Re:The Texas electric grid failure was a warm-up
by mjburgess on Thursday January 20, 2022 @07:24AM
(#30007985)
My point was that simple a-priori logic of the kind you offered regularly fails. A fast-food restaurant who wants to keeps its machines running has profit-driven feedback loops of a radically different nature than those of an energy market (esp. when such a market has natural monopolies).
And likewise, markets are amoral. If the "market" opts for a failure every decade over a higher-priced day-to-day run... this isnt "rational" or "correct" or "ethical" or whatever. The way a market happens to function is amoral.
You can make the argument that over fairly short time horizons in non-critical areas "meeting consumer demand" in most cases has a certain consequentialist justification. This doesnt carry over, a-priori to all possible cases.
Ie., it is quite reasonable for a society via a democratic expression of ethical judgement to say "the market is not here considering the long-term impact in the right ethical manner"... ie., that being without power when it's -20 outside & affecting the whole population in ways not priced in by the market is a *moral failure*.
It is the prerogative of the collective to say at once "here's how it should be", rather than via iterated interactions "here's how its happened to be".
And likewise, markets are amoral. If the "market" opts for a failure every decade over a higher-priced day-to-day run... this isnt "rational" or "correct" or "ethical" or whatever. The way a market happens to function is amoral.
You can make the argument that over fairly short time horizons in non-critical areas "meeting consumer demand" in most cases has a certain consequentialist justification. This doesnt carry over, a-priori to all possible cases.
Ie., it is quite reasonable for a society via a democratic expression of ethical judgement to say "the market is not here considering the long-term impact in the right ethical manner"... ie., that being without power when it's -20 outside & affecting the whole population in ways not priced in by the market is a *moral failure*.
It is the prerogative of the collective to say at once "here's how it should be", rather than via iterated interactions "here's how its happened to be".