🚀 go-pugleaf

On Thu, 17 May 2001 17:45:36 -0700, "xenman"
<xenman@sprynet.nospaam.com> wrote:

>1.  High prices are NOT the problem, 

They are when they drive companies out of business.

>2.  The CA electrical power industry was NEVER deregulated.

Semantics. Deregulated doesn't mean without regulations. It means with
less regulations. No one has ever suggested that it should be
permissible to build a nuclear plant in the middle of an estuary and
dump the waste on the beach. Nor that the money for the plant could be
gained through fraud. It's a question of what regulations and how
many.

SDG&E _was_ deregulated according to plan and they did pass on their
costs to their customers. 

What I find curious is a market based on the _highest_ price for a
commodity. Who are the bozos bidding these prices? And what's to
prevent them from bidding 100x what the prices are today? The
knowledge that the turnip is already bled dry and they won't get their
money? Do you really want to let an industry bankrupt an entire state?
I can deal with rolling blackouts a lot easier than the draining of
our economy.

As far as I can tell, this crisis is independant of the "deregulation"
hassle. The power shortage would have hit anyway, and the CA power
companies would have been bid into bankruptcy. The problem is a market
that allows such radical fluctuations in the price. Free market
capitalism at its best.

Tom Keener
keensurf_at_cts_dot_com