The people who are getting these huge bills are the same people who have been benefitting for years from the cheap wholesale prices.<p>So basically, they have been living with no insurance, and now that they have hit some serious price volatility, they can't afford it.<p>I'm not sure the best solution for this, but I don't think it should be for the state to just step in and absolve everyone involved.<p>Obviously, the practice of wholesale billing has to be regulated more strictly. I get the free market intention behind it. Users will be more likely to limit their usage when prices increase. But the problem is that in cases like these winter storms, electricity can mean life or death.<p>You can't have a truly free market unless we are willing to let people die if they don't have the money.<p>It's the same reason totally free markets break down with healthcare. If someone chooses not to buy insurance, we are not the kind of country that will turn them away at the hospital and let them die. And if you aren't willing to do that, then that is not a free market.
Am I alone in thinking the government reaction to this shows the complete ideological bankruptcy of supposed "free market" Republicans? When push comes to shove, they support government intervention as much as any bleeding heart liberal. The only differences are who they want to protect, where their political bread is buttered. What is different between an energy bill and a bill from a hospital?<p>At some point it's almost like we ought to treat Republican governments like a foreign adversary - just like putting sanctions on Russia is not ideal because ordinary non murdering Russians get hurt, it's not as if we can condemn regular Texans to freeze because of lowlives like Abbott and Cruz. But we have to do something about it, at some point the amount of damage they are doing to the republic has to be confronted.
I'm seriously disappointed in HN when the only responses to consumers getting $16K power bills are them getting blamed or instructed on how to live without electricity.
I’d like to have a sideways arrow, for ‘get this garbage out’ so that there is a difference between voting ‘I don’t like this’ and I want this comment killed. HN is my favourite place to come and read opinions, because while I don’t agree with every opinion, They are better expressed here than on most forums, more likely to be sincere and rarely pure trolling. Unless I’m not picking up on something, there are comments here getting killed for being unpopular, it would be better if that only happened for crappy behaviour. I think the dead comments are often some of my favourite to read. On my laptop I can change the css to read the dead, but on phone my I’m squinting at the grey on grey.