Texas in Crisis

[Jarhyn]

There was a follow-up Letter from Griddy about the storm and prices sent on the 15th that indicated other power companies weren't going to accept new customers right away, so some folks were going to be paying jacked up rates for a while.

Duh! A company that doesn't pass on market rates to customers at present is going to be bleeding heavily. Of course they won't take on any new clients now.

Fundamentally, this comes down to a form of insurance. A company like Griddy is not providing any insurance against market rate shock, some other companies do. As always with insurance you pay not only the average cost of claims but something of a premium to get someone else to take the risk. (Normally there are also overhead costs to insurance but in this situation the business relationship and billing already exists, the additional overhead is tiny.)

This is not a case of the company being unfair, it is a case of consumers not realizing the risk they were assuming. Of course, being Texas, I'm sure they weren't required to point out how badly things could go.

Consider another common example of who assumes the risk: Fixed-rate mortgages vs adjustable-rate mortgages. Fixed-rate mortgages are a form of insurance against interest rate increases, ARMs have much less insurance (but since they normally have a maximum rate there is still some insurance involved.)

In the big picture insurance is virtually always a bad deal--we only buy it because we might be the unlucky one. You normally should only buy insurance if you can't afford to be the unlucky one.

(Note, however, that there are some edge cases. I used to buy dental insurance from my employer because I could pay for it with pre-tax dollars but I would have to pay the dentist with post-tax dollars. The insurance company's cut was less than the tax bill would have been. There is also the issue that insurance companies are often in a position to negotiate a better deal--but note that this doesn't actually require insurance to exist. Before the ACA I was wishing someone would come up with health "insurance" with an infinite deductible--there definitely would be a value to the negotiation and crap filtering the health insurance companies provide even if they weren't willing to actually insure you.)

Not every municipality or customer may choose who they pay for electricity. Some people only have one option. Sometimes that option is the usurous one.

I would hazard that for some in this situation, the choice was "accept usury or have no heat/light."

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

In the big picture insurance is virtually always a bad deal--we only buy it because we might be the unlucky one. You normally should only buy insurance if you can't afford to be the unlucky one.

Insurance is a waste of money... until you need it. And when you need it, you can't afford to not have it.

 

[ZiprHead]

In the big picture insurance is virtually always a bad deal--we only buy it because we might be the unlucky one. You normally should only buy insurance if you can't afford to be the unlucky one.

Insurance is a waste of money... until you need it. And when you need it, you can't afford to not have it.

It can be expensive to be poor.

 

[Jarhyn]

In the big picture insurance is virtually always a bad deal--we only buy it because we might be the unlucky one. You normally should only buy insurance if you can't afford to be the unlucky one.

Insurance is a waste of money... until you need it. And when you need it, you can't afford to not have it.

It can be expensive to be poor.

It IS expensive to be poor. There's a certain dividing line, a financial escape velocity. If you get past a certain point, you can go anywhere you want, financially speaking. You just have to beat the gravity well of poverty first.

Ideally, we would accept a world wherein we all have a responsibility to work on bringing each other, at a bare minimum, to the edge of the gravity well, and then judge people on their decision to stay there at the threshold, or go out and do things.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

In the big picture insurance is virtually always a bad deal--we only buy it because we might be the unlucky one. You normally should only buy insurance if you can't afford to be the unlucky one.

Insurance is a waste of money... until you need it. And when you need it, you can't afford to not have it.

You failed to understand my point--insurance often is not worth it--think about extended warranties you're offered when you buy an awful lot of products. That's insurance with a low payout ratio, why do you think they push them so hard?

You insure against the risks that are too big for you to foot the bill, not against all risks.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

It can be expensive to be poor.

It IS expensive to be poor. There's a certain dividing line, a financial escape velocity. If you get past a certain point, you can go anywhere you want, financially speaking. You just have to beat the gravity well of poverty first.

Ideally, we would accept a world wherein we all have a responsibility to work on bringing each other, at a bare minimum, to the edge of the gravity well, and then judge people on their decision to stay there at the threshold, or go out and do things.

An awful lot of the people in there jumped in themselves by having children they weren't financially prepared for.

 

[Treedbear]

It can be expensive to be poor.

It IS expensive to be poor. There's a certain dividing line, a financial escape velocity. If you get past a certain point, you can go anywhere you want, financially speaking. You just have to beat the gravity well of poverty first.

