I’m not sure what you mean. Are you saying that public utilities should be funded from taxes instead of charging for service? I don’t think having tax payers pay public utilities to overproduce electricity is going to fix the problem, especially since no amount of tax dollar funding can allow utilities to produce solar electricity when the sun isn’t shining.
Public utilities still need to cover their expenses, and they’re not going to be able to do that if they’re charging negative rates in the middle of the day and have no electricity to sell once the sun goes down.
Isn’t peak consumption around middle of the day for most countries?
I can’t speak to other countries, but in the US peak electricity demand generally occurs in the early evening.
Mfw electricity being cheap to generate is not economical
Cheap electricity is great for consumers, but not necessarily for producers. Some people might say, “well, screw producers,” but even if you take profit out of the equation, electric utilities need to be able to at least cover their expenses, and you can’t do that if the amount of electricity you’re generating relative to the demand is so high the price actually goes negative (meaning the utility is actually paying the consumer). Again, that’s good for consumers, but I’m sure you can see how that’s not a sustainable business model. And, like I mentioned before, it would be one thing if utilities could make up for this by selling for a higher price during peak, but by that point the sun is either setting or already set, depending on the time of year, so there’s just no solar electricity to sell, at any price.
That’s not what they were saying, they were saying that it’s not economical to have an abundance of electricity when people need it the least, and little or no electricity when people need it the most. It would be one thing if utilities could sell solar electricity at peak demand hours for a higher price, to make up the difference, but that’s just when solar generation is slowly down significantly or stopped entirely.
And, yes, I know that battery storage could theoretically solve this, but battery technology is not currently capable of providing electricity for the entirety of the time we need it. New technologies are being developed right now with the goal of achieving long term grid storage, but they are still in the R&D phase. I’m confident a suitable storage technology, or multiple technologies, will eventually come to market, but it’s going to take a while.
Regardless, it is likely we will always need some kind of on-demand power generation to supplement renewables and maintain grid stability, and I think nuclear is the best option.
But we shouldn’t act like the problem is that utilities are just greedy. Many utilities aren’t even for-profit companies, as many are either not-for-profit cooperatives or public entities. Sure, there are also many for-profit power utilities as well, maybe even some with connections to the fossil fuel industry, but generally power utilities are not some great villain.
Nintendo doesn’t want you to play their games if you’re not willing to follow their rules. Ok, that’s their prerogative, but that means I will not be playing their games…at least not their new ones.
I prefer playing on my Steam Deck these days, and I really don’t want to buy another handheld just to play Nintendo first party titles. I’m going to play some of my favorite classic Nintendo titles on my Deck using emulators and just not play the new stuff. I’m sure they’re great games, but so what? There are lots of great games. I’ve got a huge backlog of great games already in my Steam library, and 20 more on my wishlist. If Nintendo some day decides to make their titles available for Steam Deck or PC, I’d consider buying them, but since that’s extremely unlikely to happen, I think I’m just done with Nintendo.
Makes sense. Steam OS is Arch based, so Valve has a vested interest in it. Especially now that the Steam Deck is an unmitigated success.
I don’t think the decisions that led to our current monetary system were made arbitrarily, not at all.
The cost of living will just keep going up because inflation is necessary in our current, debt based monetary system. The Fed tries to keep this under control by not allowing the rate of inflation to go much beyond about 2% a year. The recent inflation issue we’ve been having wasn’t about inflation suddenly happening where it hadn’t been happening before, it was about the rate of inflation increasing beyond the Fed’s 2% target. When they talk about inflation getting back under control, they’re talking about the rate of inflation getting back to near 2%. But make no mistake: prices are still going up - they have to, that’s how the system works - and they will keep going up every year, seemingly indefinitely. For this reason, a cost of living raise equal to at least the rate of inflation is absolutely essential, otherwise workers are getting a pay cut.
But this is further complicated by the fact that the core inflation numbers are very broad. Housing costs are exploding. Core inflation would be much lower if not for rising housing costs. But the way housing costs increases are measured is by averaging housing costs across all markets, meaning the cost of housing in low demand areas is averaged with the cost of housing in high demand areas. This means that if you live in a high demand area, the core inflation rate doesn’t necessarily capture the true cost of living in your area, and that the cost of living in your area is going up much faster than the national average. Therefore, many workers need an annual cost of living increase that is much greater than the national inflation rate.
As far as I know, there is no national law requiring companies to give cost of living raises every year. Many companies do, but many don’t. A mandatory, annual cost of living raise is something that unions can negotiate, once again showing the value of unions.
They need our labor to make their profits. Fuck their profits.
Sounds like the moms are to blame. Moms need to be less forgiving of their sons, to better prepare them for their future relationships.
Of course parents not taking appropriate precautions doesn’t absolve the companies of responsibility. Unethical behavior is unethical behavior, even if there are things consumers can do to protect themselves from it. After all, the precautions wouldn’t be necessary if the companies didn’t engage in this behavior in the first place, so these precautions aren’t really solutions only mitigations.
The irony is, something like this probably would have been a lot less expensive to make, while also appealing more to fans. It’s funny how so many people in the movie business are not very good at, you know, the movie business.
Every corporation should have a worker advocate, a consumer advocate, and a community advocate on their board of directors. It is ridiculous that only the investors get to make the decisions, currently. Investors only care about one thing: maximum return on their investment. They don’t care how the company is run, they don’t care how many employees get laid off, they don’t care if the company is benefiting the community, they just want the value of their shares in the company to go up, and/or to receive the highest possible dividends at the end of the year. They want passive income, they want the value of their asset to go up so they will be wealthier. That’s it. It’s unacceptable that only the investors are given a vote, and that others, who are also deeply affected by how the company operates, don’t.
The level of paranoia is kind of crazy.
One of the many games just sitting in my steam library, waiting to be played.
We just got a leaked image from inside Team Cherry:
That should be illegal.
It’s funny how quickly opinions have (seemingly) changed regarding unions. For decades, both parties were pretty hostile to labor unions. Now, everyone wants to show how pro union they are. It’s been quite the dramatic 180°.
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We live in a society that generally looks down on working class people. Not all working class people, equally, though, as not everyone who sells their labor is culturally or socially in the same class. A professional athlete making tens of millions of dollars a year can’t really be counted in the same social class as a factory worker making $50K a year. That being said, very, very few people get rich by earning a wage. Generally speaking, if you want to get rich you have to have access to capital.
And getting rich is the goal. One’s position in the social hierarchy is closely tied to their wealth and income. For this reason, there’s a strong incentive to NOT do work that doesn’t pay a lot. Unfortunately for all of us, much of that work is absolutely essential for the functioning of any modern society. So, there’s a disconnect. The incentives are skewed, away from some of the most essential work and toward some of the least essential work. I think the long term effects of this could be disastrous, as we see more and more shortages of workers in essential fields.
But fear not, the capitalists have anticipated this and they have a solution: immigrants. Just bring people in from other countries to do the essential yet low wage, low status work. I don’t really think that’s a solution at all, and is more or less just delaying the inevitable.