🚀 go-pugleaf

Tom Keener <keensurf@cts.com_but_not_this_part> wrote in message
news:3b0558ea.291284937@nntp.cts.com...
> 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.
>

Then why don't high taxes drive companies out of business,
high real estate drive companies out of business, high
wages drive companaies out of business.  On a per capita
basis CA consumes very little power, ranked 49th I've
read, primarily because it's climate is so moderate.  The
actual cost of electricity as a % of all expenditures in
CA is really quite low.

> >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.
>

Not for the power bills I get.  I own property in San Diego
County and SDG&E is my power supplier.  Our power bills
show a credit for power that costs more than $.065/kwh.
We get to make up the difference next year.

Any attempt at deregulation would allow prices to go up
and down, would allow supply to increase (build new
power plants) and decrease.

> 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

Actually its the lack of a free market that is causing
the extreme price fluctuations.  A free market means new
sellers are allowed to enter and old ones allowed to leave
a market.