Comment by mcdonje

I get how the grid works. You don't get the market failure. In a normal market, consumers aren't service providers unless they happen to also sell something separate from what they're buying. They're using a service. Sellers ostensibly take a risk that demand won't be sufficient.

With the grid, that's unacceptable. So there's an absurd solution of paying customers to influence their buying behavior, and even calling them 'service providers'. In a normal market, you charge more or less to steer consumer behavior, like what they do for human customers.

In this 'market', the government is providing much of the capital and the businesses are not taking on all of the risk. And some 'customers' are necessary to make the product work.

This is not an appropriate scenario for a free market. It's actually impossible for it to function as a free market.