> Ensuring the electric grid doesn't collapse when it gets below 20 degrees is in fact exactly the sort of thing that can be fixed with enough application of force.

This seems like the sort of belief system that inspired the story of King Canute and the tide. [0]

> Spend the money, or we'll take it from you. Done.

I understand that a lot of people only care about justifying the expropriation of wealth. But it seems you’ve forgotten to include the part where the expropriation is actually justified on the basis of promises to do something good with that money.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Canute_and_the_tide

Can you point me to a specific current federal regulation that would’ve prevented this issue? TFA posits that there aren’t. So, you’ll take money to enforce a non-existent regulation?

The trivial proof of the GP's statement is that there are regions of the world and the US that regularly drop below 20F and have a functioning electrical grid (say, for instance, Alaska).

That's not proof at all. Building grid infrastructure that can function below 20F in regions that reach that temperature regularly is easier in important ways - in particular, if a new piece of infrastructure gets built that can't cope, the problem will happen early on and either get fixed or worked around, whereas somewhere like Texas can build up decades of new infrastructure that can't cope with the cold before anything happens to demonstrate that.

Thats probably a result of superior management of infrastructure rather than “application of enough force.”

It is clearly stated as a hypothetical application of political will, not a reference to a particular regulation.

Then this is the indicated response: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Canute_and_the_tide

Huh? The various law making entities in the US are not always making maximal use of their power, it doesn't make any sense to wave your hands in the air and say that they can only do the things they've already made laws for.

Was King Canute making maximal use of his power when he ordered back the waves, or could he have deployed his army to the beach to reinforce his edicts?

I don't know, I wasn't there.

It probably doesn’t matter because neither halting the tide nor producing heat in the winter are problems that are solved by authoritarian measures.

Require that the power companies in Texas winterize their equipment. Done.

The electric company in El Paso, which is not part of ERCOT, did spend heavily to winterize their equipment after the 2011 cold snap. El Paso did not suffer outages this year like the rest of Texas.

Producing heat in the winter is a solved problem. If power companies are not applying the known solutions to a recurring problem, then apply state force to require them to do so. Done.