DEREGULATION BLAHS. (But this just might spark interest in my regulated industries class in the spring.) If airline service is nonexistent, blame deregulation. If Amtrak runs late, blame deregulation. If the power grid crashes, blame deregulation. Lots of talk about that last this weekend. Start at Newmark's Door. Visit Knowledge Problem who points out some advocacy from the Reason Public Policy Institute. For a differing point of view, visit Common Dreams. Greg Palast misses the independent regulatory commissions, who "told utilities exactly how much they had to spend to insure the system stayed in repair and the lights stayed on. Bureaucrats crawled along the wire and, like me, crawled through the account books, to make sure the power execs spent customers' money on parts and labor. If they didn't, we'd whack'm over the head with our thick rule books." That didn't preclude the 1965 and 1977 grid failures. Harvey Wasserman suggests we've outsourced power production when we could each have our own windmills and solar panels. (The horror! The horror! The sainted Franklin Roosevelt's Rural Electrification Administration only causes the grid to metastasize.) Robert Kuttner is nostalgic for Consolidated Edison. Wasn't that the vertically integrated producer for New York City in 1965 and 1977? Instapundit has found a lot of sources. This Nicole Gelinas editorial raises a number of points for further study.

Crooked Timber reacts to the power companies' plea to turn a few things off so as not to crash the system as it restarts: "When the power companies are unable to meet demand, force them to offer consumers an incentive to conserve – say, a voucher for each kilowatt hour they use below their average that can be redeemed for free power when the crisis is over." Not sure how one would do that in the event of a system crash, where the rules provide for some restitution in the case of spoiled food and a few other losses, but I can tell you that Consolidated Edison pays me $10 a month in June, July, and August for the right to turn my air conditioner off.