Posted on 03/05/2020 5:06:27 AM PST by karpov
In poor countries the price of electricity is low, so low that “utilities lose money on every unit of electricity that they sell.” As a result, rationing and shortages are common. Writing in the JEP, Burgess, Greenstone, Ryan and Sudarshan argue that “these shortfalls arise as a consequence of treating electricity as a right, rather than as a private good.”
The Burgess et al. analysis coheres with my observations in India where “wire anarchy” is common (see picture). It’s obvious that electricity is being stolen but no one does anything about it because it’s considered a right and a government that did do something about it would be voted out of power.
The stolen electricity means that the utility can’t cover its costs. Government subsidies are rarely enough to satisfy the demand at a zero or low price and so the utility rations.
Burgess et al. frame the issue as “treating electricity as right,” but one can can also understand this equilibrium as arising from low state capacity and corruption, in particular corruption with theft. In corruption with theft the buyer pays say a meter reader to look the other way as they tap into the line and they get a lower price for electricity net of the bribe. Corruption with theft is a strong equilibrium because buyers who do not steal have higher costs and thus are driven out of the market. In addition, corruption with theft unites the buyer and the corrupt meter reader in secrecy, since both are gaining from the transaction.
(Excerpt) Read more at marginalrevolution.com ...
Willfull ignorance of economics is a duty, enforced by mainstream “educational” institutions and mainstream “news” organizations.
The only “free electricity” I’ve seen is generated by people living off-grid, who use water/hydro power to turn a water wheel to power a generator; or through the use of solar panels.
That is why electricity is is called a ultility.
Yes, everyone has a right to electricity, and health insurance for that matter. E everyone has the right to pay for these things. No one should be excluded. No discrimination. If you want it, you buy it ...with your own damn money.
So? PJ stole it? I have the original manuscripts and so do you if you dig deep enough. :)
When the beautiful sun comes out after a bad rainstorm and you’re going for a walk, you soon realize that you can’t save all the worms on the sidewalk struggling to make it to their destination.
Ok, sorry, further searching indicates you are right — O’Rourke got it from de Tocqueville. De Tocqueville died in 1859. He was prescient.
IMHO the fact that I have a right to something does not equate to an obligation from someone else, or the government, to provide it.
I have a right to own a house. If I have sufficient funds and/or meet the same requirements for a loan that apply to everyone, I cannot be denied the chance to purchase one.
I have a right to food, otherwise I would die. Which means that I cannot be denied the opportunity to either purchase it or grow it.
In fact, I have the right to just about anything that We, as a People, did not explicitly empower the government to provide for in the Constitution.
I guess, in Tocqueville’s time, there was already this confusion between personal rights and the obligations of others ...
I try! I have thought about maybe making a little worm catcher, since they are so slippery and hard to pick up.
Even then, requires capital expenditures and ongoing maintenance costs. Only “free” insofar as one doesn’t have to pay for the actual energy.
No confusion at all. Others have no obligations to your rights. Kinda explains where you are though. :)
The people of India are just going to have to make electricity by cheaper means.
Thorium-fueled Molten Salt reactors provide many advantages in producing this cheap electricity. Properly harnessed, electrical energy generated by these Thorium-fueled Molten Salt reactors can consume much of the radioactive “waste” from Uranium-fueled Light Water reactors, be scaled up or down in size as needed for the application at hand, be placed in relatively close proximity to large population centers without the fear of a runaway “China Syndrome” massive radiation release. and best of all, do not produce weapons-grade plutonium as a byproduct. Thorium is about four times as plentiful as uranium in recoverable form in the earth’s crust, and does not become spontaneously fissionable under any circumstances, but may only be “ignited” in the presence of the small amounts of “spent” uranium fuel rod material.
A win-win in every way. Only the problem of solving the highly corrosive nature of the molten salts (mostly fluorides) on the structure of the atomic pile itself, stands in the way of its much wider adoption. The principles and the applications have already been proven, it is now just a matter of engineering.
I am assuming that Tocqueville himself was aware of the confusion and felt the need to address it in a form that the confused might understand.
“...the fact that I have a right to something
does not equate to an obligation from someone else,
or the government, to provide it...”
-
I have a right to keep and bear arms, so buy me a shotgun.
Yes, use that logic on a liberal and watch his head explode.
Money is data, which is why most of it can be stored and processed in computers. At the root money data is about energy consumption. When someone buys a bag of chips they are in effect paying for all the energy used to produce it, directly but mostly indirectly.
All economic activity consumes energy. That is exactly why Democrats keep trying to seize control over energy with regulations and carbon taxes, and exactly why they should be kept away from hijacking the source of all wealth production.
Do you a reference for that? It just doesn’t sound like Alexis de Tocqueville.
One of the tenants of a fundamental human right is that, when exercised, it can not and does not obligate another human to do something or be something.
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