Comment by cess11
2 days ago
Profit motive commonly has obscene consequences, like destroying food instead of using it to feed the hungry.
2 days ago
Profit motive commonly has obscene consequences, like destroying food instead of using it to feed the hungry.
This tends to more to do with food supply security and costs of distribution than anything else (as well as political opposition to socialising food supply).
i.e. if we want to avoid food shortages, we need to overproduce the raw goods and therefore waste some. Transporting and transforming those raw goods into food that someone can eat still costs money, it's not just so farmers can get paid. We probably should still actually make sure no-one goes hungry, but that does actually involve some cost and effort on the part of the government, and the challenge there is mainly political elements who don't like the idea of someone getting something for free.
Yep, that's why we pay farmers to keep half their fields empty, because in case we need those fields (eg. war somewhere), we still have farmers with all the machines and infrastructure needed to produce food, that can expand onto the now-empty fields.
While true that it happens in certain cases, the onus of showing that it would be the case in this specific case is still on you.
I basically just did, that's how markets of this kind work. If it is more profitable to warm the wind along a mountain side than some cold person, then that person will stay cold.
Poverty and misery in the world are mainly caused by this kind of mechanism.
When the grid has to much money for 10 seconds, the cost of finding an having a productive asset that is ready to accept such a short burst of energy means that paying people to throw it away can easily be cheaper, leaving you with net positive money that can be used towards keeping people warm. Real systems involve tradeoffs, and so there will always be some short enough time frame where throwing away energy is better for society and human welfare than building infrastructure to use it. Everyone already using the energy gets it for free when prices are negative.
If it is profitable to produce heat, it means prices are negative. If prices are negative, then that is true also for cold people.
On the other hand if prices are high, and someone has sells electricity that was bought when prices were close to zero, then the cold people will get warm for cheaper than if there wasn't a battery.
Sorry, but you really make no sense.
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