washingtonpost.com
I've now read the Washington Post plea for Stalinist control of the electricity industry. It confirmed my ideas about the situation.
It's a problem of cargo-cult ignorance. Voters who also happen to be consumers of electricity are ignorant cargo-cultists. The politicians in their pay have to do what they want on important issues or they will be out of a job. So the problem becomes how to get electricity at a cheap price for the voters and especially to avoid high prices when there are shortages without running out of supplies. They have set themselves an impossible task unless they go back to slavery and force people to produce what they want.
Unfortunately for them, slavery went out of fashion, so the only option will be nationalisation of the supply industry and construction from taxes of so much capacity so that although it will be mismanaged, there will be enough for supply to be maintained even at times of peak demand. They have the same problem as Stalin with that idea.
They will have to build a Berlin Wall around California to stop businesses and people escaping from the absurdly high taxes which will be necessary to fund the madness.
Unfortunately for them, while people can be kept prisoner in some circumstances, the political will isn't there. Even if they could keep the people there, cyberspace is a slippery customer and will disappear over the horizon. Cyberspace can't be taken hostage by a few flakey Californians. The remaining imprisoned economic entities will perform like Russians, which wasn't very well. You can lead a Flakey Californian to a Siberian salt mine, but you can't make them eat and their production will be pathetic.
So, California will end up like India; impoverished, with lots of people and no industry other than state-owned losers which cause blackouts and high prices.
Here is where they go wrong, <"Consumers can't stand the kind of volatility that a completely free market provides for a commodity as vital as electricity," said S. David Freeman, chief energy adviser to California Gov. Gray Davis. "These prices got to the point where they threatened to trigger a recession. They also violate any sense of fairness. That's why [the state and federal governments] have to step in. The idea of a completely free market is not compatible with the needs of society." > The underlying whine, "It's not fair," is the essential failure in their thinking. The outcome of the idea that it's not fair is ignorant cargo-cult voting. How about those essential industries, food, fuel, medical supplies ... it's not fair that petrol doubles in price and what is more vital than food? It's not fair that anti-cancer treatments are so expensive. Poor people can't afford them.
The government created the problems. The high prices wouldn't trigger a recession. They would avoid a recession. In blackouts, economic decisions are voided and production goes down as well as wasteful uses of electricity. That's how they'd get a recession. By having high prices, the wasters would turn off their usage and productive enterprises which need the electricity would go on buying.
It's such a joke. Just as in the USSR, people will create increasingly bureaucratic, committee bound, centrally-planned, rationed and controlled layers and layers of bureaucracy to oversee, plan, price, enforce and so on what could be a simple business. Just as in the USSR, they will fail to compete with outside, free market, free people who will pay what the market will bear and enjoy uninterrupted, low average price, electricity supplies.
J6P is clueless and will continue to vote for such madness it seems.
Jay is right, I should assume the worst. As J6P votes to fix the world's economy and financial system, they will do even worse because if they can't understand electricity supply, they sure won't know a trade deficit if they trip over one.
Now, which direction are the hills? I think I'll head off that way.
Mqurice |
