Disclaimer: Not being in America and all I don't claim to know the California
problem very well.
Seth,
What you are writing about isn't a deregulation creating still more benefits for the
wealthy at the expense of the poor. If electricity was really deregulated, the prices
that consumers and businesses must pay could be hiked in order to pay the
electricity producers, and that would be at the expense of the poor. A bailout would
rather be at the expense of the folks who pay lots of taxes while owning no eletricity
producer's equity.
Also, you seem to be ignoring the problem of overconsumption. At least your article
denies it. Why did the problem only arise this winter? Imagine PG&E and Edison
were nationalized... Where would the cheap electricity come from? Natural gas
(and other commodity) prices go higher not to satisfy some evil capitalist but
because there is too much demand. Some people will have to live on without all the
electricity they want. Currently most of these people do not live in the USA. Do you
support that or do you think that Californians should curb their energy consumption?
And how can this consumption be curbed if not through big price hikes? (I am not
denying that there has been price manipulations nor that there is an insufficient
amount of eletricity producing plants in California relative to its electricity demand
but none of those problems will be solved by nationalization of PG&E and Edison.)
Mark,
A key answer to OPEC lacks in your post: Making sure that most oil exporter's
profits come back to the core countries through finance or through military
expenses. How many barils must the Sahoudis sell to buy a US fighter airplaine?
You say a combination of measures can save California from total crash. But
California can currently afford as much electricity as it wants as long as it is ready
to
pay the price. As to measures, I say a single measure can save it from all energy
problems for the time beign: electricity price hikes for consumers and businesses.
Those hikes can be moderated with discounts for small consumers in order not to
hurt the poor. Americans are such a wasterful bunch that it won't be hard for them to
consume significantly less electricity.
Nestor,
The root of the Californian problem is not neoliberalism and plunder of the working
classes but on the contrary measures to protect them from the higher prices that
they should pay for electricity. That said, the situation would certainly be better if
the
infrastructure wasn't private but socially managed as it should be (even economists
recognize that).
As to your suggested reading for First World folks, care to be more precise?
Where do I start?
Julien
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