Ideally, we would accept a world wherein we all have a responsibility to work on bringing each other, at a bare minimum, to the edge of the gravity well, and then judge people on their decision to stay there at the threshold, or go out and do things.

An awful lot of the people in there jumped in themselves by having children they weren't financially prepared for.

People find meaning and purpose in the darnedest places. Some find it in financial success and tend to have fewer kids. When that's not a viable option there's just family. Women can always have kids. When men can't make enough to benefit the family they leave. I believe anyone in a similar situation would act in the same way. There needs to be a minimum wage increase that provides enough for every family to have some savings. That's the heart of what it takes to function as a capitalist society. If that's too big a burden for businesses then the government needs to step in to make up the difference. It's an endemic problem and that's the only way to fix it.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

It can be expensive to be poor.

It IS expensive to be poor. There's a certain dividing line, a financial escape velocity. If you get past a certain point, you can go anywhere you want, financially speaking. You just have to beat the gravity well of poverty first.

Ideally, we would accept a world wherein we all have a responsibility to work on bringing each other, at a bare minimum, to the edge of the gravity well, and then judge people on their decision to stay there at the threshold, or go out and do things.

An awful lot of the people in there jumped in themselves by having children they weren't financially prepared for.

Many of my parents' generation had lots of kids so they would be cared for in old age, or at least that's what many say. My father certainly believed that.

 

[Jarhyn]

It can be expensive to be poor.

It IS expensive to be poor. There's a certain dividing line, a financial escape velocity. If you get past a certain point, you can go anywhere you want, financially speaking. You just have to beat the gravity well of poverty first.

Ideally, we would accept a world wherein we all have a responsibility to work on bringing each other, at a bare minimum, to the edge of the gravity well, and then judge people on their decision to stay there at the threshold, or go out and do things.

An awful lot of the people in there jumped in themselves by having children they weren't financially prepared for.

A lot of people were dragged there by the people you WOULD be describing if not for the fact that they were already inside the gravity well anyway.

A lot of people are in the gravity well because this might describe their parents.

It doesn't matter what put someone there. The problem is the fact that once they are inside, they can never leave, and neither can their children.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

In the big picture insurance is virtually always a bad deal--we only buy it because we might be the unlucky one. You normally should only buy insurance if you can't afford to be the unlucky one.

Insurance is a waste of money... until you need it. And when you need it, you can't afford to not have it.

You failed to understand my point--insurance often is not worth it--think about extended warranties you're offered when you buy an awful lot of products. That's insurance with a low payout ratio, why do you think they push them so hard?

You insure against the risks that are too big for you to foot the bill, not against all risks.

And the topic was at one point about the energy crisis in Texas where not enough importance was put on keeping the power grid from near collapse.

That level of failure is unacceptable.

 

[bilby]

An awful lot of the people in there jumped in themselves by having children they weren't financially prepared for.

A lot of people were dragged there by the people you WOULD be describing if not for the fact that they were already inside the gravity well anyway.

A lot of people are in the gravity well because this might describe their parents.

It doesn't matter what put someone there. The problem is the fact that once they are inside, they can never leave, and neither can their children.

Yeah, assigning blame is utterly unproductive. If it makes people like Loren feel better, then let's accept ad argumentum that people having children that they weren't financially prepared for is the major cause of poverty. Now, WTF do we do to fix that poverty? Absent a time machine or a program of genocide, we can't eliminate the children they (perhaps unwisely) had.

So how do we fix this issue, for which we have all now had our fill of smug blame assigning?

 

[Jarhyn]

An awful lot of the people in there jumped in themselves by having children they weren't financially prepared for.

A lot of people were dragged there by the people you WOULD be describing if not for the fact that they were already inside the gravity well anyway.

A lot of people are in the gravity well because this might describe their parents.

It doesn't matter what put someone there. The problem is the fact that once they are inside, they can never leave, and neither can their children.

Yeah, assigning blame is utterly unproductive. If it makes people like Loren feel better, then let's accept ad argumentum that people having children that they weren't financially prepared for is the major cause of poverty. Now, WTF do we do to fix that poverty? Absent a time machine or a program of genocide, we can't eliminate the children they (perhaps unwisely) had.

So how do we fix this issue, for which we have all now had our fill of smug blame assigning?

By doing all necessary spending to provide a high quality public education for as long as they can absorb it.

