Texas Faces New Power Crisis: Prices Soar 10,000%

https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/ercot-may-enter-emergency-grid-prices-spike-cold-blast
Texans! Burn the green idiots at the stake!
Since you cannot see the warming they promised, you will at least get warm around the fire.
But seriously, in this example we see the savage grin of capitalism.
If there is an opportunity to earn extra money, then it will be done. And do not care about those in need and their difficulties. The capitalist don't give a damn about the fact that there are people who cannot afford such sums and these people can die. Capitalism is like that.
As Karl Marx wrote - "No is such a crime that the capitalist will not commit for the sake of 300% of the profit."
This is what we see confirmation always when we find ourselves in an emergency situation under capitalism.

 

72F in Dallas. Not much of a cold front. I wish we had 72 here, but its 81.

 

Yes. It's not too cold. But if at this temperature, electricity prices have risen 100 times, how much will they rise if the temperature drops below -17F?

 

72 is ideal. Just open the windows and enjoy the natural air. No need for heat, and no need for AC. I think Zerohedge is just being Zerohedge.

 

Are they lying?

 

I haven't looked into it, but they do lie a lot. I'm guessing they are trying to sensationalize a non-issue.

 

Doesn't Texas have a state utility commission to regulate against wild swings in utility prices???

 

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It was 80 degrees here in Dallas and the Yankee transplants turned on their AC

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The swings are allowed-- they occurred during the recent winter episode, for those who did have power, even for a short while, when power went out across the state.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/20/us/texas-storm-electric-bills.amp.html?0p19G=6214

"My savings is gone,” said Scott Willoughby, a 63-year-old Army veteran who lives on Social Security payments in a Dallas suburb. He said he had nearly emptied his savings account so that he would be able to pay the $16,752 electric bill charged to his credit card — 70 times what he usually pays for all of his utilities combined. “There’s nothing I can do about it, but it’s broken me.”

Mr. Willoughby is among scores of Texans who have reported skyrocketing electric bills as the price of keeping lights on and refrigerators humming shot upward. For customers whose electricity prices are not fixed and are instead tied to the fluctuating wholesale price, the spikes have been astronomical.

 

In a democracy, The People are free to say 'no thanks' to those prices - and to the capitalists who ask them. After all, there are many alternatives.

Your Marxist model means that The People will never have the freedom to say 'no thanks'. They'll be locked in to whatever price the overlords set, with no alternatives allowed.

Do you hate The People? Or is it democracy you hate?

 

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... Texas flirted with one again on Tuesday. Mild weather, warmer than predicted, led to higher loads than the system was ready to handle, as customers turned on air conditioners. With about a quarter of the state’s power plants down for maintenance to be ready for summer’s heat, “we are in a condition that’s very tight,” said Woody Rickerson, vice president for operations of the agency that dispatches power, known as Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/04/14/texas-blackouts-liability/

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When supply outstrips demand you can either raise the price or introduce rationing. The former is preferable.

 

That's a bit of an oversimplification."The people," do not directly set the rules, which limit what their options will be. For example, in the winter's failure of Texas's power grid, if your rate fluctuated with market price, your choices were between paying more than 70× the price for your electricity, or killing your main power switch & doing without electricity (& heat) entirely; hardly an enviable choice. Of course, we do have elected officials, & government agencies, which are supposed to keep a check on such things, in theory, but it often turns out that practice is an altogether different species of animal.

So, you want to apply for unemployment during the pandemic. The state isn't answering the phone, but recommends you go on their website. You have the choice to have the ability to go online, or to forego benefits, to which you are entitled. Then you go on the site to sign up, & the process requires that you are sent to a private, non-state run site. So your computer or phone screen warns you, that you are being redirected to a non-secured site. But that's the only way to sign up. So, once again, how much real choice do you have? Again, expecting those we choose to vote for, to remedy all crappy choices we have, all the things we might see as rip-off, business practices, sounds a bit easier than, in practice, it turns out to be.

