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[Starver]

While the original act (if any) may not have been expected to have downed the whole system, it could have had the 'advantage' of initiating a cascade of failures to add immensely to the first relatively simple act of sabotage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003 (which mentions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Southern_Brazil_blackout as the only incident that was greater), showing the principle applies no matter what the initiator and, seemingly, no matter the 'sophistication' of the national systems concerned.

[LordBaal]

The thing is that a whole year to repair such damage?

[Egan_BW]

The thing is that a whole year to repair such damage?

Murphy's law applies.

[Starver]

Where devices trip to prevent overload problems, it probably involves just enough physical checks for line-and-box integrity to ensure the devices won't retrip. Or cause someone who dangerously assumes the power is still down to be hit by the returning surge.

But I recall that in talk about damaged equipment (I think in the context of a solar/geomagnetic-storm inducing rogue voltages in the system¹, which was a big topic of conversation around the turn of the century, once Y2K itself had been put to bed) it was said that there's not enough warehoused spare equipment in the world to swap in to the North American system alone if it needs a thorough overhaul of substations all over the place. There'd need to be a increased tooling-up operation in all the places that could produce them from scratch, and that could easily take weeks to properly start to get new product out to the respective field.

Probably not as intrinsically challenging in your case, I don't think you're trapped within the same kind of power-hungry and energy-obese areas as the US coastal metropolitan ones are, but they're probably not geared up to fix (or just maintain) your own system with quite the same matched level of commitment. I presume, that is, but possibly condescendingly so.


¹  But also in the wake of whichever one of the hurricanes it was came and smashed through NYC and caused power problems from the flooding.  Sandy, wasn't it?

[sluissa]

Hurricanes in florida also often cause that cascade effect. Line damage happens in a few areas. But the large chunk of repair time is taken up by going around to each pole and resetting/replacing the fuse there. A simple job, but there might be thousands of them, and even with a large supply of help shipped in from other areas/states, it can take weeks in the worst cases.

[PTTG??]

Here's my take on the capitalism/communism thing.

Capitalism fails because it embraces the fuck out of the tragedy of the commons.  It's how you get TCE in the drinking water, and end up with anthropogenic climate change-- with radical income disparity, and copyrights that last until the heat-death of the universe.

Communism fails because it does not acknowledge that some degree of self-interest seeking is necessary for ambition to push humanity forward;  What real incentive is there to take a huge risk for a possibly large return, if the potential for that large return is denied before the horse even leaves the stable.  It tries to get around this by demanding (with threat of law enforcement, and potentially military might) that these kinds of tasks be performed, but this has lackluster results, and only promotes a class divide between those with command of enforcement might, and those that do not. (EG, this is how you end up with gulags and shit; the demanding and enforcement of certain tasks being performed. The eventual 'comfort' with that use of force only makes that class divide deeper and deeper, and ends up making the ruling class complacent and megalomaniacal.)

The obvious road to take is one that navigates between those two.  This is more what modern Euro-Socialism attempts to do.  It ensures that the needs and rights of the citizens are met and protected, while also permitting personal wealth seeking in exchange for taking personal risks to try new things, or start a new business.

However, our fearless leaders have convinced the public that anything with any kind of safety net on it is "RED MENACE!" (queue stock footage of Stalin and gulags), and so here we are.

I think the real problem here is that we're discussing social progress in terms of ideologies (they're the words with -ism at the end) and expecting results. It's about as absurd as asking whether Catholicism or Protestantism would make for a better social framework. Each approach may have its advantages, but why the hell are we framing it that way? Rather, we should look at actual problems (say, self-regulating industries putting industry interests ahead of other stakeholders), determine what we want to achieve (equal representation of all stakeholders), the price we're willing to pay (modest increase to taxation), and explore the solutions that meet those requirements (government-run independent regulator). Pretty soon you'll find yourself actually making sense.

Edit: I'm not a big fan of the word 'Socialism". It's much like Fascism in that the word has become irredeemably tainted with its association with some rather nasty regimes, while simultaneously becoming terribly ill-defined outside an academic context due to overuse as an insult. It differs from Fascism in that Fascism has precisely no redeeming features, but that's a low bar to beat. Surely there's a less ambiguous more socially acceptable term for public policy aimed at alleviating poverty and facilitating public services for the masses. The Romans had publicly funded sewerage, so the idea isn't even modern.

Note: Example is for illustrative purposes only.

Hoping all is well in Venezuela, or at least as well as can be expected under the circumstances.

And yet, nobody hesitates to call themselves "capitalists" despite the monstrous things done by capitalist countries and organizations. I'm tired of the semantic treadmill. Socialism is socialism, and if someone is so ignorant as to not know what it means, they aren't really worth debating.

[Gentlefish]

Well, how about educating? Food co-ops are great examples of socialism at work. The Mondragon company is a massive worker's co-op that's super successful, too. Socialism isn't the death of the free market, just the death of the owner/producer divide.

[Magistrum]

Before people get worked up, we all know what caused this: The "Emergencia eléctrica" that Maduro set up and them just abandoned billions for his subordinates to embellish without any supervision and direct grant of contracts.
That was a shit move and Venezuela had ongoing power outages since 2005, then they bought the main energy provider, fixed up some stuff, made it a bit better, and promptly dropped the ball and forget that they are supposed to maintain it.
Then they come along and militarize the management of the plants, every electrician or electric engineer with some money leave the country, and now there is no one able or capacitated to perform the needed repairs in the country. Good luck fixing that.

[LordBaal]

/\
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This.

