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[Maximum Spin]

So how about that fed meeting?

[McTraveller]

Fun, France is turning off idling power plants (including nuclear ones!) because there is so little demand relative to supply that spot prices are going negative.  I'm guessing they aren't letting the retail customers "pay nothing" for the power though....

I'm realizing more and more that we have a messed up system where even things like utilities operate only if they can make a profit.  I wish we had a system that had a goal of making energy as cheaply as possible (including externalities), rather than making money; then such instances of "negative prices" would be hailed as as the proverbial "energy too cheap to meter" utopia instead of as a calamity.

EDIT: strikethrough

Second Edit: What indeed about the Fed meeting?  Nothing really surprising there. I still like it; I'm getting 4.65% APR on my FDIC-insured savings account (sadly 3.5% after taxes, because simple interest is taxed as income instead of capital gains - fun systematic things going on there) and only paying 2.25% on my mortgage. Of course I'm getting even more return on my actual capital-gains friendly investments which aren't even in my IRA... my personal accounts are up more than 10% in a month, will be interesting to see how they fare for the whole year so they qualify for the reduced capital gains tax rate if I need to cash them out.

[Maximum Spin]

Fun, France is turning off idling power plants (including nuclear ones!) because there is so little demand relative to supply that spot prices are going negative.  I'm guessing they aren't letting the retail customers "pay nothing" for the power though....

I'm realizing more and more that we have a messed up system where even things like utilities operate only if they can make a profit.  I wish we had a system that had a goal of making energy as cheaply as possible (including externalities), rather than making money; then such instances of "negative prices" would be hailed as as the proverbial "energy too cheap to meter" utopia instead of as a calamity.

Why would it be a good thing if energy is being produced only to be wasted?

[dragdeler]

The kind of too shortly formulated wish that's going to make the genie screw you over... My dude if you ever meet him tell him you wish for every household to be in possession of more energy production capacity than they use, in a manner that satisfies all safety concerns.

http://simplicityinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/The-Paradox-of-Oil-Samuel-Alexander.pdf

[McTraveller]

Why would it be a good thing if energy is being produced only to be wasted?

Well of course that's not a good thing.  What you do want is excess generation capacity so that if you have a disruption to other supply somewhere, or a sudden demand spike, you're not SOL. 

There's definitely a balance to be had - you don't want to spend too many resources on capacity that you'll never use.  However, you don't want to disincentivize having spare capacity. Having insufficient spare capacity is a great way to have all sorts of problems.  So again, it's about balancing things.

It's quite interesting from a standpoint of, what do you do if you have otherwise serviceable equipment that isn't used just because of a capital cost repayment structure set up decades ago doesn't work as well due to technological developments?

[EuchreJack]

It occurs to me that Capitalism itself is a flawed economic system, as every society that has used it has also had a built-in underclass to exploit.

The British had their colonies, then their former colonies that were still economically dependent.

The Americans started their country with a sizable slave population, whose decedents can still be exploited. There is also a long-standing tradition in America to use immigration (legal and illegal) as a way to build and maintain an underclass.

[dragdeler]

It does not stop there, we are compressing the past and the future into this very instant to make a quick buck. Any avenue is good enough to invent a new way to externalise the cost. And since everything relies on growth well, at some point the magic runs out and you can only produce x% more goods (we're passing that cap in may domains too) or produce for x% less money or sell it for x% more. X being the percentage of growth required for the business to sustain itself... Which has the same dynamic as compound interest so even just mathematically it would have never worked, assuming infnite innovation magic juice.

[Maximum Spin]

It occurs to me that Capitalism itself is a flawed economic system, as every society that has used it has also had a built-in underclass to exploit.

The British had their colonies, then their former colonies that were still economically dependent.

The Americans started their country with a sizable slave population, whose decedents can still be exploited. There is also a long-standing tradition in America to use immigration (legal and illegal) as a way to build and maintain an underclass.

That's called "mercantilism". The early capitalist writers considered capitalism to be the opposite of mercantilism.

[EuchreJack]

Pretty good article about hype versus reality in the economy:
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/08/09/business/consumer-spending-travel-value-nightcap

[McTraveller]

Yeah that article is a good example of the difference between anecdote and data.  Basically if you're a crap company, people will start looking for alternatives. That doesn't mean the entire economy is in bad shape; in fact, it means it's in good shape, that people can find alternatives.

I'm still waiting for an economic system change that eliminates the volatile business cycle... there's got to be a way to have steady improvements rather than this boom-bust nonsense. I'm old enough now that I don't think I'll see it in my lifetime though.

[Frumple]

That's... basically keynesian economics, iirc? More or less the entire point of that was to mitigate the boom-bust cycle, and as far as I'm aware it largely works for it.

We still get boom-bust cycles of note because, well, lots of folks don't like to follow keynesian economics 'cause they want to take advantage of the boom-bust cycle and have the resources to do so even though it means shitting on the rest of us, heh.