Electricity Fairness Act [debating]

[Marokai Backbeat]

This is some pretty basic stuff, guys.

Regulated power, and markets with substantial public competition, have noticeably cheaper electricity than places without public competition or regulation. Public power utilities alone, provide much cheaper electricity rates than their private counterparts. Some limited amounts of such regulation exist in the country already. We haven't had "blackouts" from that, for goodness sake.

Were it up to me, our entire national electricity apparatus would be nationalized.

I fear this would lead to blackouts.

It wouldn't. It scales with time and growth fairly, and these caps are based on a slightly raised level of existing electricity rates that I had to unfortunately look up for hours before actually writing this thing. It prevents rates from skyrocketing out of control, and increases public competition. It would benefit the consumer a great deal.

No. Just no!

Neoliberal.

I suggest checking this map.

Rates will need to be scaled up to match reality.  That said, population growth, inflation, and a dozen factors will naturally drive the rates upwards at some point in the future?  What happens then?  If you are going to go through with this, which I strongly advise against, it ought to scale in order to cope with changing situations.

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It does scale up: see Section 1-6.

But wow, electricity in Hawaii is almost triple what I pay here in Georgia? If nothing else, I think it'd at least be good to pass the last bit of the bill.

It is somewhat understandable why they would have higher electricity, considering their location, but the lack of any public competition in Hawaii allows the private power companies there to raise prices on electricity with impunity.

Fun fact I didn't know before writing this bill, though; Nebraska apparently has no private power companies. Not in the same way of other states, at least. In the 90s, the state legislators there considered reforming the system to opening the Nebraska market up to private competition, but in their review, they concluded that such a move would unfairly raise prices on consumers, and their current evil socialist system would be superior.

What I'm proposing here isn't such a radical thing. It merely restrains power prices from getting too far out of control from what they are now. And opens up a little bit more competition. That can never hurt.

[Marokai Backbeat]

One quick techincal point: (I apologize if this comes off the wrong way) the unit of energy is kilowatt-hours not kilowatt per hour. A watt is already per unit time, so it would be multiplied by time (in this case hours) to have a unit of energy. Also the costs should be per kW-hr, not per hour. The cost is being paid for energy, not for time.

Duh, you're totally right, my mistake. I don't know why that completely missed me, before. Feel free to amend it if you like.

[Marokai Backbeat]

Whatever the case, price ceilings are absolutely never in any scenario a good idea, and it is an iron law that a binding price ceiling will cause shortages (in this case, blackouts).  Hugo Chavez has been finding this out in Venezuela.

If ever there was a case of a ridiculous comparison, you've found it!

I certainly remember reading all about those blackouts and power shortages in Canada all the time! And their power costs? Yeesh! So expensive!

[Marokai Backbeat]

Yes, Hugo Chavez put binding price controls on power in Venezuela.  Unsurprisingly for anyone who understands very basic microeconomics based on deductive mathematical logic, there have been blackouts in Venezuela, ridiculous as that may sound.  Otherwise, I'll be content to quote myself:

As for nationalized electrical power, the government, of course, can sell power at any rate it wishes.  This is not because it has somehow figured out some way to create power more efficiently or cheaply than the market (my town, which has the worst of all corporatist worlds, has a substation owned by the town and power lines owned by utilities - the workers at the substation all receive between $200,000 and $240,000/year - not cheap!).  The reason why the government can sell power or anything else at any rate is because it, unlike a private company, can sell things at a loss and make up the difference by taxing people more (which creates its own deadweight loss).  Furthermore, there's an additional deadweight loss in this instance - power generation has an important negative externality (environmental damage caused by the burning of coal or natural gas - even if one is sourcing one's power from non-emissions sources that's still preventing other places from using those non-emissions sources for their power).  Charging an artificially low rate for power will cause this negative externality to grow, along with the deadweight loss (environmental damage, in this case).

There is absolutely nothing there that has any relevance to this debate. You and your ilk deal in theoretical neoliberal mumbo jumbo, and I couldn't give half a damn. Regulated power is cheaper in the United States. Public power is even cheaper than that. Such utilities don't suffer from crippling losses or blackouts as a result.

The government doing something is not always cheaper, or more efficient. I would never contend that. But what we're dealing in here is empirical stuff. Comparing the United States to Venezuela is a preposterous comparison. I could easily point to our neighbors to the North as a rebuttal. Nearly all provinces have public power utilities, and their power is much cheaper than ours. This is partially due to the fact that a lot of the power in certain provinces comes from hydro electricity, which is easy to produce more cheaply, but using them as an example still works.

You say public power is cheaper not because it's more efficient, but simply because the government sells it at a loss and makes up for it in taxes, which, A) Wouldn't matter even if that was the case. It would still be cheaper in most cases. and B) Is flatly not the case all the time anyway. Quebec's public power utility, Hydro Quebec, runs such a profit that they've been trying to expand their own power utility into neighboring provinces and using excess profits to pay for other government expenditures.

What I'm attempting to regulate here is unfair price gouging and reigning in the profit motive. Which on something as essential as electricity, shouldn't be the driving factor. And we're not even debating nationalization anyway, for God's sake.

[Marokai Backbeat]

Motion to table

I cannot wait until you're gone. You are a waste of a Senator.


Nay.