[thompson]

And yet, nobody hesitates to call themselves "capitalists" despite the monstrous things done by capitalist countries and organizations. I'm tired of the semantic treadmill. Socialism is socialism, and if someone is so ignorant as to not know what it means, they aren't really worth debating.

The problem is that the word Socialism is ambiguous as it refers to a fairly diverse range of social and economic models and activities. Ambiguity in communication is bad as it proliferates misunderstandings. There's nothing wrong with using the term amongst people with a common understanding of it, but once you're communicating to a wider audience you need to consider whether it is the most effective means of getting your point across. Sometimes it will be, usually it won't. But if you don't actually care about changing the world and are just interested in virtue signalling, the word is extremely effective.

[SalmonGod]

Same could be said of capitalism.  Much of the time, I really should be saying "propertarianism" instead, as the word is used in The Dispossessed, to more clearly express my point of view.  But I wouldn't expect many to understand what I'm saying.

Inconsistency and vagueness are sadly just common features of political discourse that we have to deal with, and more often than not, that's done intentionally.  Bad actors are constantly trying to disrupt language for various reasons, and usually have the most to gain from chaos and confusion.  It's best not to give them what they want by giving up on words so easily, while striking the best balance possible to actually communicate with the less informed on a practical level.

Alt-Right Playbook: Ship of Theseus  (because I want everyone to watch all of these -- I'm sure I'll end up posting them all in here eventually)

[Starver]

I was thinking of the Pratchett quote (Night Watch) that "That's why they're called 'Revolutions' - they always come round again" (paraphrased, and echoed elsewhere in the works), but he could easily have picked at least the sentiment up from your source.

But, really, the actual difference between Capitalism and Communism is that in Capitalism, man exploits man. But In Communism, it's the other way round.^[source?]

[wierd]

I always took it that they were aptly named, personally.

Capitalism is all about maximization of capital, and capital resources. (this is why the tragedy of the commons is systemic and unavoidable. A commons that is not 100% exploited is a capital resource not at maximal economic utilization!) This is why (drawing back on the mobile home side discuss earlier) there is such cynical and jaundiced views about poor people and their actual ability to live as rates are increased.  Rents not at 100% market capacity are underperforming capital resources!


Communism is the theoretical inversion of the above.  Rather than capital resources being exploited towards maximal return for a single individual (often at the expense of commons and disadvantaged demographics), the objective aim is to seek maximal utility of the commons of a community or local branch of a society. (Marx advocated small scale communes, not large scale top-down models, IIRC) This ensures that there is sufficient utility in all common spaces and properties to accommodate the needs of the individuals within that society, and mechanisms are enacted to ensure that no single actor or group of actors gains unfair or disproportionate access or control. (But the problem is that the enforcers of that set of rules intrinsically become the new dividing line, since they enact and exert power via their enforcement, or lack of enforcement, creating privileged groups-- In addition to my prior assertions about why it breaks down; there is insufficient incentive for disruptive, game-changing ideas because there is no significant gain for the individual trying it.)

Socialism is less concerned with the commonality of material possessions or spaces, and more about the logistical needs of a functioning society. (at least theoretically. The term is used almost sarcastically these days, in the same vein as the 'democratic' in the DPRK) This is why it seeks to install welfare and safety nets in society. (because when underclasses are created, they cause long lasting and far reaching bad effects in the whole of the society, even if individual actors might profit obscenely from that condition. Take for instance, with public health.)  The degree to which it does this has a wide range of variability, which is why I prefer to make a hyphenated compound word with its different subflavors, like "euro-socialism".

[JoshuaFH]

I was rereading "Management" by Peter Drucker, and I got to a part that I think is relevant: That what defines society today is the emergence of the multinational corporation. Formerly, businesses were always subject to, and at the mercy of, the government of their mother country. The concept of mercantilism basically meant that merchants and businessmen were always just basically weaker and shittier civil servants. With the emergence of the multinational corporation, that is no longer the case, they possess their own, separated, place in the global society now; and the relationship between business and government is fundamentally changed as a result.

So, long story short, the discussion on capitalism and communism or whatever is a moot point, the fundamental problem of the generation is that the correct relationship between government and business hasn't been worked out. Corporations are amoral not just because being amoral is profitable, but because they can't be moral; no company can conform equally to the social or religious norms of morality of every single country that they occupy, so they become amoral by default. So, as businesses no longer represent the mores of a given country, the smart thing to do would have been to recognize that and to start making fundamental changes to government towards being purely adversarial to business, treating it as a necessary evil rather than even pretending that the two are on friendly terms. We haven't done that, so we're suffering for it. That's what I pulled from reading the book, atleast.

[thompson]

Those are reasonable definitions of what Socialism and Communism are trying to achieve, but we're still talking about ideologies here. What society needs to be talking about is policy. You certainly can describe a social welfare safely net or public health as "Socialist", but so what? We don't want those things because they're"socialist". We want those things because they make the world a better place. But by framing it in the socialist/capitalist lens you're restricting yourself to an arbitrary dichotomy (or 1D spectrum, for those who can comprehend grey). But what does that achieve? It's kind of an appeal to authority, except you're appealing to ideology instead. But you've stacked the other side with very, very powerful people. In effect, serious real world problems are reduced to identity politics.

Note I'm talking about the overuse of ideological categories as a rhetorical or expository tool here. In other contexts it's not really an issue.


Edit: I suspect there's a misunderstanding between us, but due to cultural and time zone differences I'm not sure we can resolve it without diverting the attention of the thread from its namesake for too long.