Why EVs Won't Crash the Electric Grid - Slashdot

Why EVs Won't Crash the Electric Grid

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• 'Member the 2003 NorthEast blackout? Profit over safety and reliability... ultimately costing lives and $6 billion.

  Funny how you jumped to that decades old example, completely skipping over the Great Texas Freeze of 2021 where hundreds of people [texastribune.org] literally froze to death in their homes because of profit. That profit being Greg Abbott ordering Ercot to charge customers high prices for several days resulting in a $16 billion overcharge [businessinsider.com]. All because Ercot couldn't be bothered to upgrade its electrical systems because that would cut into its profits.

  • • Re:

      This isn't really true. The Texas grid is *connected* it's just not *synchronized* which means all of the inter-connects are DC. For the amount of generation Texas lost, that would take a lot of long-distance transmission to cover. Having most electricity produced relatively-locally makes sense because the infrastructure to transport it over long distances is expensive and there are transmission losses.

• • Re:

    There's already signs that say "last gas for... XX miles" in the USA.

    How will this be different?

    • • Re:

        Never use gasoline to start a fire. I can't say if that's why you were modded down. But gasoline and fire absolutely do not mix. Gasoline is volatile. If you get anywhere near the vapors with a flame, you will burn your whole body to a crisp nearly instantly. Never even think about doing this. It's one of the few cases where I wish/. had the ability to delete a post.

        • Re:

          Please mod parent up. A search on Youtube for videos of idiots trying to start bonfires with petrol/gas. Some of them literally explode because they've created the conditions similar to a small fuel-air bomb.

      • • • • • Re: Before the buildout

                I don't think it's fair to call those police "good guys". They were absolutely unwilling to be good guys when the situation demanded it.

    • • Re:

        What happens if there's a gas shortage and a whole bunch of cars need to refuel there?

        https://i.insider.com/4e5e9a54... [insider.com]

  • Re: Before the buildout

    You used metric, so stfu. LawL

• • it was not capitalism that pulled the humanity from poverty, it was trade and small but steady technological evolution, that can happen in any regime.

    Don't confuse political issues with market and technological changes, there are plenty of capitalist countries that are poor and several socialism friendly countries that are rich, being the north Europe countries one of the biggest examples of that. They having huge taxes and the state impose many rules and control, yet everything works and the state helps anyone in need.

    >Socialism is totalitarian system
    soviet socialism was a totalitarian system, but socialism itself is an idea, the way how you implement it is open to any government regime

    Soviet socialism was broken, true, but USA capitalism is not, right now, in good health too, the race for max profit is killing many companies and causing many social problems...and it brings no profit to try to solve those problems and will in the end spark revolts

    It is usually in the middle ground were people are happier and have less social problems, not super rich, but also not as many poor people. But also as always, there is no "one size fits all", all countries and cultures have different demands and way of thinking, that may favor different ideas and solutions.

    Being a kingdom, republic, democracy, tyranny, etc, it just change who is in command and how he/she gets there, and if they are good, it will work, if they are bad, everything will fall apart.
    The difference in the end is that king and tyranny, you can't change the leadership easily if they are bad and that long governments tend to overlook some kind of problems , as they get more distant from the normal people problems, that in the long run can also spark revolts

    • Re:

      Yes but no socialist countries became rich by practicing socialism. The became rich via capitalism and then the government seized the means of production from the proletariat. Which works fine as long as the government is stable and functional.

      • Yes but no socialist countries became rich by practicing socialism. The became rich via capitalism and then the government seized the means of production from the proletariat. Which works fine as long as the government is stable and functional.

        That's just ignorance talking. Precisely the countries mentioned became rich by practicing socialism, not capitalism. Norway is often held as a prime example of a country that is only propped up by the fact that the government makes money off the oil industry. But that isn't capitalism. The government *IS* the oil industry. Specifically the largest oil extractor Equinor has it's history as Statoil (translation: State oil), literally a company started and run by the government, and still a government entity to this day. They contributed the most to Norway's wealth and they are one of the few examples of socialism in its most pure form: a government controlling the means of production. No one seized anything. And that is very much true for many "socialist" enterprises outside the USSR.

        Now I put "socialism" in quotes precisely for the same reason I now put "capitalism" in quotes. The reality is the USA doesn't practice capitalism either. Capitalism is a construct free from government intervention. That doesn't exist anywhere in the world. Likewise socialism is a construct free from private ownership, that doesn't exist anywhere in the world either. Every nation practices some form of sliding scale between different social systems and no one (not even the USSR) has implemented any in their purest form, because in their purest form economic theory dictates that each of them has only one stable state: 100% of power concentrated in the hands of a single entity, be that the state, or Amazon.

