I’m not sure why we pay for electricity in the first place. Reliable electricity, clean water. These things are fundamental to modern human existence. Why do we have to pay for them at all other than greed?
Paying for your electricity helps align incentives so that you can make the trade-off of investing to lower usage vs. just buying the power you want at market rate... and bearing that cost means you have the freedom to make that trade-off rather than it being made for you.
1) I lived in Iraq for a while, and they have free electricity. What happens there is that they have to implement rolling blackouts because when people do have electricity they turn on every appliance, light, tv, ... Having some kind of cost involved helps to limit this type of silly behavior.
2) At some point, someone is paying for electricity even if they don't send me a bill every month. Let's say the government funds free electricity for everyone. As someone who tries to conserve energy, my costs will go up while the guy next door keeps his 3k sq-ft house at 65 degrees all summer pays less than he does now. That does not seem like a good system.
Also, paying $0.10 per kWh makes us choose between using an air conditioner to cool the interior of an occupied building to 20 degC, or wasting power on mining proof-of-work cryptocoins.
There may be a case for having the first N kWh of residential household use in a month be free, and metering the excess at a higher rate. If I got unlimited electricity at no cost, I, for one, would have an aluminum smelter in my back yard--right next to the Moon-etching laser, programmed to write "CHAIRFACE".
There may exist theoretical alternate systems that can allocate more fairly than a market system. If one can do that with unmetered, no-additional-cost-to-the-consumer electricity, I'd be happy to hear about it, as I am not currently aware of any.