Millions of Americans could lose their electricity as shutoff moratoriums expire | Hacker News Reader

Millions of Americans could lose their electricity as shutoff moratoriums expire

carbonswitch.co

56 pointsclaudeganon34 comments

Why is punitive electricity shutoff a thing at all, let alone in a pandemic? Losing A/C or a fridge’s worth of food can be a death sentence for some people who are on the edge, or more commonly push them over into homelessness. Same goes for water. Society is judged by how it treats its most vulnerable. Liens can be placed on houses, collections can be done other ways, or we can just forgive and forget. The taxpayer built the grids, and in many places subsidises generation. We don’t have to be cruel.

The cruelty is the point.

The US is a country where farmers destroy food while people go hungry. It’s a country where houses sit empty for months while people go homeless. It’s a country where one person amassed $200 billion while millions of others have to ration their life sustaining medications because they can’t afford to pay for them.

The economic system is totally unfit for purpose and the values system is completely inverted, valuing channeling wealth to the already wealthy while punishing those who aren’t every step they take.

This. It is an intended feature, not a bug, and it's either willfully ignorant, stunningly uninformed, or intentionally malicious to obfuscate this. To whoever reflexively downvoted the parent comment just because it tells an uncomfortable truth about America: your actions are part of the problem.

I didn't downvote the comment, but this seems like an extraordinarily combative response to what you assume others are thinking about a pretty unclear issue. When you say it's an intended feature, for example, who is it specifically that intends the feature? I've never seen anyone say it's a good thing for poor people to go without electricity, but perhaps you have.

Generally anyone who believes in free-market capitalism will say this is an intended feature.

Have you never heard of "actions have consequences?"

You're probably not going to hear someone just outright say this is good but they will allude to it.

Deep down they know it's bad, hence why most won't just come and say homelessness is a good thing.

If they don't say it's good, and they know deep down it's not good, in what sense do they support it? Again, I'd be interested to read up on it if you have examples in mind, but every "free market capitalism" person I'm familiar with agrees it'd be great if everyone had electricity and nobody was homeless.

Every economic system ends up with both a carrot and a stick.

In some systems, there is the idea that people will take only what they need, and they will of course work hard for the common good. Once the reality of human nature makes it clear that this is a fantasy, out come the rifles and prison camps.

In other systems, the carrot and stick are just natural consequences of nobody intervening. If you don't work, that's fine... but you won't earn anything, and you thus won't be able to convince other people to provide you with things like electricity.

We can adjust the economic system to be more one way or the other. Pretending that the carrot and stick need not exist is a path to hyperinflation, which is a stick applied recklessly to everybody.

Seriously? You really think that the purpose of charging for electricity is to be mean to poor people?

Electricity is generated by enormous, complicated machines. Those machines cost money to build and maintain. They consume massive amounts of coal or natural gas, which has to be transported in. They have to pay specialists to keep everything running. They need to have people on call 24/7/365 to maintain thousands of miles of wires.

All of that costs money.

There's a simple rule: Everyone pays for the electricity they consume.

The electrical power industry is highly regulated by the government. Utilities have to provide power to all areas, they can't overcharge people too far above their costs, and they have to give plenty of notice before rate increases or disconnection for non-payment.

Hogwash. It would cost only $12B a year to pay for electricity for the poorest 10 million households. The defense budget was increased by 43B/year in 2018.

You don't think usage would go up dramatically if electricity was free?

You could have a free tier per person.

“Only” $12,000,000,000 / year.

What's more important? People having basic utilities or the latest killer drone?

Comparing costly new services to the national military budget is classic “whataboutism”. The military budget is a popular punching bag. It’s true, about 4% of the US GDP goes to the military. That 4% buys us — and our allies — nearly guaranteed deterrence from major armed conflict. And a lot of that spend goes right back into the economy.

Do you think giving people electricity and housing and education doesn't "go right back into the economy"?

For instance this is what happens in the U.K. if you don’t pay your water bill. https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/consumer/water/water-suppl...

You can be disconnected from electricity in rare circumstances, but I personally haven’t heard of it...

In Ontario Canada, you can be disconnected from electricity and Water, and they will disconnect it without mercy, on time, but only not during the winter months for obvious reasons that you could kill people.

That's true, but you can also lose your house for completely unrelated debts in the UK (i.e., you could pay your mortgage but if you have a different, unrelated loan that you default on then that creditor could have a court sign off on seizing your house).

This how debt law works pretty much everywhere. Creditors have the right to seize virtually any assets to cover their outstanding loans.

This is one area where the US has really good protections. Even most people that file Chapter 7 (liquidation bankruptcy) in the US don't lose any assets. Courts will generally only liquidate investment accounts, vacation homes, high-dollar collectibles, etc. They won't take your primary home, car, typical personal possessions, etc.

That only applies to water bills, and if I remember correctly the reason why that rule exists is that the UK was starting to have cholera outbreaks before it was put into place. Usually, I think electricity suppliers here deal with people who don't pay their bills by forcing them onto prepayment meters that require them to pay up front for it and automatically cut them off when the money runs out. So technically they're not disconnected entirely, but they sure aren't getting electricity unless they pay for it.