      • Didn't the USSR go from a country where most people were peasants to space fairing in about 50 years, which included a horrible war and a horrible dictator?
        Since going capitalist, I don't know if the average Russian is much better off then the average Soviet citizen. Judging from the birth rate, death rate from alcohol abuse and still lacking basic freedoms like being able to speak out about their government.
        China is another example, they seem to have broken the cycle of extreme famines that killed millions for centuries with the average Chinese citizen better off, though still with the same lack of freedoms and too big bureaucracy.
        As for the west, I think the freedoms and rule of law, combined with capitalism has been one of the main things that made us wealthy. Unluckily that is being actively undone, by the rich capitalists, leading to lawlessness, removal of peoples freedoms, in the name of freedom of all things and an increasing number of poor people who have problems with the basics like housing and good food.

    • Actually, it was capitalism that pulled humanity out of poverty. The industrial revolution coincides with the development of capitalism in Europe and North America. Industrial revolution, especially industrialization of the agriculture, is the single factor that pulled the humanity out of poverty.

      As for socialism, you are correct, it's only an idea. To be precise, it's a totalitarian idea because it's based on limiting or abolishing the property rights. So called "democratic socialism" is a fantasy. The property owners will fight against socialism because it limits their rights. And the only way to suppress this resistance is to use state force. And here we are, from an idea to totalitarian society. There hasn't been a single implementation of socialist ideas which wasn't totalitarian. People usually counter that argument with something like "and what about Scandinavia?". That is rubbish. Scandinavian societies are free market capitalist economies, with the private property being protected even more than in the USA. Socialism, in its original meaning, is the society in which means of production aren't privately owned but are "public good" instead. That status of the "public good" is problematic because of the technicalities of the management. So every socialism ends up abolishing property rights and nationalizing large companies, which are then governed by the political elite. In order to suppress the resistance of the owners to what amounts to a robbery, government sends in the police and the army. And the society ends up in a totalitarian nightmare. There is no socialism with "private means of production". Abolishing them necessarily leads to totalitarian society, brain drain and capital flight. Socialism is fundamentally incompatible with democracy.

      Other than that, saying that Soviet socialism was totalitarian but not every socialism needs to be totalitarian is an apex of hubris. That means the following: "if I were a dictator, I would have implemented socialism that works". No, you would not. It's not possible. It's been tried in SSSR, Cuba, Eastern Europe, China, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, among others. It has never worked and it never will, precisely because of not protecting private property. Humans are primates, who are territorial animals. The expression of the territoriality is private property, deeply ingrained into the human psyche. Even an infant will cry if you take away its toy because even an infant knows the meaning of the word "mine". This thing is mine. Even a toddler understands that instinctively. Human morality in the western civilization is based on the 10 commandments, one of which is "thou shalt not steal". In other words, depriving other human being of the property is immoral. In other words, socialism is immoral and causes resistance. That necessarily turns it into a totalitarian regime, it it's not defeated on time.

      Socialism in its today's form was first described by Marx and Engels, 2 bearded writers of bad fiction, which was debunked while Marx was still alive. The "class system" is a logical consequence of the "labour theory of value", which Marx has purloined from Adam Smith. However, this theory, which states that the value of a product is a measure of the amount of labour needed to produce the product, is a bunk. The classical counterexample is the story of diamond and water. Both are found in the nature, no work is needed to produce either a diamond or water. Yet, the value of diamond is much larger than the value of water. That proves that value is not a function of labour. And that, my friend, debunks the entire Marxian class system, "expropriating the surplus value" and and exploitation of the worker class. There is no exploitation. Workers sell their work, which is a good like any other and sold and bought in an open market. No "kulaks" here. That was shown by F. Bastiat and E. Boehm von Baewerk, while Marx was still alive. In other words, Marx's socialist fantasies are pure and unadulterated BS.

      • Re:

        "Yet, the value of diamond is much larger than the value of water"
        Which is a clear example of human greed & stupidity.
        Water is far more useful & necessary than diamonds and the marketing campaign that sold the world on the supposed "value" of them was exposed at least 40 years ago
        
        "Have You Ever Tried To Sell a Diamond"

        • Anchor href didn't work so here is a bare link
          "Have You Ever Tried To Sell a Diamond" - Atlantic Magazine Feb 1982
          https://www.theatlantic.com/ma... [theatlantic.com]

  • The original cause was a bug, the cascade effect was overall piss poor planning because it would have taken effort (read: money).

    American 'capitalism' is a game of Monopoly and most people are losing but happy to keep playing because they think they have a shot at being the ultimate winner.

    Socialism is not the same as communism, and not slobbering over capitalism's knob is not socialism anyway. There's nothing wrong with making sure important things are heavily regulated, and that common infrastructure is government-controlled so it isn't vulnerable to being weakened by short-term profit motive.

    There's also nothing wrong with a social safety net. 'Member the plot of Breaking Bad? That could never happen in Canada.

    • Re:

      "'Member the plot of Breaking Bad? That could never happen in Canada"
      Probably not in any of the bigger cities. About 5 years ago, a 40-something sister of a close friend - they live in Toronto - contracted an aggressive form of breast cancer. Within 6 weeks, she was operated on at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre & had completed her chemo by the end of the year.
      She spent far more buying lunch & paying gas & parking for the people driving her to her appointments than for all of her medical exp