[Marokai Backbeat]

I am desperately looking for something to actually respond to there, but your posts are seriously so devoid of anything substantive to actually latch on to that I'm really at a loss. Statements like..

If you have a binding price ceiling, there will be a shortage.  That isn't really debatable.  It is in fact a mathematical surety that a binding price ceiling will cause a shortage.  It is as sure as 2+2 equaling 4 that binding price ceilings cause shortages.  To argue otherwise is the equivalent of saying that 2+2 = 5.

.. are so padded out and meaningless that your entire post could be simplified down to "Nuh uh."

[Marokai Backbeat]

Perhaps Wormy is just pasting and re-purposing segments of past essays he's written in response to me, then.

[Marokai Backbeat]

Thank you, Senators.

[Marokai Backbeat]

I accept the amendment as friendly.

Senators have 24 hours to object.

[Marokai Backbeat]

It wont pass. This proposal is extremism in true form and will lead to disaster.

This is insanely dramatic. I respect a decision to vote against this, but not your completely dishonest and unserious freaking out over something that is not really that big of a deal. Regulation like this exists, or has existed, in scattered forms in certain states already, and the rate of increase on the cap is roughly in line with the average increase of electricity prices in the last decade or two.

I feel like we've approached this point in our society where young people have completely forgotten what actually already exists and react to stuff like this as if it's dramatic and new. I remember one of the first things I proposed when I became a Senator in 2009 was codifying some media ownership restrictions in Atlasia. People suddenly jumped on calling me some sort of weird extremist when simpler versions of the law I proposed were already actual law in real life.

No one has shown how this will actually do any harm. No one has argued as to why this is even a bad idea at all. You've been doing some hair-on-fire nonsense and Wormy popped in to compare us to Venezuela and argue against something I wasn't even proposing.

If you're going to oppose this, I would at least ask you to do so like an adult. Every time you oppose something, you make short, ridiculously melodramatic statements. You debate nothing, you propose nothing on your own, and you generally cause as much silly immature trouble as possible. I find it baffling how you've continued to have some sort of high-minded reputation, but your party seems to do a very good job at excusing, and rewarding, your absurd behavior.

This bill aims to implement some sort of national rate regulation for a good reason. States with more regulated electricity markets have lower costs and a lower average increase of electricity rates in comparison to the national average. I actually find that report especially amusing, because I took to talking to Wormyguy on AIM last night after his appearance in this thread, and asked him what he would prefer if he actually had to make a proposal. He argued that we should reduce monopolies and open up electricity markets more to encourage more choice.

Problem is, when greater retail choice is introduced, prices go up even more. Not down. Facts are pretty cool.

If we're going to vote down rate caps, then I at the very least want to hear your input, and others, on re-purposing as a bill designed to increase support for wholesale suppliers of electricity and other public power utilities. If we're going to truly have "retail choice" then we should have a strong public power alternative also competing in all markets. Public power is cheaper and more dependable in this country, and as energy continues to get more and more expensive, we should do our part to provide greater alternatives.

I've also mentioned this in the past, but I would support the creation of a national public hydroelectric utility. Atlasia isn't as naturally gifted as our northern neighbors, but there are still numerous areas we could be scouting out and using to generate electricity. There would at least be enough hydroelectricity, to that end, to power a combined amount equivalent to a couple of our smaller states.

[Marokai Backbeat]

Problem is, when greater retail choice is introduced, prices go up even more. Not down. Facts are pretty cool.

Are you seriously trying to be a self-parody here?

I am offering a re-purposing of this bill to a more modest attempt at supporting wholesale suppliers and small public power utilities, in addition to creating market competition in Hawaii.

The current composition of the act isn't going to get anywhere, so there's barely any sense in arguing over it. Even though, as I said, I still think it's crazy that it's gotten this ridiculously overblown reaction and that people seem to be forgetting things that actually exist, reacting to them as if they're new.

But I digress!

[Marokai Backbeat]

I accept the amendment as friendly.

Senators have 24 hours to object.

24 hours have passed and TJ's amendment is now the official version of the bill.

Still though, I would welcome input on my proposal to re-purpose this bill into something else.

[Marokai Backbeat]

I'm going to gut out the price ceilings, change the name, and narrow it down to the less controversial section 2, so this bill at least has a chance of accomplishing something very simple and good. Senators have 24 hours to object.

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[Marokai Backbeat]

Consider this amended. I'll open a final vote later if no one has anything more to say.

[Marokai Backbeat]

Why should the federal government establish a power company only in Hawaii? Shouldn't Hawaii do that?

It would be administered by the local of regional government, merely established by the federal government, I would imagine. Similar to how we set up our healthcare system. (Funded nationally, administered regionally.) The difference would be that, in this case, the federal government would only be establishing Hawaii Community Power, not running it in perpetuity.


I'm also going to go ahead and open this for a final vote, so everyone please vote Aye, Nay, or Abstain.

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Aye

[Marokai Backbeat]

Nay

Hawaii thanks you for protecting their ridiculously high electricity bills.

[Marokai Backbeat]

4 Ayes, 2 Nays, and 1 Abstaining. We need more votes to move this along.

[Marokai Backbeat]

This bill is now passing. 24 hours to change votes.

[Marokai Backbeat]

This bill has now passed, and I present it to the President for his signature.

Well done.

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