Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch Message Board

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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch

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To: Raymond Duray who wrote (25750)	8/19/2003 8:50:32 AM
From: TigerPaw	Read Replies (1) of 89467

<font color=brown>In the search for the source of Thursday's blackout, the underlying cause has been all but ignored: deregulation. In principle, deregulation of the power industry was supposed to use the discipline of free markets to generate just the right amount of electricity at the right price. But electric power, it turns out, is not like ordinary commodities. Electricity can't be stored in large quantities, and the system needs a lot of spare generating and transmission capacity for periods of peak demand like hot days in August. The power system also requires a great deal of planning and coordination, and it needs incentives for somebody to maintain and upgrade transmission lines. Deregulation has failed on all these grounds. Yet it has few critics. Evidently, even calamities like the Enron scandal and now the most serious blackout in American history are not enough to shake faith in the theory.</font> nytimes.com The electric grid (as contrasted to the pieces from which it is made) is a good example of a commons. When the Bush administration and it's friends try to scam the commons instead of treating it as an inherintly common interest of the public, the result will always be tragedy. <font color=brown> When the blackout hit on Thursday, many of us first thought of terrorists. What hit us may be equally dangerous. We are hostage to a delusional view of economics that allowed much of the Northeast to go dark without an enemy lifting a finger.</font> constitution.org TP

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