California Can Expect Blackouts for a Decade, Says PG&E CEO

Re:California Can Expect Blackouts for a Decade, Says PG&E CEO by maxaf on Monday October 21, 2019 @07:53AM (#21311173)

American liberals are always yelling for more “humanity”, but they keep quiet about the requirement that humanity must come at someone else’s expense. Yes, we need cheaper housing - but not here. Yes, guvment must build better jails - but not here. Yes, please run more buses - but not down my street. Yes, we must accept more refugees - but put them somewhere far away, certainly not anywhere near my child’s route to school.

Liberalism and NIMBYism are joined at the hip. Liberalism is loud and ostentatious, while NIMBYism is prosecuted quietly via the court system, lobbying, and political donations. There’s a certain poetic beauty to how both seem to coexist in the same group of people.

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Re:California Can Expect Blackouts for a Decade, Says PG&E CEO by dmode on Monday October 21, 2019 @11:33AM (#21313444)

I think you are conflating entirely two different concepts. NIMBYism is a unique California value and closely related to California history rather than a true left ideology. In fact, leftist policies are for more denser urban development, public transit etc as you can see in European countries

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Re:California Can Expect Blackouts for a Decade, Says PG&E CEO by jtmcmc on Monday October 21, 2019 @09:49AM (#21312189)

"Liberalism" is the "hipsters" of modern leftist politics...

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Re:California Can Expect Blackouts for a Decade, Says PG&E CEO by maxaf on Monday October 21, 2019 @08:10AM (#21311293)

Yes, that's what the liberals are saying. They're yelling for more humanity, but they want it to come at someone else's expense. This isn't my principle; it's the liberals'. I'm not the one who should be meditating on anything, as I'm also not the one preventing affordable housing from being built.

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Re:California Can Expect Blackouts for a Decade, Says PG&E CEO by roenxi on Monday October 21, 2019 @09:03AM (#21311771)

There is a two-step process here for your builders, gardeners, nannys, security guards, etc. First the things they want must be produced, then they have to secure access to those things.

There is no question that tax-and-redistribute can make step 2 happen. However, the problem is that the plan for step 1 is usually some variant of 'Massive taxes aren't going to change what gets produced. What's gonna happen, people gonna stop working on important things?'. That plan often doesn't work because it turns out massive taxes change what gets produced, often much for the worse.

You can get morally outraged if it makes you feel better, but your comment inspires no hope in me that you've thought your solution through. There is substantial evidence that, economically speaking, going for a big pie unevenly shared is a much better solution than going for a small but evenly sliced pie.

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Re:California Can Expect Blackouts for a Decade, Says PG&E CEO by maxaf on Monday October 21, 2019 @08:14AM (#21311331)

Who am I protecting from taxes again?

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Re:California Can Expect Blackouts for a Decade, Says PG&E CEO by maxerickson on Monday October 21, 2019 @09:38AM (#21312083)

Trade workers in the US aren't poor.

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Re:California Can Expect Blackouts for a Decade, Says PG&E CEO by acollins1331 on Monday October 21, 2019 @08:33AM (#21311513)

Broad brush strokes that have no basis in reality are a great way to see the world. You think there aren't conservatives who are just as shitty as the liberals you talk about? A: there are

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Re:California Can Expect Blackouts for a Decade, Says PG&E CEO by jakelazaroff on Monday October 21, 2019 @08:15AM (#21311341)

I’m not sure where you get those ideas? Where I live in NYC, they recently shut down a major street to cars so buses could run more easily — and the furthest left want to expand that. The left leaning people I know want to close jails, not build better ones elsewhere. We opposed an Amazon campus in our backyard specifically because it would drive up rents — and the furthest left want rent control.

Liberals are obviously not a monolith of only ethically consistent people, but I definitely don’t see the pervasive NIMBYism.

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Re:California Can Expect Blackouts for a Decade, Says PG&E CEO by maxaf on Monday October 21, 2019 @08:22AM (#21311400)

I live on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Here the same people who yell for affordable housing also go to court to block construction of new towers. The same people who complain about buses stuck in traffic on W 86th St also prevent the introduction of universal metered parking and congestion pricing.

But my original comment was mainly addressing the NIMBYism in California. Look at SF: it's a low-rise city of sky-high demand and prices. Who's preventing new construction? The same local NIMBYs who enjoy rising property values due to severely restricted supply of land that can be built on.

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Re:California Can Expect Blackouts for a Decade, Says PG&E CEO by jakelazaroff on Monday October 21, 2019 @08:39AM (#21311564)

I until very recently lived downtown, where congestion pricing would actually take effect, and the people most in support were again the furthest left.

SF does seem to be more NIMBYish, but I’m not sure why you think it’s a microcosm of liberalism.

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Re:California Can Expect Blackouts for a Decade, Says PG&E CEO by eli_gottlieb on Monday October 21, 2019 @08:21AM (#21311388)

The Left in New York City are largely socialists by now, who had enough of a long-standing working-class tradition to avoid allying with liberal NIMBYs.

He's honestly pretty spot on about liberals, as the spot on the spectrum in between conservatives and social democrats.

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Re:California Can Expect Blackouts for a Decade, Says PG&E CEO by jakelazaroff on Monday October 21, 2019 @08:59AM (#21311736)

Maybe so, but I don’t read the original comment as a critique of centrist Democrats in particular. (I also don’t think centrist Democrats are alone in the gap between their professed values and their actual ones.)

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