Technology

They did change one thing. You used to be able to get electricity at wholesale prices from certain providers. When the rates went crazy during the 2021 storm and people's crazy bills for turning on the lamp blew up on the news, they shut down that option.

These rate surges do hurt customers, but now it's in the form of rate increases when their contract expires.

Rationality is out of the window. Ideology is the new religion. They don't want to become "socialists" even though they don't know what it truly means.

Instead of requiring weatherization, they allowed power plants to opt out.

Lawmakers on the Senate Business and Commerce Committee were frustrated that the new law allows natural gas companies to opt out of weatherization requirements if they don’t voluntarily declare themselves to be “critical infrastructure” with the state.

https://www.texastribune.org/2021/09/28/texas-power-grid-loophole/

Correct.

Didn't the state basically re-elect everyone who oversaw that shit show?

It’s absolutely wild. The last time around, people died, and a lot more were put into financial hardship due to the shitty, hypercapitalist energy infrastructure. People were rightly ripshit angry about it.

And then nothing was done about any of it.

And then people keep voting for the politicians who created and perpetuated the situation.

It’s really hard to keep giving a shit about people who actively work and vote to make their own lives worse.

This is Enron-scale manipulation. Someone's ripping off the public and making a mint with the help of the regulators.

Not to mention their Governor, who seems to be in a race with FL's Governor for the "evil monster of the century award."

It's almost like they have a financial incentive to pull this shit.

In 2000/2001 this same shit was being done in California, leading to rolling blackouts and record-high energy prices. One company was buying all the plants and shutting them down for "maintenance" specifically to increase energy prices.

There were going to be congressional hearings over it in early 2022, but that company was Enron, and at the end of 2001 they collapsed due to other bullshit they were pulling.

Fun fact, in case you weren't aware; Texas pays bitcoin mining companies to shut off their rigs during peak demand.

Miners love this; in effect they can just threaten to mine bitcoin and get paid as much as they would have made actually mining bitcoin, but without the wear and tear on their expensive hardware. It's a legalized extortion racket being enacted on the public purse.

Apologies if I just gave you even more reason to be angry.

No no no, that's not true privatization. True privatization would fix all the problems

Imagine all those Californians that moved to Texas.

Losing power for three days, but knowing my energy bill will be twice as high as last months is always a cool feeling.

Everything is bigger in Texas

* Except the paycheck