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Comment by Avicebron

4 days ago

I wonder if anyone in the emergency operations center has offered up the idea that there should be more than one entity providing power...

5 comments

Avicebron

Reply
inferiorhuman  3 days ago

Dunno, I think it's quite reasonable to class electricity as a natural monopoly. What's less reasonable is regulatory capture. Landline telephones were insanely reliable in their heyday because they were required to be so. PG&E is reckless because they're allowed to be reckless.

Edit: For non-Americans, landline telephones were highly regulated up until '82 with AT&T having a government sanctioned monopoly.

  • Avicebron  3 days ago

    Sure, and I would be lying if the libertarian bacon-wrapping of what I said was more than an litmus test and karma play, but the concept of good governance on a company like PG&E is so far out of the realm of possibility since citizen's united (and the public warping of perspective to agree with it) I don't see a very reasonable path forward to getting these (lovely, sweet, pure-hearted, well-meaning, community-oriented, positive, hard-working) people under control.

    EDIT: *language, think of the children.

bloppe  3 days ago

Rather than get another utility involved, I'd rather see far more incentives for installing home storage and ideally solar as well, especially for rental properties. Nothing's more resilient than a distributed grid.