Wired: the danger of invisible government deeds

[Winehole23]

government is the problem:

The TVA transformed one of the poorest areas in the country by making millions of acres of depleted and eroded soil useful for farming, creating a river capable of carrying huge amounts of freight, generating electric power for sale at low prices to retail power companies, stimulating demand for electricity, and developing the local economy in a host of ways—including handing out thousands of books and effectively creating new prosperous towns where thinly-populated, hard-scrabble communities had been barely surviving on land that couldn’t be farmed. Floods in 1937 had made millions of people homeless in the Ohio and Mississippi valleys; by 1942, the TVA's 29 enormous dams made such catastrophes just about impossible in the Tennessee Valley.


Today, TVA makes enough from selling wholesale electricity that it needs no taxpayer funding. And Tennessee Valley residents pay electric rates that are below what more than two-thirds of the country pays. Almost 5 million people get their drinking water from the TVA.

https://www.wired.com/story/the-dang...ernment-deeds/

[boutons_deux]

government is the problem:

https://www.wired.com/story/the-dang...ernment-deeds/

add in 100s of nation-wide of non-profit electric and telephone "socialist" cooperatives in areas under-served by for-profit corps.

Telephone coops are mainly financed by Universal Service Fund, another socialist operation.

I laugh when I hear San Antonio people whining about the salaries of CPS Energy's top people. They have no idea how those salaries and their electricity rates would explode if CPS Energy (non-profit municipally owned that dumps $200M - $300M / year into SA govt's bank account) was sold to private equity or other for-profit predatory Capitalists.

Although TX has recently changed to increase rural telephone coop rates, for DECADES TX rural coop members, just about all Repug and govt-haters, paid $5 / month for telephone service, while metro areas were paying $30 / month.

the point: When people COOPERATE socialistically for their own good, "own" the project and its benefits, wonderful LOCAL progress can be made without rentier Capitalists extracting wealth. Works at the national level too, eg Interstate Highway system.

the prospect: it ain't gonna happen.

[RandomGuy]

good point.

Too easy to miss the good that an organized plan can do. Good government is so less visible than bad.

Our brains are hardwired for negative things, but not so much for good things.