• Rogue
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    48
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    2 days ago

    Capitalism. If the market is able to pay more then the company will demand more

    • Tobberone@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      1 day ago

      Yeah. Someone will always be able to pay more than the common man. And companies using it to produce something will always afford to pay more than someone just consuming electricity.

    • Wanderer@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      arrow-down
      7
      ·
      22 hours ago

      That’s no how capitalism works. If there is money to be made there will be more competition.

      • Onihikage@beehaw.org
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        8
        ·
        19 hours ago

        Not if the biggest players buy all their competition and use their multi-state revenue to lobby municipalities to make it illegal to compete with them.

        It’s important to recognize that this is how capitalism works if you try to apply it to natural monopolies such as physical infrastructure, along with anything else subject to inelastic demand, such as healthcare. It’s exactly why it makes no sense to have entities that provide such infrastructure operate according to free markets, because either (1) there will be no competition and the “market” with one seller will abuse their position to maximize profit, or (2) you have competing systems side by side, using double the resources and space (or more) for half the efficiency (or less).

        Too often people think of Capitalism as an efficiency maximizer, when in reality it is a capital concentrator. Infrastructure needs to be efficient in order to best serve the people that use it. We see time and again that energy corporations in the “free market” use their revenue to buy their competitors and lobby for looser restrictions that let them hike rates faster and higher until they’ve completely escaped any semblance of regulation.

        • Wanderer@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          arrow-down
          5
          ·
          22 hours ago

          Well then you need government regulation.

          But that’s not the bread and butter of capitalism markets. It’s the edge cases