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> What happens in your non-authoritarian bureaucracy when the bureaucrats make a decision you believe to be in error and you set out to do something inconsistent with it?

You follow the process to have the decision reviewed and you make your case. Even if they reject what you propose you're still able to try to convince others that your idea is better and, assuming that you have a democracy, you can have the rules changed.

> If they're allowed to stop you then you can't demonstrate that their policy is in error

I struggle to imagine a scenario where there's no possible way to determine if an error was made or if a change might be an improvement without just doing it anyway. If it isn't plainly obvious that your idea would be better and there are also no facts, research, examples, models, etc. that give support to your idea you should expect to have trouble convincing others of how great it is. When something only impacts you personally, you can blindly try things without any reason to think it might be better all you like, but people who are making decisions that impact large numbers of people, whole communities even, should require some kind of evidence before changing things for everyone. Ideally, there'd be a process in place so new solutions can be proposed, promising ideas can be explored, researched, trialed, tested, then implemented.

> Doing that sort of thing suppresses diversity and breeds monoculture, which is how you get catastrophic systemic failures.

Sometimes, but not always. What you'd call monoculture can be really great. It's why international standards and internet protocols exist and are followed. It promotes interoperability. It'd be a lot easier to write an app to help people keep tabs on their power usage and charges if there was just one company putting out bills and an API. Even with a single company providing a service they can still make good use of diversification to limit their risks. Companies with tons of competitors often take those kinds of precautions to avoid single points of failure within their operations. The last ISP I worked for had over 15 types of modems in the field from a variety of manufacturers. Some were being trialed, some were being phased out, but a firmware problem or failing component impacting one model wouldn't take down every customer. Companies tend to try to standardize where they can though.

There are certainly some trade offs involved with having one organization handling things, and it's not ideal for every type of service, but things like utilities are good candidates because of the scales involved and because the "product" being delivered is the same. When power companies are doing what's expected of them nobody has a preference for the electricity that Company A provides over what Company B delivers. I wouldn't want a single company making all the pizza though, because in that case variety matters.

> A society where everyone is thinking of the common good is the one where individualism works, because then you have no need for a giant bureaucracy trying to coerce everyone into doing the right thing

A society where everyone is thinking of the common good is the one where the bureaucracy's job isn't coercion, simply efficient management and organization. Authoritarianism is the problem with bureaucratic authoritarianism, not bureaucracy.

In a high trust society there would never be a need for more than one organization responsible for supplying the public with something like power or water. Centralizing those functions to a single organization would eliminate redundancies and inefficiencies reducing the costs necessary to provide the service. In a high trust society that single company's goal would only be to provide a quality service to the public, instead of demanding endlessly increasing personal enrichment at the expense of the public.

A high trust society wouldn't even have an agreement like the terms this company asks customers to agree to.

Companies in the US have violated the public's trust so often and so brazenly that consumers are forced to treat them as adversarial. Companies insist that we live in a low trust society because they want to take advantage of us, and they aggressively oppose consumer protection laws and efforts to regulate them in ways that would allow us to have more trust.

> Para. 15 explicitly obligates GMP to permit this: As Lessee, Customer’s control over the Energy Storage System is limited to its usage as a backup power source in the event of a power outage up to the point that the battery is completely depleted

That doesn't bind GMP, it binds the customer. It simply limits their control over the battery to a specific use under a specific circumstance. I suspect that GMP will often be left without the ability to stop users from using their battery as a backup in the event of a power outage (depending on the nature of the outage) but they make it clear that when they can, they are entitled to by adding:

"GMP shall have the ability to continuously utilize the Energy Storage System at its sole discretion for the Term and has the right to use all the energy in the battery."

It does state that the system they install will have "whole- home backup power capability" and the program description includes the line "The Energy Storage System can [note CAN and not WILL] provide Customer with whole-home backup power during a Grid outage."

I think there's a fair expectation that at least some of the time the battery will work to supply whole-home backup power when there's an outage. They were pretty careful to pepper in enough weasel words throughout to keep their options open when they have options at all though. Like you said, outages can be "bidirectional". A cut cable isn't going let stored power out any more than it lets the power in.

