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Comment by autoexec | Hacker News Reader

> Texans generally do not give a shit about anyone but themselves

They don't seem to care about themselves either. It's their own land/water/air they pollute by letting corporations exploit them. It's their own people who freeze to death when their shitty power grid can't keep up with extreme weather, or who die from overheating while at work. It's their own family members who die in fertilizer plant explosions. Their own kids who are being mangled at trampoline parks. They're the ones living in the state with the highest population without heath insurance in the country.

Companies have convinced Texas that regulations are from the devil so that they can make money hand over fist at the expense of Texans and the people of Texas fell for it. They figured out a lot time ago that if you can convince a Texan that you're giving him freedom from The Man, you can bend that Texan right over and have him thank you for sticking it wherever it pleases you.

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Have you spent much time in Texas?

I lived there for 17 years.

Certainly never ran into anyone who feels the way you just described.

Or do you have some sort of political viewpoint that's influencing your opinion?

If Texas wasn't aggressively anti-regulation they wouldn't constantly suffer from those problems all of which are caused directly by the lack of regulations that would have prevented them.

In your 17 years of experience were Texans demanding regulations to protect themselves, their environment, and their families? Were they refusing to elect officials who would allow corporations to exploit them?

Ok, so political opinion then.

Cause and effect is not a political opinion

Believing that the issues you mentioned are cause and effect is certainly a political opinion.

Regulations demanding you run your power like you live in Anchorage, which had warmer temps than Houston during the storm, has other effects. Such as raising power prices and harming other customers and robbing their families of food and other necessities that money can buy. Only retroactively after this record breaking storm can you decide it wouldn't cause net harm.

If Texas wasn't so anti-regulation they'd have been on the regulated national grid and wouldn't have had much problem when the unusual cold came. The entire rest of the country isn't robbed of their food and other necessities. We're also mostly not freezing to death. There's no "net harm" being done to the entire country (except for Texas) caused by making sure that power companies are held to better standards.

You're arguing for more distribution of Texas power sources, which is the real benefit of tying into a wider grid. They achieve elements of this by tying into Mexico. Perhaps feds should deregulate the grid and allow Texas to connect rather than holding Texas hostage to follow regulations before connecting.

Id argue regulations blocking deregulated connection to fed grid as at least arguably as valid an opinion as the regulated one. Regulations killed Texans because they are so obsessed with their fed grid rules theyd rather Texans die than grant ERCOT unregulated access.

The national grid works because it is regulated. If you allow states to hookup their garbage unregulated systems to it, there would no longer be a regulated grid and the entire system would be made vulnerable.

It was the refusal to follow the same rules everybody else plays by that caused the problem for Texans, not the fact that rest of the country has standards and insists that they're followed.

The regulated grid works. The "we don't need rules" grid failed, and it will continue to fail Texans until they care about themselves and families enough to demand better. They don't even have to demand connection to the national grid, Texans could just demand regulations for their own grid that are even stricter than the national grid's rules and stay separate. Texas could create a system of regulations that make their grid the most well-run grid in the country.

ERCOT + unregulated fed backup to ERCOT almost assuredly would be more robust than just ERCOT. Regulations killed Texans.

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