery I'd see the truck. They just leave the "we missed you" post it without ever ringing the bell or knocking at the door
You fundamentally misunderstand what people are calling for. The aim of making utilities public isn't the enrichment of a small few, its to spread the benefits of society to all who contribute. The core of this is that we want responsible accountability and the best way to do that is to operate with a communal mindset. One in which if we find a political officer is abusing their position of power we can remove them and restore the material wealth stolen to who it belongs to. You're so used to operating in a system where positions of power go to the already wealthy that you're assuming that's what we're still calling for. Collaborative cooperation has become such a foreign concept to you that you're completely ignoring that we're saying utilities and services should enrich no one but society as a whole
I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief.
“Bad news, detective. We got a situation.”
“What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?”
“Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.”
The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?”
“Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.”
“Easy, chief,” I said. “Any rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.”
He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.”
I put a quarter in the siren. Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. It was a normal office building, strangled on all sides by public sidewalks. I hopped over them and went inside.
“Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t.
“Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up.
“Come on,” I said. “Don’t you all understand that the protection of private property is the foundation of all personal liberty?”
It didn’t seem like they did.
“Seriously, guys. Without a strong economic motivator, I’m just going to stand here and not solve this case. Cash is fine, but I prefer being paid in gold bullion or autographed Penn Jillette posters.”
Nothing. These people were stonewalling me. It almost seemed like they didn’t care that a fortune in computer money invented to buy drugs was missing.
I figured I could wait them out. I lit several cigarettes indoors. A pregnant lady coughed, and I told her that secondhand smoke is a myth. Just then, a man in glasses made a break for it.
“Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled.
Too late. He was already out the front door. I went after him.
“Stop right there!” I yelled as I ran. He was faster than me because I always try to avoid stepping on public sidewalks. Our country needs a private-sidewalk voucher system, but, thanks to the incestuous interplay between our corrupt federal government and the public-sidewalk lobby, it will never happen.
I was losing him. “Listen, I’ll pay you to stop!” I yelled. “What would you consider an appropriate price point for stopping? I’ll offer you a thirteenth of an ounce of gold and a gently worn ‘Bob Barr ‘08’ extra-large long-sleeved men’s T-shirt!”
He turned. In his hand was a revolver that the Constitution said he had every right to own. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, put a quarter in it, and fired back. The bullet lodged in a U.S.P.S. mailbox less than a foot from his head. I shot the mailbox again, on purpose.
“All right, all right!” the man yelled, throwing down his weapon. “I give up, cop! I confess: I took the bitcoins.”
“Why’d you do it?” I asked, as I slapped a pair of Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents Handcuffs® on the guy.
“Because I was afraid.”
“Afraid?”
“Afraid of an economic future free from the pernicious meddling of central bankers,” he said. “I’m a central banker.”
I wanted to coldcock the guy. Years ago, a central banker killed my partner. Instead, I shook my head.
“Let this be a message to all your central-banker friends out on the street,” I said. “No matter how many bitcoins you steal, you’ll never take away the dream of an open society based on the principles of personal and economic freedom.”
He nodded, because he knew I was right. Then he swiped his credit card to pay me for arresting him.
Would you say rampant inefficiencies and cronyism are also present in the private side of things as well though?
I can certainly imagine that the rich owner of a company is more likely to take a service contract with his rich buddy than with the newbie on the block, and nobody will do anything about it because private.
Then in terms of inefficiencies, the only thing a private company seems to be able to do efficiently is take money off you, not deliver their service or even customer service.
At least state services have the opportunity to hold those in charge responsible, if the systems put in place work for the people. In many countries however, this is not the case.
Therefore it seems like turning companies private is just another bad option. The actual, and perhaps impossible, fix is to resolve the issues in our governing bodies such that our leaders are held accountable.
A monopoly run by the government can operate at a loss no problem. Why? Because their job isn't to make a profit first but to serve the people. Can any private business operate at a loss? And IMHO, utilities are the prime example of what should be owned by the government.
If the state is run by the workers, and in the interests of the workers without the profit motive, it is soley directed towards providing a service. A capitalist monopoly is directed towards profit alone, and can price control.
It's not just the US. I had issues with my supplier a couple of years ago where they randomly changed the supply address of my account then opened additional accounts in my name without informing me or asking for consent, and after I called them to sort their shit they added a random over 2 grand charge to my account and expected me to pay my neighbour's bill for some reason. I ended up with around 15 calls to them where every time they claimed to be confused how that could have happened and promised an immediate fix which never materialised.
When I was finally able to raise a complaint with the ombudsman the supplier didn't even bother to respond. For all that blatant fraud they got a slap on the wrist. Their only penalty was that they had to credit a tiny amount to my account (I think it was ~£100) and remove the other fraudulent charges and accounts.
The worst part is I know for a fact they're pulling that shit with people unable or unwilling to fight back. I dread to think how much of their profit is from just straight-up scamming people.
Would be nice if we could unfuck the US, also if we could take a bit of money from the military to get heat pumps and induction stoves, and just skip the gas
I really want an outdoor wok burner, because my induction stove just doesn't get hot enough. I'm used to working with a professional stove that will go up to 700° F. The induction stove won't get my wok above 500° F.
They make a standalone induction burner specifically for a wok (mine came with a wok, but the one I already had works). It's nice because you don't have to use a flat bottom one, but it still maxes out at like 550°.
I have questions. They specifically say that once available it will run on a 120w or standard outlet, or low power 220w outlet. I don't know that it would be possible to hit 700° F without a high power 220 outlet.
It charges its internal battery from whatever supply you have over the course of a day, then when you are cooking it can operate off the battery alone. So it doesn’t really matter how good your supply is because most home users won’t be cooking all day, so it will charge its battery slowly.
It has a 3kwh battery, I’m not sure how powerful the inverter is and it depends on supply but it might take an hour or two to charge from flat.
But it probably couldn’t maintain 700F for an extended period of time. I guess most people won’t need that heat for a long time.