The biggest concern I can see is power being shifted to keep the lights on for specific customers while leaving others with power-filled batteries in the dark or draining faster. We already see a lot of inequalities with how power companies treat people. Wealthier neighborhoods are often less likely to experience outages, get their power restored sooner, are more likely to get upgrades/maintenance, etc. Having these batteries in people's homes, especially those farther out from critical infrastructure (which usually gets top priority from utility companies) can actually help with that, but only if the utility company plays fair. It'd be nice to see something explicit that would give priority to the energy stored in the battery to the homeowner who helped pay for it in times of need.

> The internet usage clause is reasonable and common sense, IMO. I suppose it would be better to include an upper limit to make sure that it isn't hogging the connection, but it would be my very last concern.

I'm glad that reportedly the bandwidth usage isn't heavy at least. It'd be nice if they segmented off the device for customers when they installed the service. Not many users will be able to isolate their home network from the utility's equipment. I could see these batteries being a good target for hackers to get a foothold into a person's network and I've seen examples where companies use their access to a person's home network as a way to collect more consumer data through scans.

I'm also curious to know whats in the privacy policy they won't show you until after they show up to install the device.

> IIUC, the benefit for the customer is a battery backup that is much cheaper than buying the batteries themselves would be, plus the ability to make money when their battery is taken over for a few hours during occasional peak usage events. Provided the former override the latter, as seems to be the case, I don't see what the issue is.

They don't get a battery backup. The utility company gets a battery backup and the customer pays a large percentage of that cost. The utility company isn't obligated to let the consumer who paid for part of that battery draw power from it, ever. They explicitly state that all the energy it stores is theirs, and that they can drain all of it away any time they want to.

Customers are being contractually obligated to shell out thousands of dollars, over a 10 year commitment they're punished for backing out of, obligated to not hold the utility company responsible for any damage they cause, obligated to take on a bunch of liability for things they have no control over, obligated to allow the company access to their property, obligated to allow the company access to use their internet service free of charge, and for all of that the utility company isn't obligated to do anything but install the company's equipment on the customer's property

All the customer gets is that maybe they'll be paid for the power the company takes from the battery (the company doesn't have to pay anything) and to maybe get to draw power from it if there's a service outage (the company isn't obligated to let them use any of it).

There are customers who say they are being paid for that energy and they have been able to use the power to avoid outages, and that's great, but that can change at any time and for any reason because the terms they agreed to don't obligate the utility to do either of those things. The terms explicitly say that all of the energy in the battery belongs to the utility company and they can use it however they see fit.

Maybe this utility company is the nicest company in the world. Maybe the utility company today would volunteer out of the kindness of their heart to rebuild someone's house if a software update causes the battery to catch fire and the customer's home burned to the ground along with everything in it, but the terms say they wouldn't have to do that and couldn't be made to. Maybe the company would never ever stop paying customers for the energy they take, or leave the customer without power while they drain the full battery to help restore service for businesses or wealthier customers. The terms would let them do those things though.

You shouldn't pay out thousands of dollars, take on a list of obligations, and expose yourself to huge risks and liabilities and then still be forced to just hope that the company will do the right thing, and keep doing the right thing for the next decade of your life. That's the problem.

> It also would have required constant testing and cost whether I used it or not, with no ROI whatsoever beyond power backup, a lot more noise/local pollution/size, storage of significant amounts of extra fuel (be it propane or diesel) with the resulting challenges, etc.

According to the utility company you should have one anyway because you may not have access to the power available in your battery even when it is full. Even when you need it, they can decide to send it somewhere else.

> And I'm glad it wasn't only used for my needs. I like helping my neighbors, my town, and my state.

In this case you're also helping your utility company and being charged for the privilege. How often have they helped you with something you weren't paying them for?

> These aren't megacorps, utilities here are pretty tiny

Your energy company is a subsidiary of Énergir. It's the largest power company in Vermont providing service to the vast majority of the state. They also provide power for New York, Maine and Connecticut. Énergir is also the largest natural gas distribution company in Quebec. This is not a local mom and pop operation.

> I mean really, on some level everyone needs to be ready to contribute in general for life here sometimes. State is responsible for roads and such too, but if it's bad I and others get out our chainsaws (now electric! electric chainsaws are AWESOME) and winches and so on and get to work.

How much do your neighbors charge you when you help clear the roads with your chainsaws? Do they make you legally liable for any damage to cars if there are accidents on that road after you helped clear it? Would it be absurd if they did?