 

[bilby]

Yeah, assigning blame is utterly unproductive. If it makes people like Loren feel better, then let's accept ad argumentum that people having children that they weren't financially prepared for is the major cause of poverty. Now, WTF do we do to fix that poverty? Absent a time machine or a program of genocide, we can't eliminate the children they (perhaps unwisely) had.

So how do we fix this issue, for which we have all now had our fill of smug blame assigning?

By doing all necessary spending to provide a high quality public education for as long as they can absorb it.

That would be a start.

 

[jab]

Good, that is true except for the distant future.



Not good. The Texan administration is not bent on making nuclear weapons (the US already makes them), and certainly not on killing civilians with them (as Islamic terrorists would). Moreover, Texas does not have a bad track record of nuclear safety.

In addition to that, you have to consider that if it's not nuclear energy, it will be some other kind of energy - which data shows is more polluting and more dangerous.

And, I'm sure, some folks might disagree with the assessment. In either case, the specifics of the energy mix we use in the future is not the concern of this thread - it's the particular incompetence of Texas, their government, and the people who have voting power to elect that government. So are you trying to address my point, or are you trying to straw man me?

You're the one not addressing some of the points I've been making. Two of them are:

1. Texas does not have a bad track record of nuclear safety.
2. Nuclear energy is better than the alternatives, in terms of safety and environmental impact. There is no particular reason to think that that will change in Texas. One can tell that just by looking at the record in Texas.

The record in Texas is that their free market approach was successfully and safely generating wind energy & gas energy, until suddenly it bigly wasn't.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

An awful lot of the people in there jumped in themselves by having children they weren't financially prepared for.

People find meaning and purpose in the darnedest places. Some find it in financial success and tend to have fewer kids. When that's not a viable option there's just family. Women can always have kids. When men can't make enough to benefit the family they leave. I believe anyone in a similar situation would act in the same way. There needs to be a minimum wage increase that provides enough for every family to have some savings. That's the heart of what it takes to function as a capitalist society. If that's too big a burden for businesses then the government needs to step in to make up the difference. It's an endemic problem and that's the only way to fix it.

Set it that high and you'll find a lot of people have no hope whatsoever of getting a job.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

An awful lot of the people in there jumped in themselves by having children they weren't financially prepared for.

A lot of people were dragged there by the people you WOULD be describing if not for the fact that they were already inside the gravity well anyway.

A lot of people are in the gravity well because this might describe their parents.

It doesn't matter what put someone there. The problem is the fact that once they are inside, they can never leave, and neither can their children.

Yeah, assigning blame is utterly unproductive. If it makes people like Loren feel better, then let's accept ad argumentum that people having children that they weren't financially prepared for is the major cause of poverty. Now, WTF do we do to fix that poverty? Absent a time machine or a program of genocide, we can't eliminate the children they (perhaps unwisely) had.

So how do we fix this issue, for which we have all now had our fill of smug blame assigning?

It's already been demonstrated that free long term contraception takes a big bite out of new people being sucked in. Since it's a prescribed thing there's no overuse problem from making it free. Do so and then start looking for more ways to fix things.

 

[TomC]

The record in Texas is that their free market approach was successfully and safely generating wind energy & gas energy, until suddenly it bigly wasn't.

This is rather why I'm so leery of nuclear power.

As long as everything is good, it's clean.
Except for the waste disposal issues.

But then there's human nature. From all out war to creeping complacency, nuclear power plants have the capacity to produce huge human disasters.

Imagine a war, just a conventional modern war, with nuclear plants as prime targets. Or a nuclear power plant in a third world country, like in Africa or South America, subject to the vicissitudes of political turmoil.

Or one in The Republic of Texas, newly freed from the burden of U.S. citizenship and the onerous regulations that entails. As long as the rich connected folks can jet off to Mexico, why would the Texan elite care about the disastrous circumstances the little people have to live with?

Why not just take the campaign donations, believe what you're told, and assume that somebody else will deal with the problem?
If there ever is one?
Tom

 

[Swammerdami]

Duh! A company that doesn't pass on market rates to customers at present is going to be bleeding heavily.

Not every municipality or customer may choose who they pay for electricity. Some people only have one option. Sometimes that option is the usurous one.

I would hazard that for some in this situation, the choice was "accept usury or have no heat/light."

Tough. The customer either explicitly clicked an 'I Agree' box, or implicitly agreed to the Corporation's stipulations. What would you have Commissar Biden do? Squeeze the corporation and its billionaire stockholders out of their Holy Profit? Why don't you just go back to North Korea, Yemen, Denmark or some other place that will uphold your communist ideals?

