[HN Gopher] An Upstate Town Took Back Its Power (2023)
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An Upstate Town Took Back Its Power (2023)
Author : kotaKat
Score : 41 points
Date : 2025-02-09 17:28 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (nysfocus.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (nysfocus.com)
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Deep inside is the secret: regulation.
|
| "That makes it some of the cheapest electricity in the country --
| largely thanks to NYPA's preferential rates for municipal
| utilities. "
|
| It is not the miracle of socialism over capitalism I was hoping
| for
| Spivak wrote:
| It does seem to be the miracle of public utilities over private
| ones though. I don't know if anyone involved in this was even
| claiming a socialist angle.
|
| There seem to be some socialists who are taking up the charge
| to expand this program but the original victory is all just
| public ownership. Rock bottom energy generation prices being
| passed on directly to the consumer instead of being sold to the
| highest bidder, amazing.
| JohnnyLarue wrote:
| Publicly-owned _is_ socialism. It 's the workers owning the
| means of production.
| Spivak wrote:
| I mean sure but then every mixed economy is going to have
| an identity crisis. You can advocate for public ownership
| of certain industries and still be a capitalist because
| that's the reality of it. In all public the economy
| collapses, in all private the economy collapses. You need
| both because the public side is how you survive the bust.
| PLenz wrote:
| NYPA is the state owned electric utility in NY. So yes, it is a
| triumph of socialism. A state owned entity supporting a local
| one.
| bell-cot wrote:
| > [...] It took another seven years of legal battles and two more
| referendums before Massena flipped the switch to a new, city-
| owned utility. When it finally happened, in May 1981, utility
| bills dropped by a quarter. The town hasn't looked back since.
| [...]
|
| > "That's what makes Massena so unique -- that we saw it
| through," said Andrew McMahon, superintendent of the city-owned
| Massena Electric Department. Others have tried only to see the
| effort fall apart, he said. In Massena, "the town hung together."
|
| What's far more special about Massena is that they've _kept_
| their municipal electric utility going since then. Similar to
| start-ups, successfully doing this is 1% idea, 99% execution.
|
| Flip-side - one of my uncles spent 50 years managing a small
| municipal electric utility. But after he retired, there were too
| few locals who understood that their cheap & reliable electricity
| didn't come from Santa. Politicians short-changed maintenance
| 'till something complex & expensive broke - and Big Electric Co.
| bought up the whole system for pennies. Because "keep shivering
| in the dark" was the only other bidder.
| mindslight wrote:
| The problem with publicly owned power coops, which the article
| touches on repeatedly, is that they form a model for the
| straightforward provisioning of modern necessities. Left
| unchecked, this can end up spreading. For example, my municipal
| electric company got bored and decided to branch out into
| providing Internet service. $75/mo for a gigabit symmetric, no
| caps, no contractual pricing games. And now that they've finished
| building out the whole town, they're using that experience to
| help smaller neighboring towns build out their own networks as
| well.
| namuol wrote:
| Sounds awful. Which city?
| bsder wrote:
| And this can be a mixed bag.
|
| Princeton, MA is a _really_ good example because they 've got
| success and failure. They sort of succeeded with Internet and
| sort of failed with electricity (and windmills).
|
| See Mad Ned blogs for Internet:
| https://madned.substack.com/p/thin-pipe-part-i
| https://madned.substack.com/p/thin-pipe-part-ii
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(page generated 2025-02-09 23:00 UTC)