If you really want to volunteer to help host/power/secure/connect your utility company's infrastructure for them that's very sweet of you, I'm sure that will save them a lot of money, but they are also charging you a bill to do it for them and then they're leaving you liable for things entirely outside of your control while also making you agree that you'll be responsible for any harm caused by their equipment. They aren't being your friend here. They aren't looking out for you. They aren't acting like a part of your community. They are charging you and your state money, externalizing some of their costs and risks by putting them onto you, and charging you thousands for that.

Helping neighbors and contributing to communities is great! Getting taken for a ride by a utility company isn't either of those things. The relationship with their utility company is literally contractual. They make you sign a contract! A contract with very bad terms. They're pushing some of the typical costs of running their business onto their customers, leaving them entirely responsible in the event that anything goes wrong, even when their customers do nothing wrong and have no control over the situation, and they are making the customer pay them for the privilege while not being legally obligated to provide anything in return.

Also yes, paying taxes should entitle someone to basic minimums like the ability to pay for clean drinking water delivered to your tap, and reliable power delivered to your home. We aren't a developing country, we're the richest nation on Earth. The extent of the "effort on my part" should be limited to signing up with the utility company and paying my bills every month. Everything else is their job. It's what they are paid for. What "effort on your part" are you making in your life to help your water company? Your cable company?

> First, the batteries took the place of a generator,

The generator would have been yours, and only used for your needs. It wouldn't have involved any data collection, the uncompensated use of your bandwidth, or exposed you to so much liability.

> Part of the program is that in case of storm warnings or other risk it actually switches out from the VPP for the duration to protect you instead.

They may do this, but by their own terms they aren't obligated to. The good news is that in the event where a cable is cut/down and they lose the ability to siphon power from your battery you will be sure to get the benefit of whatever power it has stored. It's also nice that they compensate you for the power that they draw, but again, all of that energy is already theirs by right.

The state contracts them to provide the people with reliable power and you pay them for that service. They should be expected to reasonably deliver that in exchange. Installing their equipment inside people's homes can be part of how they manage that responsibility, but it's still their responsibility and they should compensate you for that and not expect you to pay them even more for the privilege of paying their costs and accepting liability.

> it was a genuine win/win even before getting into softer factors like reducing usage of fossil fuel peaker plants that a lot of us do really care about.

It's honestly not a bad idea conceptually. It seems like it can have real benefits, but the terms are exploitative. At a minimum they should be obligated to prioritize your power needs above others when it comes to energy stored in the battery on your premises, and they should be obligated to compensate you for power taken, as well as for providing them storage, access, security and bandwidth for their equipment, and they should also assume responsibility for any damage/harm their equipment causes to your property and anyone one on your property as long as it wasn't caused by tampering or improper use. Ideally, you'd also be able to opt out of all personal data collection (not related directly to the use/monitoring of their hardware), and any loss/theft/damage would be covered by their insurance (provided their equipment was reasonably secured), otherwise they'd have to pay you enough to get additional insurance coverage of your own.

I'm glad it worked out for you when you had it, but unless the terms were very different from what they are today you were absolutely cheated and being taken advantage of, even if you didn't feel that way.

This is like leasing a car except that the dealership can show up with other customers to take "your" car for test drives or just to drive it around for any other reason whenever they want to, for however long they want to, and they won't pay you back for any of the gas they use. Basically turning your personal garage into their distributed showroom.

Linked from that link: https://greenmountainpower.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/ES...

I'd feel better about this if they weren't charging people thousands for the batteries. As it is, this looks like a scam by utility companies to force their costs onto consumers and charge them for it on top of that. People should be being paid by the utility for storing, hosting, and allowing access to the power company's distributed infrastructure.

It's not as if the batteries people are paying for become their property, or are only for the homeowner's benefit. The utility company has the right to use that power however they want at any time including the "right to use all the energy in the battery". The homeowner also has to allow contractors, subcontractors, or third-parties onto their property. Physical access aside, they also have to allow the utility free access to their network and free use of their internet connection/bandwidth. The utility will not compensate homeowners for any of that.

Homeowners must also agree to install the utility company's cell phone apps/software. I'd bet those apps are collecting data and probably pushing ads too. They have to agree to the “Customer Privacy” terms, which will only be shown to them "upon installation of the Equipment".

The utility company advertises this as a means to prevent power outages (which, if they were doing their job in the first place, should be extremely rare occurrences), but the fine print makes it clear that homeowners should not assume that they will have any access to the power that battery holds in the event of a power outage or at any other time.

