On Mon, Oct 30, 2017 at 4:50 PM, Dale <rdalek1...@gmail.com> wrote: > > have we profited on today'. However, when a company is public, stocks > and such, then it is about what have we made today with no one caring > about years from now. After all, the people owning the stocks may not > even own them next week. >
Nor should they be concerned with the long-term. This should be the role of the regulator. If the regulator wants spare capacity, then they should take bids for companies to have spare capacity available and they get paid to just sit on their excess capacity. If the regulator wants more redundancy in the transmission network then they should set specifications for what is desired and take bids from those able to build it out. If the regulator wants everything to be replaced within a certified lifetime based on testing then they should specify this, and take bids from those willing to maintain the grid to this standard. The problem is that the general public does not see the value in infrastructure, so they don't think about it when they're voting. Instead they vote based on whatever fringe issues the politicians want them to focus on instead. If a company is going to get paid the same whether they build for extra reliability or not, they're going to opt not to. Not only does this give them more profits, but it makes their bids more competitive vs some other company that would just undercut them for "over-providing." Lax regulation just punishes conscientious market participants. -- Rich
