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To: pater tenebrarum who wrote (51689)	12/27/2000 8:21:13 PM
From: Don Lloyd	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 436258

hb - what i'm saying is if they had ditched regulation for a completely free market solution instead of their piecemeal approach to deregulation (which incidentally was welcomed by the utilities as they thought it a good way of maximizing revenue at the time), the problem would be SOLVED already. generation capacity would have been built. Although I'm too lazy to work out the details, I suspect that the proper market in electricity is one in which consumers can effectively sell back their marginal consumption for cash. Just judging by my own use of electricity, the last 10 or 20% of my consumption could be bid away from me for a pittance, especially compared with the cost of new generating facilities. Price controls simply destroy the resource allocation mechanism that free market price signals provide. New generation facilities are needed, but electricity has been priced too low for some time and has plenty of marginal demand that needs to be justified by the payment of a market price. Regards, Don