Re: Bitten by NIMBY, CA power system goes socialist...

From: Max More (max@maxmore.com)
Date: Thu Jan 11 2001 - 12:00:47 MST


At 09:27 PM 1/10/01, you wrote:

>Other papers in the series present evidence of market power (price
>manipulation beyond competitive levels) in the detailed data available on
>the California markets. They also offer some remedies, including price
>stability through futures markets,

I believe this is standard in most markets. My understanding is that the
politicized form of deregulation in California involved a legal prohibition
on using futures contracts. If they *could* use those they would. But they
are stuck paying extremely high prices on the spot market. This was deal
with the devil gone wrong.

There was an excellent article in Business Week on this two or three weeks
ago. Sorry I don't have the URL, but a search should find it.

It's frustrating to hear about the "failure of deregulation" when the
failure was not in markets but in political intervention (apart from the
above, that includes refusing to allow construction of more power plants).

Max
--------------

Max More,
max@maxmore.com or more@extropy.org
www.maxmore.com
President, Extropy Institute. www.extropy.org
Senior Content Architect, ManyWorlds Inc.: www.manyworlds.com



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