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You really think companies in America with monoplies would lower prices just because their costs went down?
So, theoretically, there’s a point at which induced demand through lower prices can raise profits. Having a monopoly on an elastic good only benefits you when you’re onboarding new clients at an escalating pace. Private energy companies looking to increase energy consumption overall may well take an upfront haircut on the retail price in order to encourage more people to adopt hardware that consumes the commodity.
But - over the long term - sure, the incentive is to capture more revenue in pursuit of higher profit. And that means raising prices faster than inflation.
That said, a public investment, could be pursued as a loss-leader. Public money invested in publicly owned utilities raises the availability of low-cost energy for private consumption. This is spent in pursuit of higher overall economic growth.
Our utility bills would be cheaper if the government invested
So much of the price of a thing is bound up in the administrative overhead and profit extracted at every step of the delivery process. You can pull a kwh of energy out of the ground, in the form of a lump of coal or a liter of gas, for pennies on the dollar when it is eventually sold retail. And that’s before we consider the pricing impact of artificial scarcity that occurs under the ERCOT model of wholesale electricity auctions.
By contrast, the TVA system has kept prices below (often far below) the national market rate simply by operating at-cost as a public enterprise. Energy companies in socialist states - from Sweden to Iran to China - can even retail electricity at subsidized rates (below cost of production) as a loss leader intended to spur high value domestic energy-hungry industries like steel manufacturing and chip fabrication.
Getting to green energy now that the global economy is flush with dirt-cheap high yield solar panels and market-competitive lithium batteries definitely cuts the raw labor / machine costs of fossil fuel extraction. And they defer the tail costs of fuel waste pollution management as well as the associated ecological and human health knock-on effects. But even sticking to the old fossil fuel economy is cheaper under a public system when the costs of operation aren’t inflated by the demands of private administrators and investors.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldto
World News@lemmy.ml•Kiev will have to make ‘painful concessions’ to achieve peace – German foreign ministerEnglish
223·4 days agoOh boy, strap in. Can’t wait to hear how many keyboard commandos think Ukrainians should get shoved into the meat grinder for another year.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldto
Global News@lemmy.zip•Singapore executes Malaysian drug trafficker in 12th execution this yearEnglish
1·4 days agoThe number of rich shits in Singapore who are coked out of their gords eight days out of seven.
This killing is pure sadism.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldto
Technology@lemmy.world•Peter Thiel dumps entire Nvidia stake, slashes Tesla holdings amid bubble fearsEnglish
1·19 days agoEven if Nvidia stocks crash, they will recover.
NVIDIA is up 1500% in two years, with a p/e ratio of 56 in a market that’s absolutely ravenous for semiconductors. The idea that the demand for semiconductors can flatline as data center production stales and NVIDIA’s valuation will just rebound to its current high is… well, it’s highly speculative what NVIDIA is going to do, but I wouldn’t bank on the current status quo.
If nothing else, it’s a stock that can safely be described as “overvalued”. Selling now isn’t a bad idea.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldto
Technology@lemmy.world•Peter Thiel dumps entire Nvidia stake, slashes Tesla holdings amid bubble fearsEnglish
17·19 days ago-
Peter Thiel sells his Tesla stake
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Telsa price goes up
Lolz. Lmao even.
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UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldto
World News@lemmy.ml•Nobel peace prize winner María Corina Machado offers to sell $1.7 trillion of Venezuela's assets to US corporationsEnglish
6·23 days agoIn a few more months, she’ll be taking the title of President off Juan Guaidó.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldto
World News@lemmy.ml•Nobel peace prize winner María Corina Machado offers to sell $1.7 trillion of Venezuela's assets to US corporationsEnglish
56·23 days agoThe “Peace Prize” winner has been trying to violently overthrow the Venezuelan government since the Bush Era failed coup in 2002.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldto
Technology@lemmy.world•Valve Announces New Steam Machine, Steam Controller & Steam FrameEnglish
330·24 days agoWhat is up with Valve and their obsession with those stupid touchpads? I hated that on the old Steam D-Pad. Hypersensitive seemingly every moment except when you needed it to be.
The XBox and the PS figured out how to make traditional controllers very well. Nintendo loves to get freaky with it and does a better than average job of innovating in the space. But Valve just seems to want to cobble together spare parts into a janky whatever the hell this is. I don’t get it.
Whomever is making these things, you don’t have to keep doing this. Just be normal!
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldto
Technology@lemmy.world•28-pound electric motor delivers 1000 horsepowerEnglish
4·1 month agoNah, his complaint was lack of torque.
Maybe just had torque confused with horsepower? That’s been the historical trade-off between gas and electric. Sure, its very easy to get an electric motor to jump into action. But it is comparatively difficult to generate the same amount of power with equivalent fuel density.
A gallon of refined gasoline packs insane energy.
Much of which is lost to heat when combusted, which is the historical hang-up.
Not that batteries don’t have their own heating problems. But the benefit of batteries is that they’re an engineering problem we can solve with miniaturization, which we’ve become incredibly good at. We’re at a soft ceiling in terms of engine chemistry. Petroleum is about as refined as we’re going to get it. Combustion’s math is what it is. Improvements to the efficiency of modern engines have stalled out as an automotive tool, even to the point that a gas engine powering an electric capacitor in a hybrid yields performance improvements over the gas engine just spinning the wheels directly.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldto
Technology@lemmy.world•28-pound electric motor delivers 1000 horsepowerEnglish
91·1 month agoWhat could he have possibly been trying to say?
I mean, the general appeal of ICE engines is the fuel, not the engine. Gasoline is generally more energy dense than lithium.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldto
Technology@lemmy.world•New Study: At Least 15% of All Reddit Content is Corporate Trolls Trying to Manipulate Public OpinionEnglish
3·1 month agoGenerally speaking, I don’t check the age/gross karma on an account unless I’m suspicious. And by then… plenty of older accounts with lots of karma are HailCorporate to the gills. Nevermind the mods.
I just can’t take anything on that site seriously
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldto
Technology@lemmy.world•New Study: At Least 15% of All Reddit Content is Corporate Trolls Trying to Manipulate Public OpinionEnglish
2·1 month ago“At least” is doing some heavy lifting


War with Venezuela
Intervention in Nigeria
Bankrolling Gaza Genocide
ICE pogroms at home
Navy circling Taiwan like a school of sharks
Ongoing conflict with Iran and Yemen
How many wars can the US juggle at once?