Anyway, I read that Governor Abbott intends to propose New Laws, forbidding any recurrence of this calamity! AOC and Hillary are selling girl-scout cookies, while Republican Abbott steps up to the plate and hits a home run! With innovative bold leadership like that, the whines and whinges of Antifa, Green New Deal, NAACP and other America-haters will soon be forgotten.

 

[bilby]

The record in Texas is that their free market approach was successfully and safely generating wind energy & gas energy, until suddenly it bigly wasn't.

This is rather why I'm so leery of nuclear power.

As long as everything is good, it's clean.
Except for the waste disposal issues.

The only waste disposal issues are political - anti nuclear protestors don't want a solution, because it would take away their favourite talking point. But the fact is, we already solved all the problems, and have a variety of excellent options to pick from.

Every way of generating electricity has a waste problem. Only nuclear fission has solved that problem.

What we have been doing for sixty years has never hurt anyone in the slightest way; So exactly what is the "problem"?

But then there's human nature. From all out war to creeping complacency, nuclear power plants have the capacity to produce huge human disasters.

Nah. Nuclear power has the capacity to produce run of the mill "disasters", of the kind that happen regularly in other industries.

The worst possible result from a nuclear plant incident would be another Chernobyl. It's basically physically impossible for a power plant to fail worse than that.

Imagine a war, just a conventional modern war, with nuclear plants as prime targets. Or a nuclear power plant in a third world country, like in Africa or South America, subject to the vicissitudes of political turmoil.

Or one in The Republic of Texas, newly freed from the burden of U.S. citizenship and the onerous regulations that entails. As long as the rich connected folks can jet off to Mexico, why would the Texan elite care about the disastrous circumstances the little people have to live with?

A nuclear power plant is basically bombproof by design. They're shit targets in war; Hard to damage, and not particularly harmful to your enemy if you do manage to hurt them.

It's much easier and more effective to go after switch yards and transformers if you want to damage an enemy power grid.

Why not just take the campaign donations, believe what you're told, and assume that somebody else will deal with the problem?
If there ever is one?
Tom

Or you could stop listening to anti nuclear propaganda, and find out for yourself how absurd these hypothetical disaster scenarios really are.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

Good, that is true except for the distant future.



Not good. The Texan administration is not bent on making nuclear weapons (the US already makes them), and certainly not on killing civilians with them (as Islamic terrorists would). Moreover, Texas does not have a bad track record of nuclear safety.

In addition to that, you have to consider that if it's not nuclear energy, it will be some other kind of energy - which data shows is more polluting and more dangerous.

And, I'm sure, some folks might disagree with the assessment. In either case, the specifics of the energy mix we use in the future is not the concern of this thread - it's the particular incompetence of Texas, their government, and the people who have voting power to elect that government. So are you trying to address my point, or are you trying to straw man me?

You're the one not addressing some of the points I've been making. Two of them are:

1. Texas does not have a bad track record of nuclear safety.
2. Nuclear energy is better than the alternatives, in terms of safety and environmental impact. There is no particular reason to think that that will change in Texas. One can tell that just by looking at the record in Texas.

The record in Texas is that their free market approach was successfully and safely generating wind energy & gas energy, until suddenly it bigly wasn't.

First, I doubt that that was the record, but even if it was, that does not suggest that it would be a good idea ignore the track record on nuclear safety, as that is to ignore a significant piece of evidence.

Second. as pointed out repeatedly, nuclear energy is overall safer than anything else. So, in order to rationally oppose nuclear in Texas because of safety concerns, one would need good reasons to think that in Texas, nuclear is probably more dangerous than other forms of energy. And there seems to be no good reason to think that.

Third, in the current energy crisis, one reactor was shut down by an automated safety procedure, and that was it. That, by the way, is because nuclear in Texas is strictly regulated, rather than following a free market approach. That happens in all of the US, by the way. In the case of Texas, it's an Agreement State, but the US NRC retains juristidiction.

In other words, if you oppose nuclear in Texas, in effect you oppose an energy industry that is under federal regulations and oversight. Alternatives perhaps would not be.

All that said, arguably nuclear is overly regulated, for the reasons bilby has been explaining in several threads, but if you want regulations instead of (allegedly) free market, then opposing nuclear will get just the opposite of what you want.