What's the alternative? If the electric company's not allowed to shut off service to non-paying customers, what would stop someone from just shredding every single electric bill they receive?

If everyone knows there's no consequence for ignoring a bill, why would anyone ever pay?

Wage garnishment? Works for child custody, use it for something more critical.

If they don't have wages, allowing people to relocate with a large time frame from delinquency (like 3 months) without electricity cuts.

Debt accumulation without interest whose payments can be garnished from wages once pay arrives.

There are many ways of solving the problem if there's will to do so.

I've seen wage garnishment work terribly. A guy works at my company for a week or two and then ghosts once we get the state letter mandating wage garnishment for child support. One woman (of many this particular charmer owed) was owed over $25k, and she will almost certainly never see a dime.

Over here (Netherlands), the right to electricity and gas was (and still is?) so strong that even squatters, once they properly established themselves, would get access to these services.

More specifically, they had to find their way into a year-plus abandoned property with no registered plan for the future (at the time of 'break-in'), make sure to have basic furniture (bed, table?), and then they'd be able to call whoever they needed to get gas and electric.

Leaving aside my opinions on squatting, I always felt it was a good thing that in our society, access to these fundamental things is so enshrined that it even applies to people breaking into a place and claiming it their own.

To be fair, squatters rights are specifically protected in law. The idea being that someones right to housing supersedes someone elses right to keep a property vacant indefinitely.

Copying a previous comment of mine, because this is an important issue and also not a surprise to anyone who's been paying a modicum of attention (the comment was originally in response to someone who characterized those who have their water turned off in the US as "choosing to live a lifestyle" beyond their means):

They really don't choose to "live a different lifestyle". It is simply the case that water, one of the basic necessities for life, is not readily available to many low-income Americans. Water access is routinely turned off or simply not available [0, 1, 2, 3] for those who can't pay or who are unlucky enough to live in certain areas. It is another example of the rampant wealth inequality [4] and degradation of social support [5] that been worsening in the US for decades [6, 7, 8]

[0] https://www.usnews.com/news/healthiest-communities/articles/....

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52384622

[2] https://time.com/longform/clean-water-access-united-states/

[3] https://www.vox.com/identities/2020/4/17/21223565/coronaviru....

[4] https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev-soc-0....

[5] https://people.umass.edu/crotty/Austerity_War.pdf

[6] https://www.nber.org/chapters/c7443.pdf

[7] http://www.macrohistory.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/HSCF_....

[8] https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdfplus/10.1086/708815

I'm sure its covered in your linked articles, but it is worth pointing out that for many Americans, water is delivered by a pumped well that is dependent on electricity.

So if you shut off electric service, you may also be cutting off access to water. Alternative water sources can be very expensive by comparison.

https://www.circleofblue.org/2018/world/infographic-househol...

Seriously. Seems like electricity & water should be like back taxes in terms of "expenses that can be attached to a house". You shouldn't be turning off anyone's electricity or water (within reasonable usage) if they are still legally allowed to occupy the house.

When that person is evicted, then just like I can buy foreclosed properties that have taxes attached to them, I may also have to pay for the electricity and water that was never paid.

I think we're just in a societal trough right now. There's a broad swing that's constantly happening throughout history between selfishness/selflessness. Right now, we're going through a selfishness phase. It doesn't matter how well you appeal to people to be less selfish. They'll come up with justifications for why selfishness is better/more rational, etc. Current trends in thought dictate that people start with differently tuned assumptions. You can logically justify anything if you start with the right assumptions.

After a few decades, we'll be swinging back to selflessness and doing just as good a job of justifying why that makes more sense.

I don't know if "selfish" is the word. It's not good business to let your customers starve, or even force them to pay for extra food instead of paying their electric bills.

I guess this is what happens when everything is left up to the individual and the market. In general, either these companies lower prices for all their customers or maintain the same prices with fewer customers. Apparently the latter is better for them and they have no interest in going into lending. Maybe unemployment insurance could have helped but, judging by the article, a lot of these people may not have been able to afford that even if it was widely available.

I think it's just one of those things nobody's gotten around to reforming. I've never seen an explicit defense of the practice.

This makes an interesting point. I mean, it could be argued that the systems of reform are increasingly complex. Information relating to the problems is increasing exponentially. Yet our individual ability to process and act on this information seems to be where it's always been. People paid to actively thwart reform are making a lot more than you are, and they're living on K street, not wherever you are.

A nation of people unhappy with deep-seated systemic troubles, and a widespread feeling of helplessness to be an agent of change. Acting local may help us feel better, but often it doesn't do a whole lot to fix the problem.

Marijuana legalization may be a perfect fit for the times in which we find ourselves. The ultimate tool to 'ride it out.' Alternately, you can spend several hours a day deeply troubled after reading the news, or make token financial contributions to public interest groups doing stuff you buy into.

Maybe someone can suggest a post-news-reading algorithm to feel less horrible about things.

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