OVERREGULATION

I hurt my neck again a week ago, probably from spending too long 
peering down inside the rear passenger door of my Jag (#1) while 
fiddling with trying to fix the exterior door handle. Cue a few 
days stuck on the couch, followed by a week of decreasingly-light 
work that might have finally got too heavy assembling some things 
to sell yesterday, from the feel of it. At least I had quite a 
backlog of downloaded documentaries to work through, including 
another old economics series to follow The Age of Uncertainty and 
Free to Choose (2020-10-11.1The_Age_of_Uncertainty.txt): Commanding 
Heights (2002).

I haven't actually watched the last hour or so yet, since I started 
getting better (healed by the power of economic deregulation?), so 
I won't attempt a review. In essence it's clearly biased towards 
the right, occasionally mentioning increased wealth inequality in 
countries that adopt free-market policies, but almost as an 
insignificant side-note. But it presents an interesting practical 
economic history, including in often-overlooked South America.

Of course Australia doesn't get any mention in the series, but 
thinking about some recent policies by the centre-left federal and 
state governments in power here at the moment, they do also swing 
me in favour of the show's arguments against government regulation. 
Although these policies are at a much smaller scale than the 
doumentary's examples of whole economic restructuring.

For one, I mentioned in March (2026-03-25Naked_Thoughts.txt) the 
federal (then "wait, no, that's our idea!" state) government's 
Solar Sharer, or in Victoria Midday Power Saver, regulations, 
requiring all electricity retailers to supply three hours of free 
electricity to residential customers at the middle of the day when 
there's often surplus capacity in the electricity grid due to solar 
generation.

Great, I thought. I can run all my heaters flat out in the middle 
of the day in winter, go around naked all day, and then turn them 
off leaving the house pre-heated warm enough to last through the 
evening. So when the scheme started here at the beginning of the 
month (just before next month's state election, surely by no 
coincidence), as one of my first tests sitting up at the computer 
(frustratingly difficult when my neck gets sore) I looked into how 
it works for me in practice.

Surprise surprise, in practice it's useless. It turns out they've 
made it opt-in and allowed power companies to increase their prices 
during the rest of the day to compensate, which in the case of my 
power company they basically doubled. This even includes the fixed 
per-day supply charge, which makes up an extra $20/month fixed cost 
that I'd have to reclaim through shifting my current usage to the 
free power window from the get-go. The plan is clearly designed not 
to actually make sense for anyone, and it isn't even advertised on 
their list of plans (I had to do a web search to find it).

But what about other electricity companies? The state government 
also boasts of their Victorian Energy Compare website that allows 
you to compare energy retailer pricing. So I hesitantly filled my 
details into that, suspecting the security is probably pretty 
hopeless, and got a result that compared to my current electricity 
cost of $1,050/year (calculated by the webpage from my latest 
bill), I could switch to the cheapest available plan at 
$1,140/year. Wait, that's $90 more expensive?! What's it say my 
current plan should cost? $1,500/year. So it thinks I should be 
spending $450 more per year, and if I switch retailer I can spend 
only $90 more per year? Also it admits that if I switch to the 
Midday Power Saver plan with my current retailer it'll cost me an 
extra $10/year (who knows how it figures that). Clearly completely 
useless, and I'll bet the state government poured millions into 
developing that website.

What the website probably isn't really handling (although it 
suggests that it does) is that my electricity retailer bills on a 
variable rate depending on wholesale electricity pricing throughout 
the day, which in theory can already go negative when there's a 
surplus from solar and you can save money by using power then (but 
in practice that doesn't happen for my midday heating in winter). 
Their new government-mandated Midday Power Saver compliant plan 
instead has the old system of fixed prices per kilowatt/hour for 
certain times of day, at about twice the price of the average cost 
with the variable rate plan except for the three free hours. So 
here I have a choice of a plan directly tied to the energy market, 
or a government-mandated plan that tries to solve the issue of 
excess power at midday using a brute-force approach which the power 
company reacts to by reducing its pricing flexibility so they can 
be sure to regain the lost revenue during the free hours. Instead 
of allowing market feedback between residential consumer demand and 
wholesale electricity pricing, at best everyone manages to charge 
up a huge home storage battery during the three midday hours, even 
when it's cloudy so there isn't a surplus of solar energy and the 
extra load actually causes wholesale prices to spike during those 
hours.

In my case the battery (with all approvals and qualified connection 
to the house wiring) would cost more than than I could possibly 
save from my bills in the 5-10 years before it's worn out and needs 
replacement anyway, especially with $480/year in fixed daily 
connection charges even if I use zero metered electricity by 
running entirely off battery in the other hours. So it's not even 
an incentive for me to buy one of those.

What I might do is try and rig up some vintage panel meters 
somewhere in the house to show my current electricity usage and the 
current pricing, so I can try and adapt my usage in real-time. Of 
course you're meant to use a smartphone app for that, but I don't 
believe in such things.

Meanwhile for the other new government regulation that began this 
month, I at least needed no research to see this one wouldn't 
benefit me. Businesses are now no longer allowed to charge fees for 
credit/debit card payments. As someone who insists on paying with 
cash in stores, this clearly means that I'm now going to be paying 
the fees for people who use cards, in the form of increased prices. 
Moreover for businesses that often do large transactions and offer 
the card as a less-used convenience option alongside bank transfers 
etc., now they're in a difficult position and I've already noticed 
one has withdrawn the option of paying by card as a consequence. 
Yesterday I heard of another one: the government itself! The tax 
office is now withdrawing the option of paying income tax by card 
because they're not allowed to pass on the card charges anymore! 
This after the government themselves said businesses should be able 
to absorb the card fees rather than passing them on (yeah right!). 
So a) I now have to pay for a service I don't use (for in-store 
purchases) through increased prices, and b) if I do want to use 
card payment for something (probably online) now I have less choice 
to do so.

Oh, stop press, today the governemt made the tax office exempt from 
the rule against charging for card payments for one year. Go 
figure. Who says only the American government is making up policy 
as they go these days?

 - The Free Thinker