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Our essential needs, like electricity, being supplied through money making systems which destroy the earth, made me think of many of the other ways Capitalism undermines what else might be better for society if it wasn't orientated around corporations making profits:

We might have our digital and mechanical devices last longer if it weren't for planned obsolescence — corporations deliberately designing products to fail or become outdated quickly, forcing consumers to replace them rather than creating durable goods.

We might have more agricultural diversity and food sovereignty if seed companies weren't criminalising seed saving — making it illegal for farmers to save and replant seeds from their own crops, undermining centuries-old farming practices.

We might be able to repair our own possessions if manufacturers didn't design products to be difficult or impossible to fix independently — forcing consumers into expensive official repairs or replacements rather than allowing community repair solutions.

We might have better public health if our healthcare systems weren't prioritising profitable treatments over prevention — creating a system where managing chronic illness is more lucrative than keeping people well in the first place.

We might see fewer homeless people and less waste if retailers didn't destroy unsold goods — deliberately damaging perfectly usable clothing, food, and other products rather than donating them to those in need, purely to maintain prices.

We might enjoy better utilities if essential services weren't privatised, commodified and misused — producing more pollution than they need to in their extraction and production, including even solar power, which ends up being co-opted by corporations too.

@NateProle you could absolutely get to a place where coal was a thing of the past and gas was reserved for peaking in many places without having to make any sort of sacrifices for ideological commitment to environmentalism. Coal’s pretty inefficient at this point, even if you don’t care about the environmental impacts, which is why it’s dying.

@VestigialLung @NateProle We're really already at that place. Solar and storage is a lot cheaper than running a gas peaker.

@Dseitz @NateProle it’s not just raw cost you have to factor in. Having a source of electricity you can quickly and easily turn on or off is generally desirable. Take a situation where it’s the middle of winter, so solar production is at its lowest point, and you get one of those polar vortex events. Short of building and maintaining a wild amount of excess capacity, you’re in trouble. That’s why you won’t find a utility without peaking capacity.

@Dseitz @NateProle doesn’t have to be gas; gas is just popular b/c it’s cheap, easy to start and stop quickly, and nobody in power cares about the environment. That said, if fossil got winnowed down to just peaking capacity, that *might* be a fairly sustainable practice (someone smarter than me would have to run the numbers to get to a definitive answer there). Certainly better than where we’re at now.

@Dseitz @NateProle my ultimate point was pretty closely aligned to yours though, that even if you aren’t ideologically committed to renewables as something worth sacrificing economics for, there should be more renewables happening than there are right now, and coal should be a thing of the past ASAP.

Sort of like when baking I use a kitchen scale. It’s not because I’m focusing on accuracy; it’s that it’s faster and easier than measuring cups. Accuracy is a bonus.

@VestigialLung @Dseitz @NateProle One of the core issues here is solar is a technology, and it's still a relatively young one. The same is true of batteries. Even a year from now the economics are going to be WILDLY different. And if the current administration gets its way on LNG imports that'll speed things up even more.

@VestigialLung @Dseitz @NateProle Yeah one of the core tensions is how or perhaps if we maintain a centralized model as more and more stuff is de facto disconnected from the grid.

@Dseitz @Dseitz @NateProle yeah, I’d suggest studying what Germany did, since I know they replaced a lot of their power production with individuals installing home solar, but Germany’s a social democracy, so if healthcare policy is any indication, whatever worked for them, we’ll probably do the opposite. Home solar ban coming, coupled with a requirement that everyone install a coal burner, not to create electricity, just ‘cause?

@Dseitz @NateProle freedom coughs

@VestigialLung @Dseitz @NateProle You basically just described the Great Leap Forward. Which is both funny and disturbing.

@Dseitz @Dseitz @NateProle been posting this gif a lot lately whenever the US political situation comes up. https://tenor.com/view/crying-laughing-kristen-bell-gif-6139291

@CyberpunkLibrarian @NateProle
I doubt that the cockroach people will be interested in that bit of history.
#humans

@fabio I think you hit the nail on the head with 'it would require investment and upgrades to the grid' - in the past these kinds of major infrastructure projects were done, covered or subsidised by the government., or occasionally by communities (as in the case electricity co-ops etc.)

@lurkingsquiddle Of course we need to address excess electricity being consumed or stored within any system, though these decisions wouldn't be financial without capitalism, they'd be resources and needs based, and made collectively.

I'd expect there to be more storage as part of the infrastructure, which would likely evolve into more decentralised micro-grids. Without the limits of ability to pay, we could develop flexible uses for surpluses, transforming temporary excess of electricity into an opportunity rather than a problem.

The goal would be to restructure our approach to energy in a way that serves community needs directly, rather than subjecting it to the artificial scarcity of the market which must maintain prices and profits - even when this only benefits a relatively small group to the detriment of everyone else.