The utility also requires homeowners to agree to terms that state the utility will not be liable for any damage to persons or property caused by use of/replacement of/repair of/or the utility's failure to repair the utility's equipment and software. The homeowner also "bears the entire risk of loss, theft or damage" to the utility's equipment.

This would be a bad deal even if the utility were paying a monthly fee to homeowners. The fact that they've conned customers into paying the utility for using them, their internet, and assuming all liability/responsibility for the utility company's hardware is insane.

Texas has convicted residents of other states for violating their abortion laws. https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/new-york-attorney...

Unless you or your "crime" is covered by an existing shield law you could end up in a lot of trouble. Even if the shield law protects you, if you ever enter the state you could be thrown in prison or executed

If only AI were a files avilable to every person and not something that needs massive numbers of data centers and all of the RAM while being totally controlled by a very small number of very rich people.

Don't lose all hope. Federally, I wouldn't hold my breath, but states and cities are fighting back. California, New York, Connecticut, Georgia, Ohio, Maryland, Illinois, Seattle, New Jersey, have all banned surveillance pricing. Colorado almost did but their governor vetoed it, so hopefully he gets voted out on his ass soon, but there is more push back on this than I expected from both parties. Lots of places still have bills being worked on. https://www.icsc.com/images/made/c54c2b3e89d2a51d/Pricing-Le...

It is changing. It's accelerating, spreading, and getting worse all the time.

The sentence says "...the images and biometric data...are automatically and immediately deleted". It doesn't say that the information they learned by using the images and biometric data that they collected, such as your name, location, the timestamp etc is being deleted. Who you are and where you were at what time isn't an image and isn't your biometric data.

> there should be something like an accredited gambler law, where you're not allowed to gamble more than 1/3rd your paycheck except in certain circumstances.

What would that look like? Would gamblers have to send copies of their pay stubs or bank statements to every casino or gas station they visit and every gambling app they use? I'd be happy if we focused on restricting the most harmful actions of the companies who profit from the people they turned into addicts. No more online sports betting. No more adverting for gambling. No more targeting children with gambling in video games that accept real money for anything. No more using AI or surveillance to detect and target addicts.

> State lotteries are just a regressive tax targeting the poor.

As bad as the odds are, the lottery is still the best chance most players will ever have to be millionaires

> This happens at every gambling company in regulated markets like the US or Europe.

No something clearly different happens in regulated markets. There's a massive difference between "This would make us more money, but we won't do that because it's unethical" and "I wish we could get away with doing this unethical thing to make more money, but sadly current regulations make this one unprofitable for now. Lets increase our lobbying spend to try to fix that."

I think we should be able to expect a company to have ethics, just like we should be able to expect them to follow the laws, but we should also regulate them to ensure that they do and punish them meaningfully when they fail to.

I don't watch sports much, but the last times I did they filled the screen with ads for gambling in the middle of the games while they were being played

Not just mobile games. Roblox is basically an online child casino, powered by child laborers being compensated in Robux scrip. Fortnite isn't much better. We'd do a lot of good by regulating these games better too. The gambling addicts who got hooked with these games will move on to DraftKings when they're older. DraftKings knows this is their pipeline and has been investing in esports and video games like Call of Duty and establishing partnerships with Riot Games and Activision Blizzard.

> When privacy is a selling point on the enterprise plan regular users, even paying ones, are the product.

There's really no reason to think that enterprise plans are immune. While this analysis didn't test enterprise plans, and only focused on third party tracking, the people behind these companies have already demonstrated that they are willing to break the law to get what they want, are willing to lie to their users, willing to lie to the public, and even willing to lie to congress. Yet somehow people seem convinced that they'd never dare to lie to Random Corp LLC

It's certainly true that AI annoyingly sucking up to people and validating whatever insane rambling they feed it drives more engagement. When AI tells some guy who is 50 hours deep into AI psychosis that together they've discovered a new form of physics that will change the world he wants to believe it's all true.

I wonder how popular it'd be if someone started an AI company that was explicitly advertised as "blowing smoke up your ass as a service", and clearly said that their chatbot was written to always agree with anything you said and to tell you whatever you want to hear. I don't doubt there's at least some market for it, but I'm guessing not many people ask for that in their prompts with current AI offerings.

> how exactly?

The EPA already has the means for on site tests of emissions, industrial discharge, etc. They are also capable of monitoring and investigating to locate the source of problems.

