> Spike Jones>The only good thing I
> >can think of to come out of all this is that the general public
> >will be given a valuable lesson in economics and the advantages
> >of free markets over government rule
>
> [zeb haradon doesnt] think so. Just look at all the editorials and headlines
> (in
> mainstream papers read by most people). It generally goes like this:
> "deregulation has failed".
True, zeb, but our education isnt over yet. Taxifornia is far from
graduating from the university of re-regulation. That adventure is
gonna fail far worse. Keep watching.
> Most people don't have the time or inclination to look into exactly what
> policies the "deregulation" specifically refers to
But they will. Probably by candle light.
> The lesson most people will learn
> from this is that "deregulation doesn't work..."
"...but it works a lot better than attempted re-regulation." It cannot
stop here, for as long as power prices are held artificially low,
there is no consumer motivation to conserve, nor any compelling
reason to invest in energy-smart appliances. Any attempts at
re-regulation must also include attempts at legislating consumption,
and we can scarcely imagine what a morass that will lead to.
For instance, right now they are hitting the car dealerships, but
what if they can show that they use less power than the cable TV
company? Then what if it gets worse and they start putting caps
on how much power a household can use? Two persons live in
my house, with an occasional guest. Just down the street I can show
you a house just like mine where 17 people are living. Do they
get an extra allowance? If so, when I have a bunch of guests do
I get an extra allowance? How long must they stay? What if I
use a bunch of power this month, then run off a generator for
a while? You can see the slow motion train-wreck the so-called
governor is leading us to.
Continued regulation wouldnt have worked either. If you hold
prices down artificially, demand goes up until ya run out. Universal
truth.
> Whenever anyone talks about
> implementing "deregulation", the inevitable response will be "don't you
> remember what happened with electricity when we tried that?"
Then we show that deregulation *has* worked in other states.
It is partial deregulation that doesnt work.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:56:35 MDT