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JosephTheLibertarian
09-22-2007, 06:56 PM
Should energy be privatized? I'm mostly referring to electricity here. Or is another Enron situation inevitable? What do you think?

this question is for free marketeers

kalami
09-22-2007, 07:03 PM
Isn't energy already privatized?

ItsTime
09-22-2007, 07:05 PM
yes Maine has or had I dont live there anymore a free market on it, and it seemed to work. You could choose the company you buy from.

BenIsForRon
09-22-2007, 07:18 PM
Electricity should always be provided by the private sector. Government's role is to make sure they don't have a monopoly to allow competition.

Dustancostine
09-22-2007, 07:41 PM
In most, not all of Texas it is deregulated. Where I live it is not and we actually pay cheaper for ours than even the cheapest deregs, but I would still rather have dereg energy. Right now I can't even buy green energy.

Hook
09-22-2007, 08:05 PM
The problem is when you partially deregulate. Such as California where wholesalers competed on the grid, but prices where artificially held low for the customers via regulation. It makes it so that producers barely make money, and since there is so little margin, new producers aren't enticed to make up for the huge demand. In a perfect free market on the grid, small time solar and wind people could start selling, and make a lot more robust system.

SeanEdwards
09-22-2007, 08:19 PM
Why can't different communities find their own strategies for delivering energy?

The worst of all possible worlds must be the government collusion with corporations to impose Enron style shenanigans. It was the Enron gamesters who devised California's energy deregulation laws, and then they gamed that system to the limit, all the while laughing at the consumers in California that got shafted.

JosephTheLibertarian
09-22-2007, 08:50 PM
The problem is when you partially deregulate. Such as California where wholesalers competed on the grid, but prices where artificially held low for the customers via regulation. It makes it so that producers barely make money, and since there is so little margin, new producers aren't enticed to make up for the huge demand. In a perfect free market on the grid, small time solar and wind people could start selling, and make a lot more robust system.

anti-free marketeers love to use that as an example of a failure of free market economics. Pisses me off. They take shots whenever they can, then when you look into it, it never actually WAS a free market. They like to also bash Pinochet, but he never allowed for a true free market in Chile, and the government often intervened in people's personal lives, but anti-free marketeers will use these things to bash free market economics anyway.

RP4ME
09-22-2007, 10:30 PM
Why can't different communities find their own strategies for delivering energy?

The worst of all possible worlds must be the government collusion with corporations to impose Enron style shenanigans. It was the Enron gamesters who devised California's energy deregulation laws, and then they gamed that system to the limit, all the while laughing at the consumers in California that got shafted.

I liked my not for profit coop !!!:D !