> Its just in practice to implent this, the state has to become an autocracy at the same level of a dictatorship.

What are you even talking about? The government already knows everyone who gets welfare benefits. They also already know who employs those people and how much money they were paid. If a company pays so little that their employee still needs food stamps, the government knows how much it cost taxpayers to subsidize the labor expense of the employer.

> isnt that already the case?

No. It isn't. Same with data breeches and security incidents. Some small percentage of the people who are harmed might join a class action, but most people won't get any compensation for their losses (which may include death) and those that do get something don't typically get anything close to fair compensation, just a few bucks and/or coupons. DuPont poisoned you. Knowingly. How much money did they compensate you for that? People should be directly compensated when possible, but often there are harms that impact everybody, even if not directly. Sometimes it's not possible to track everyone down. It'd be better to invest that money into the society that was harmed than allow companies to profit from it. It's not just about compensation, but also giving an incentive to avoid or limit the harmful behavior. Crowdstrike's fuck up in 2024 cost the economy tens of billions. Do you think they paid that all back? Even the shareholders got screwed (https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/14/crowdstrike-defeats-sharehol...). It sure didn't take "a backdoor into every company" to figure out who was responsible for that.

The idea that companies should pay for the harms they cause isn't "socialist inspired" and doesn't require turning into "China" or the "USSR". It's something that any sane person would want. There are lots of ways to get that result. A Pigouvian tax is only one of them, better suited in some situations than others.

> The reason the firms do not want to invest in making fact-checking a first-class feature is that the appearance of being right is what people want from AI.

No, actually being right is what people want from AI, "the appearance of being right" is all that AI companies can deliver. It comes with the benefit that many people will be fooled into thinking that AI is more capable/useful than it actually is. AI companies have to either convince others that their product is something that it isn't, or that at least it will one day be something much more than it is.

> And "the rich" for the most part are paying their fair share.

In addition to the usual tax dodges, and the lobbying for loopholes/preferential tax policy, companies push a lot of harm onto the rest of society so that it becomes everyone else's problem. "their fair share" should include all of those externalized costs. Tax companies for the air and water they pollute. Tax companies for every employee who isn't paid enough money to support himself. Tax companies for every time one of their products makes people sick. Tax companies for data breeches and security failures. Until companies don't leave everyone else on the hook for cleaning up after their messes, they can't be said to paying anything close to their fair share.

> personal responsibility is the only reliable way in this world to consistently lead a happier life.

If there's a fight between you and a multinational corporation with hundreds of thousands of employees and trillions of dollars, and they're willing to devote more money that you'll ever see in your life towards manipulating you, lying to you, addicting you, removing alternatives, and making it harder for you to resist them, do you seriously think you're going to hold out? And even if you manage to do it, how long can you keep that up?

We do need people to try to act responsibly, but we need corporations to act responsibly as well. Regulations make that possible. Until we get them, sure, resist all you can, while you can, but you will slip up or be worn down eventually. If not in one area of your life, then in another and another. You can't stay hypervigilant 100% of the time, and the stress of being hypervigilant for long periods is hurting you. The attacks on us come from all directions. They target us in different ways. They learn all they can about us and they tailor their tactics to target us when and where we're at our weakest.

If you're having success avoiding screen addiction that's great! I've had some success limiting my use of cell phones too, but I can't say that it doesn't cost me or that everyone can do what I do. For now, I'm able to resist, but that could change. It can be too easy to look down on someone for failing and say they should have tried harder but you don't know how long they've fought or what else they're fighting. Some people can naturally fight harder and longer than others. Some people have to devote their limited resources to fighting other battles. As long as companies can continue to assault our well-being for their profits totally unchecked we're all fighting battles, and for most of them we might survive but we can't ever really win. Have some grace for the people who are struggling, and some compassion for the fallen. Eventually, in one way or another, you lose too.

I don't share your optimism. I mean, yeah, he's doing to die soon, but his followers will just be suckered by the next con man who follows his playbook.

That's true, but you can support and encourage policy that would reduce your country's dependence on the US, especially when it does so by supporting local products and services. Not only would that be good for your local economy, but you gain resilience and security.

You can work to limit your own dependence a little as well. Seek out FOSS products and alternative services and replace what US run services you can as often as you can with them. Reject small conveniences that require giving large amounts of your data to US companies.