Therefore, rethinking some of the most general, basic rules of our form of capitalism-- with regard to election campaign financing, for starters-- does not seem such a bad idea. Another seemingly reasonable suggestion has been to change our legal requirements of the directors & officers of any corporation. As it is now, they are legally obliged to put the financial benefit of investor's as their top priority. If things like interest in the welfare of the corporation's workforce, or in not poisoning the environment, interfere with maximizing shareholder return, then, by law, the directors must ignore those considerations

 

1) The 'rules' are more like marketing suggestions in a democracy. We're all free to disconnect from the grid and seek alternatives. If you're cold and the price of power is too high, stack your fireplace with wood and give the middle finger to the Man. Don't have a fireplace? Why not? Why did you choose to support the Man and his Capitalism by making yourself so dependent on both? You're free to choose, and you chose the capitalist system. You must have had a reason for doing so, else you would have chosen differently.

2) You have endless choices, in a chips-are-down situation. Team up with your kith and kin and cohabit to save huge amounts of money. Stop spending money and live like a frugal pauper. Start a small future friendly business. Endless choices, actually.

3) Rethinking capitalism means thinking something antithetical to democracy. That's anti People.

 

I would say so. There has been nothing in the news about this. Hate to destroy your illusions.

 

63F here in Tyler...

 

Tyler.....I spent 5 weeks there few years back. They must like Mexican food there, because it seemed there was a Mexican restaurant in every street corner.

 

To your first two points, I would reply, that supporting changes to our system, directed towards Capitalism with a Conscience (remember George H. W Bush's, "kinder, gentler nation?") IS, ALSO, one of my endless choices. You must further explicate the meaning of your statement, "The 'rules' are more like marketing suggestions in a democracy," and why would that would make any tweaking of these, "rule-suggestions," automatically injurious to, & not actually fortifying of, our system. The ridiculous implication, as it now reads, is that our system of the moment, is PERFECT.

Your third argument is nonsensical: any change to our own, particular brand of Capitalism-- even to make it, in some ways, resemble other capitalist models used elsewhere in the world-- is,"antithetical to democracy?" First of all, it isn't even antithetical to Capitalism. Secondly, I apparently need to inform you that Capitalism is not a pre-requisite of democracy, & especially not our very specific brand of Capitalism, in every aspect. As a point of fact, the, "rules," of American Capitalism HAVE CHANGED, many times, if your level of knowledge on this subject is so poor as to not realize this. Monopolies, for example, were never prohibited, until John D. Rockefeller (who I admire) created the first monopolies, & showed us their negative impact on our society, as a whole. Then there were regulations implemented, through our democratic system, that prohibited them.

While I completely support your disconnecting from & shunning our society, if that is what you choose, I do not accept that as my only other option, besides accepting everything in our system as is, & not raising a peep of complaint.

To finish w/ your irrational third point: if it wasn't abundantly obvious to you, the claim that making any changes to the way our system of Capitalism is applied, is, "anti People," does not hang on its own, without supporting argument, simply on the weight of your asserting it. I guess that's why you indefensibly threw democracy into the mix. But in Capitalist nations around the world, many of them democratic, you will find millions of people who will strongly disagree with the notion that every past change in their system (or anything different from our system) has been anti-human, or even anti-democratic.

 

1) No system can ever be perfect .. but the closest we're going to get is when we have the freedom to exploit the system as we see fit, to create our own perfection. That requires a Capitalist Democracy. And Capitalism cannot have a conscience, only The People can. We exercise that conscience as we see fit. If we're in a position of influence and power, we can do the conscience thing in an impactful way (assuming that's what we want to do). Ultimately, as long as we retain our democracies, we're free to live as consciously as we want.

2) If you reject Capitalist Democracy (ie the model for certain much admired Northern European nations), what do you intend to replace it with which provides the same freedoms, and the same reward for effort? Keeping in mind that there is no 'tempered' capitalism - if you don't give that bull free rein, it won't work for The People. If we want opportunities and the freedom to pursue them - the ultimate egalitarianism - we need a very robust capitalism - almost unrestrained, in fact.

