But is it greater than the impact on economic output of having done a safer, but slower and more costly expansion of the electrical grid? That's much harder to measure

Heh, this is a 100 billion+ disaster when it is over. There are so many things people have not talked about yet. Multiple blood banks have lost their entire cooling and flooded at the same time. A medical testing and samples lab has had similar issues. You've not seen that in the news yet.

The there are the things we do know, like the Samsung IC shutdown that will cost millions in itself.

"By Friday, when Ercot declared that the emergency had ended, 14.4 million still lacked reliable access to public water supplies, and the crisis had already cost the state $50 billion in damages, according to Accuweather. The cost of power on Monday alone was $10 billion, according to estimates from Wood Mackenzie."

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-02-20/texas-bla...

That is indeed compelling for the mismanagement argument.

It seems like you're thinking purely of net economic impact.

As someone in Texas who just got their power back and no longer has running water, I'm having a real hard time not posting a really vicious retort here.

Pure capitalism without any humanism is really quite gross and frustrating.

No, I am really thinking of net impact, economic and otherwise (but the parent mentioned economic output, so I was replying to that point)