If the utility company had a disclaimer on their bills, or a billing option to pay more or less depending on if you wanted to run this type of risk - maybe it would be a tradeoff people could make?

Instead this seems to be a complete failure of the regulated utility and it's governing political apparatus resulting in an entirely preventable 'major hurricane' level crisis.

I don't see why others states can do it and Texas couldn't or shouldn't. This is hindsight, but out past strategy, if it was intentional, was not optimal.

Even just numerically, I would bet money that the lost productivity and sales will be much more than the "ounce of prevention" costs, even ignoring the humanitatian aspects.

They're young and prepared, so they'll be fine. I expect there to be a lot of deaths. And then a wave of burst pipes and property damage. Many people may be going without running water for weeks or months to come.

Is this lowering cost or just shifting cost, given the huge amount of property damage being caused due to lack of power? The “stitch in time” would apply here. Not to mention how to calculate the cost of human suffering caused by trying to survive in freezing temps with no power for multiple days.