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From: Lucas Gonze <lgonze@panix.com>
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Cc: FoRK <fork@spamassassin.taint.org>
Subject: Re: The Great Power-Shortage Myth
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Date: Wed, 25 Sep 2002 14:20:26 -0400 (EDT)

> The only circumstances in which a business will not be ready--indeed,
> eager--to do an additional volume of business is if it is physically unable
> to do so because it lacks the necessary physical means of doing so, or
> because the costs it incurs in doing so exceed the additional sales revenue
> it will receive.

That is a fully retarded view of economics, and pretty much the same kind
of clueless oversimplication that led to the blackouts.  There are a
bazillion factors that affect game strategies, which is what the state of
California messed up and the energy producers exploited.

I'm not convinced that the only way to prevent future energy debacles like
the blackouts is to reregulate.  Ultimately we have to blame the people
who crafted the game rules in a way that invited blackouts and
exploitation.  Given that the particular set of rules crafted by the state
of California sucked, does there exist a set of rules that doesn't suck?  
If there does exist a better set of rules, then reregulation isn't
necessarily the answer.

You can't blame businesses for being profit maximizers.  Yes, the people 
involved were heartless and corrupt.  But mainly they just did their 
jobs.

The guilty parties are either the mathematicians and economists who wrote
the rules or, if the mathematicians and economists said there were no good
rules, pro-deregulation politicians who went ahead anyway.

- Lucas