3) My suggestions have little to do with 'shunning' society. You could live in a house full of people in the middle of a city, and be independent. All it takes is the will to do it ... and a capitalist democracy within which such a thing is both an option, and possible.

4) I'm suggesting that changes to the capitalist democracy we have TODAY, would adversely affect The People - because changes will limit opportunity and freedoms. If we have any genuine belief in the idea of equality and justice, then opportunity + freedom is the only way to realise that. It means people can and will seek their own prefered level (of perfection, or whatever you want to call it), rather than a level imposed upon them via weakened capitalism and/or loss of freedoms to the necessary contraints of state socialism.

 

The only people who should be affected are those idiots who remain on the plans like with the cold front where they want the absolutely cheapest price they can get and are willing to roll the dice on having to pay insanely high prices as result.

 

This is demonstrably false, as I showed in my original reply to you, with the example of the LAW, regarding the responsibilities of corporate officers. They are specifically charged with maximizing share-holder value as their primary concern. If it's cheaper for the company dump pollutants in the environment rather than some other, more environmentally-friendly process, they can't legally choose to have a conscience, w/o breaking their lawful commitment & risking both the loss of their position, and a civil law suit, if not more. But if we, as a society, decide that a corporation's officers/directors should have the OPTION to weigh the well-being of their workers as heavily as their bottom-line profitability, there is no good reason (certainly none that you have provided) why we shouldn't be able to change that rule. Note that I am the one, who is suggesting giving people more CHOICE, not limiting that choice; it is YOU who is restricting the range, for people in power, to make choices of conscience, , by arguing against allowing corporate officers to legally consider workers, or anything else on par with share-value. This shows how nakedly false and baseless your arguments are; apparently they can only be made in the theoretical, avoiding all real-life examples of the principles, in actual practice.

 

You're literally talking about specific minutia of corporate executive employment contracts. How about we come back to the reality that any of us, if we see fit to do so, can create our own businesses and run them according to our personal conscience. That's why capitalist democracy is so important - because without it we would not have that option.

If you simply want to mandate state controls, you're going to have to fight a democracy and capitalism loving citizenry. They might not make the connections at first glance, but once they realise that state control means loss of opportunity and loss of freedoms, they'll tear you a new one.

 

Where the hell did you get the idea that I, "reject Capitalist Democracy?" In fact, because it has been so translucently clear that the types of changes I advocate are IN LINE with elements existing in the democratic, Capitalist systems of those European nations, you mention, you give me no option but to demand (for the first time) a retraction, from you, for what is no mistake on your part, but a BALD-FACED LIE!

The only circumstance which would alter my position would be
your laying out the case that you believe no country in the world, certainly none in Europe, possesses a Capitalist democracy, except the United States. Though this would certainly be a crackpot opinion which most people could not be expected to hold, and so it would not alter the reality that, to other readers, you still would be proffering a false assertion about me, & a slander, as all would take it (unless they were already familiar with your heterodox theories), nonetheless, if that is truly the view you espouse, and make it clear that this was the perspective, from which, you lodged your defamatory charge, I will drop my call for further correction or apology, from you.

 

Probably - it is zerohedge

 

I've not accused you of hating democracy or capitalism once.

I'm saying that the kinds of adjustments (to capitalism) you're talking about can be achieved by anyone with sufficient interest in doing so. These are, after all, just corporate employment contracts. If you're the boss, you get to decide what you will allow your executives to do. You're arguing for something you can already do - any time you like.

As for capitalist democracies, the First World is almost exclusively that. Europe, the UK, Canada, America, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, increasingly China, Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, etc etc. No idea why you think that I think it's only America. I'm not even American, for starters. I live in one of those 'social democracies' that certain naive Americans seem to think obviate things like poverty and social problems.