Boy, I'm Glad THAT'S Over (Hey Louie)

[Doktor Howl]

Louie,

I hear you talking.  2020 is finally over and now we can get back to normal.  I hear you saying this and I shake my head at your stupidity.  You thought all of this *gestures vaguely* was a bounded event?  That somehow, magically, things would go right now that the year of horror is past us?

We didn't get a WEEK into 2021 without an insurrection (January).

We didn't get two months in with a super storm tearing up Texas (February), when Texas found out that what they'd been voting for was to remain separated from the other 47 contiguous states' grids.  So nobody can help them.  Now they have no clean water and ALSO found out that their bills from Gridly are priced by the minute and weighed by demand, so suddenly people are getting $10,000+ electricity bills.  And THEN Rick Perry gets on the TV and says Texans would PREFER this sort of 3rd world lifestyle, if that's what it takes to keep the mean old federal gubmint out of their business.  Score one more for the "rugged individualists," I suppose.

What will March bring?  Yes, we're still setting our calendars for catastrophe, because 2020 wasn't just a bad year, it was the year in which our mistakes began to catch up with us.  And it's not like our mistakes were an occasional thing. 

So don't think of 2020 as a bad stretch of highway.  Think of it as an on ramp.

Yours truly,
Hamish.

[Faust]

We're in the Ercot Market. The fact that the US has any pass through rates to residential is insane. Everywhere else even in the worst case it is a bounded %, like 5% extra on your bill if the grid basically fell apart. I cant think of anything more land of the Free Market, where the energy providers are allowed to buffer themselves from the risk by passing it onto the consumer, in every other country, its the utility providers responsibility to keep the grid stable and keep the residential pricing within limits.

We've had stories of people taking an axe to the main incomer when they have found out about it, leaving them with: No light and in some cases no heat, in sub zero conditions for what could now be weeks because theres no one coming out to reconnect them any time soon. And the worst part is they were right to do it, that the way society is stacked against them, that this is the rational choice left available.

[Doktor Howl]

We're in the Ercot Market. The fact that the US has any pass through rates to residential is insane. Everywhere else even in the worst case it is a bounded %, like 5% extra on your bill if the grid basically fell apart. I cant think of anything more land of the Free Market, where the energy providers are allowed to buffer themselves from the risk by passing it onto the consumer, in every other country, its the utility providers responsibility to keep the grid stable and keep the residential pricing within limits.

We've had stories of people taking an axe to the main incomer when they have found out about it, leaving them with: No light and in some cases no heat, in sub zero conditions for what could now be weeks because theres no one coming out to reconnect them any time soon. And the worst part is they were right to do it, that the way society is stacked against them, that this is the rational choice left available.

The best part of it is that, usually, the bills are paid by the minute vs debit cards.

So you go to bed with $12K in the bank and wake up broke.

[Faust]

So... literal banditry? Robbing people in their sleep while a storm goes on.
Looting during storms used to be a thing for normal folk, (sorry sorry, foraging for supplies if you are white), Corps took a look at that and decided to get in on the action.

[Doktor Howl]

So... literal banditry? Robbing people in their sleep while a storm goes on.
Looting during storms used to be a thing for normal folk, (sorry sorry, foraging for supplies if you are white), Corps took a look at that and decided to get in on the action.

Yes.  Precisely that.  It has been industrialized.