Rest of nation starting to feel pain of power deregulation

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--good article, this part is the real bottom line of this so called "deregulation" of the monopoly power grid system:

"Deregulation has led to a huge growth in the buying and selling of energy, the report states. Each time electricity is bought or sold, someone makes a commission and tries to make a profit that is then added on to the price of that electricity. "

And there ya go. You have "the choice" of adding more middlemen profit takers-that's it, that's all dereg does. Started as a monopoly, still is a monopoly. About exactly the same with city natural gas deliveries as well.

The flaws in this analysis are too many to list. This piece is yet another reason why I no longer subscribe to the Soviet Union-Tribune.

And there ya go. You have "the choice" of adding more middlemen profit takers-that's it, that's all dereg does.

Gee, I didn't know that the dreaded "middleman" was always guaranteed a profit.

Actually, most so-called middlemen in the energy business are traders who take positions that may or may not make them money.

And there ya go. You have "the choice" of adding more middlemen profit takers-that's it, that's all dereg does. Started as a monopoly, still is a monopoly. About exactly the same with city natural gas deliveries as well. That's nonsense. That's all FAKE dereg does. I live in SoCal and if we had REAL options, as far as power providers were concerned, those providers would be battling for my business and buy the power using the most direct (CHEAP) route they could so they could under-cut the next guy and keep me happy.Middlemen are not the issue. BS deregulation is the issue. Deregulating the wholesale market but not the retail market was loony.We just need a proper, sane market (more generators, more providers). Middlemen would be irrelevant.

c'mon doodle, the government/corporate centralized electric market has always been a pure monopoly. I've lived all over, city and rural and suburban, it's the same everywhere and always has been, you have the "free market capitalism choice" of renting the local gridjuice infrastructure and paying who knows what anymore for the fuel from the local provider-singular, and that's it. There has never been any competition whatsoever. You move into an apartment, home, or business building, the choice is "electric" or "no electric", there is no free market choice of "electric" there for the consumer until extremely recently historically. If this was cars it might be clearer. with cars, computers, vacuum cleaners-you honestly DO have a choice. Electric-ha!

The past couple of decades against simply tremendous pressure to have it "not so" by the monopolists there has developed a growing de-centralized market, various ways to produce power on-site. The R&D and market for this has had to compete with a century old monopoly, basically the same old whopper corporations who got started in large part from governmental meddling, who squashed the de-centralized market long ago, when it really was off to a great start, the home DC market, and not entirely from "capitalism", a lot of it is government mandated, "approved" voltages and codes that favored the AC centralised providers for instance, eminent domain seizures for transmission lines in the thousands of miles and millions of acres, tax breaks for the local monoplists "plants" going way back, land grabs, making people move for flooded areas for dams, on and on. Massive subsisides historically and corporate/governmental cartels. It's still going on now, states are still seeking to grab peoples property via condemnation for these monopolists. It has nothing to do with 'capitalism" and never has, unless "coporate/governmental collusionary monopolism" is the capitalism sub-set of choice for anyone.

And the so called 'de-regulation" as has been pointed out is a farce. Joe average consumer (which is 99% of the consumers out there) has zip choice still mostly, most areas of the country. You want juice, there is the local juice company, and that's it. It's a con game that has become institutionalized over the entire last century. Yes, they have provided a very, very useful "product", absolutely no qualms about saying that, it's the truth, I am just wondering what this "electricty market" would be like now without the century old monopoly aspect to this. I know I am sure glad I got a computer choice, and brand choices at the grocery store, and a vehicle choice, etc. it sorta works when it's run that way. I would bet a month's worth of watts we would have a lot more "choices" now if it had always been run that way, and we wouldn't be near as deep into an "energy crisis" and I bet it would be a lot cheaper, too. Obviously I'm extrapolating an unknown and unprovable, but given the empirical evidence of this same concept in a thousand other products historically, I think it would be safe to say that a similar situation might have come about.

Monopolism primarily benefits the monopoly-runners. You look at just the huge volume of revelations coming out now from this western/californiana, now national 'electricity" business, scams hidden inside of political agendas wrapped around pay offs and bribes and insider dealings. And the consumer has little choice but to fund this. And it's because it's A-a monopoly, and B-government helped set it up and run it. for a long, long time now. Two wrong "things" there usually. Two really basic inefficiencies, and definetly not having anything to do with competition, or freedom for that matter. It's a joke, and there's no way to even try to untangle it now, except at a personal consumer level which requires a hefty infrastructure committment and lifestyle adaptation, but it's one that a very small but growing segment of the population is taking (me included there, BTW), seeing as how now with the internet you can get a lot more information and you can see what has been going on and what's available. Some people have just said 'enough" and seek to rid themselves of this cartel, as it appears to be almost unfixable. The politicians want to throw more laws at it, that's it. Throw more laws at it, or create a deregulation that isn't, more word twistings.

Look at the projected electricity price increases for some areas, what happened just over the past year, where people have little choice in the matter. they got whammoed bad, and forced to pay it, or shiver or bake out. they had no way to tell that this was coming, either, it just was forced on them, they weren't allowed way back any choices so they could have had an opportunity to plan for it accordingly. Look what cal decided to do, even more cost increases carved in stone now, years in advance, for what reason? Politics and insider trading mostly. It's destructive, and just adding-now I'll grant the decent point you made-layers of middlemen electric traders who "potentially" will be there to possibly get a cut on it, without providing one extra electron of juice, is only going to make it more expensive, not cheaper or more competitive. They de-regulated the middle man trading commoditiy aspect in it, that's it.

Until a consumer has a choice, where they really can pick one company over another company over a third company,etc with different ways to get the juice to you and different types of billings, and whether you can actually buy the thing or just rent/lease it-just like phone service has finally gotten to now-it will continue to be non cost effective and most likely keep being involved with more and more scandals like we are seeing, and any R&D will be grossly stifled. There's no incentive for competition when it's set up for one company-or the state itself- for the delivery, no matter how many laws, bureaucrats, traders, or politicians you throw at it, it still doesn't change that fact of consumer experience and reality and the monthly bill. And for the actual companies who might want to be involved in the energy providing business, the companies actually wishing to really do something about providing better juice more efficiently and competitively, it's still sucky for them, too. No one is winning this thing now, it's getting worse. Neither the consumers nor the businesses.

Now some sort of real deregulation, swell, I can live with that. This sorta kinda maybe well ya know "de regulation" has been a disaster, a disaster that made a few "someones" a ton of money, and mostly has just drastically run up end user consumer's cost, and it's looking more and more like massive scam city everyplace it's been tried.

No kidding. This is pure propaganda and little else. There should be a small caption at the bottom that says 'Sponsored by the Socialist Democrat Party of America.'

Absolutely right !

Good comments and I agree.

This is definitely a propaganda piece!