I agree with you Chris on the public good concept. Just pointing out what those who adhere to the religion of competition are saying.
arthur -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, August 26, 2003 2:36 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [Futurework] Power-ful thoughts and big distractions CR: > > Empirically, the outcome of electricity deregulation is quite clear > > (i.e. a matter of fact(*), not of belief) -- private households must pay > > *more* and the grid reliability decreases. AC: > But if the households paid more to provide more redundancy to the grid, > reliability is likely to increase. Trouble is that the money that households pay more is going into the shareholders' and CEOs' pockets, instead of into grid redundancy. Only regulation can ensure investment in the grid. > If you believe that competition is a > "good thing" you might be persuaded to pay slightly more for the competitive > outcome knowing that this is the outcome that brings the best chance for > process and product innovation in the future (or so the myth goes, and so > reality has actually shown). Trouble is that this theory doesn't work in the _electricity_ "market", because the grid is a shared resource of all providers. Under laissez-faire, no single provider has an incentive to invest in the grid -- on the contrary, doing so would be a competitive disadvantage. And so reality has actually shown in the NAm grid / blackouts... > Consumers also benefit to the extent that innovations take place. This has > been the case in telephony and airlines (lots of problems but lots of > innovations). Of course some fields/examples can be found where competition has led to useful innovation that outweighs the additional problems/overheads that arose with competition. But in the electricity "market" (the subject of this thread), the empirical facts show that the problems outweigh the advantages. Chris _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
