Corporate Capture in California | Hacker News Reader

Corporate Capture in California

prospect.org

29 pointsjocker1217 comments

Corporate capture in California is WAY bigger than just the DMV.

Just do some scroogling on CPUC (California Public Utility Commision) and their treatment of net metering and other utility reforms.

California is a very rich state, and if you want to find corruption, just follow the money...

I'm curious with what you are referring to with respect to CPUC and their net metering decision. I googled it and saw that they recently went away from net metering.

Austin, TX is one of the first locales (if not the first) that used a "Value of Solar" metric instead of net metering. I may hate this from a personal perspective as someone who wants to put up solar panels on my house, but I also acknowledge that net metering fundamentally doesn't make sense and is unfair.

That is, a utility can only survive of it buys electricity at wholesale rates and sells it at retail rates. Net metering is essentially having the utility buy power at retail rates. There are tons of costs with maintaining the grid beyond just the cost of power, and it wouldn't make sense for a customer to get the benefit of that grid hookup and pay nothing if they're "net 0".

"a utility can only survive of it buys electricity at wholesale rates and sells it at retail rates."

That is only true if the utility invests in the generation equipment. Individuals are paying 100% of the capital cost of solar generation equipment, which the utility uses locally at time of generation at basically no incremental cost. The utilities very much benefit from this at nearly retail rates (less the incremental maintenance costs of the local grid.) Yes, there should be some user fee for connecting to the grid, but it is not anywhere near the full difference between retail and wholesale energy costs...

PG&E is the culprit.

Take a look at each incremental change by the CPUC, and you'll see that they went too far the other way with "unfair" net metering. Concurrently, they have incrementally raised electricity rates and are charging some of the highest in the country. I routinely pay 50c/kwh for electricity, no matter what confusing "plan" I am on.

This has happened throughout my time in california. Even when I had a small apartment (years ago), the tiered electricity rates were horrendous because the baseline rate was based on someone with both gas and electricity, and the apartment did not have gas available.

fwiw, there are two base rate plans. If you are on the electricity+gas plan, but don't have gas, you're overpaying. have pge put you on the electricity-only base rate plan.

I don't remember there being a electricity-only base rate plan years (and years) ago. maybe I just had higher than normal usage?

Point is, If PG&E's map is wrong, and they have you on a gas+electricity plan when you only have electricity, you have to call them up and tell them that you aren't.

" hindered the path of an ambulance carrying a man who was struck by a vehicle"

Not to mention, almost never to mention, the empty police car that was also blocking the way.

It took both to kill that man

This is a national issue. No point singling out California for serving the money like everyone else.

I’m sick of this dumb anti-SDC narrative that all the local news media is pushing. I get it, big tech bad, change scary, controversy good for clicks and ad impressions. I’ve used them like 10 times now and know several other people actively using them in SF, and I’ve coexisted with them for years as a pedestrian throughout the Bay Area, and have had nothing but positive experiences with them.

Honestly fuck these journalists, this is life saving technology and if they hold us back because they can’t bully local government into making it easier for them to bully SDC, they have blood on their hands.

"I’ve used them like 10 times now and know several other people actively using them in SF, and I’ve coexisted with them for years as a pedestrian throughout the Bay Area, and have had nothing but positive experiences with them."

I've had nothing but positive experiences with cars in thousands of encounters over many months, but tens of thousands of people still die in accidents every year. Not observing a rare event in a small number of encounters isn't much in the way of statistical evidence.

"Works for me" is a bizarre defense of self-driving cars. Regardless, it's not only journalists, though I know they are a favorite punching bags. Lots of normal people are justifiably angry and/or scared of autonomous vehicles.

Statistics is just one piece of the picture, and when statistics can support something in a divided topic, proponents of that thing tend to irrationally tunnel-vision the statistics angle. Bad software is already an unending nightmare that makes life difficult and engenders a lot of bitterness. We see companies prioritize the wrong things all the time. If a car killed my loved one because of software and lobbying and the blind supporters of these companies, I would be insane with fury directed at those responsible, just as I would be with a distracted driver if they caused the accident, if not more so.

People care a lot about agency, and the reason for a person's death matters a lot. To take an extreme example, if autonomous cars result in much fewer road deaths, but the deaths they do cause are due to a robot arm coming out of the dashboard and stabbing the driver to death, people aren't going to accept that, and it would be ridiculous to stubbornly point at the statistics and just insist that humans must not have human feelings.

Prove that it is life-saving instead of life destroying.

Oh, nevermind. You’d need the data that they sued to keep you from getting your hands on.

But yeah, I’m sure they have nothing to hide and this is just good technology with no problems.

https://archive.ph/vuMVu

"Despite recurring safety problems, these companies had no problems receiving these permits, which critics have condemned."

So the expectation is that there be no safety problems, because taxis never have safety problems?

Your quote implies neither of those things.

It really does. The "safety problems" are trivial compared to the "safety problems" with conventional vehicles, but since we're used to 50,000 people dying each year, we're much more concerned about the possibility that a fraction of that number might die with some new technology.

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