The privatization of California’s electric grid, and deregulation of Texas’, have proved this to the point of not even being debatable anymore. Laissez-faire advocates baffle me, as there are so few empirical counter examples that support their theories.
Having lived through the 2021 Austin/Texas ice storms that lasted weeks, and then nearly the same thing in 2022 and having babies go without formula and people unable to get prescriptions and hospitals closing one after another, running on generators unable to perform complex procedures using machines like MRIs (because they use too much power they won’t run off the generators), and literally sitting in the ER with a friend who shattered his ankle trying to get out of his frozen, dead house and to the corner of the street up a hill (getting vehicles up the hill was impossible due to the ice, there were a bunch of damaged cars that “tried”) so he could stay with one of the few people in our group of friends that had power, for 12 fucking hours because 3 of the hospitals in the area ran out of generator power and sent their patients to Seaton; I can confirm, that this is an accurate portrayal of private vs public approach to infrastructure like this.
Private groups see it and you as a revenue source. A customer. Not a living, human being. They don’t answer to you, only their shareholders. And they couldn’t be fucked to change anything so it all happened again in 2022.
Oh sure, they “fired their ERCOT Board”, but they’re just lip service figureheads. Nothing materially changed. There was no public investigation, there was no discovery process, and none of the data about whatever steps they took were ever made public. Because they don’t have to. You’re not entitled to power or clean water in Texas, even if you pay for it.
The privatization of California’s electric grid, and deregulation of Texas’, have proved this to the point of not even being debatable anymore. Laissez-faire advocates baffle me, as there are so few empirical counter examples that support their theories.
Having lived through the 2021 Austin/Texas ice storms that lasted weeks, and then nearly the same thing in 2022 and having babies go without formula and people unable to get prescriptions and hospitals closing one after another, running on generators unable to perform complex procedures using machines like MRIs (because they use too much power they won’t run off the generators), and literally sitting in the ER with a friend who shattered his ankle trying to get out of his frozen, dead house and to the corner of the street up a hill (getting vehicles up the hill was impossible due to the ice, there were a bunch of damaged cars that “tried”) so he could stay with one of the few people in our group of friends that had power, for 12 fucking hours because 3 of the hospitals in the area ran out of generator power and sent their patients to Seaton; I can confirm, that this is an accurate portrayal of private vs public approach to infrastructure like this.
Private groups see it and you as a revenue source. A customer. Not a living, human being. They don’t answer to you, only their shareholders. And they couldn’t be fucked to change anything so it all happened again in 2022.
Oh sure, they “fired their ERCOT Board”, but they’re just lip service figureheads. Nothing materially changed. There was no public investigation, there was no discovery process, and none of the data about whatever steps they took were ever made public. Because they don’t have to. You’re not entitled to power or clean water in Texas, even if you pay for it.