U.S. Power Grid: Are we vulnerable? MSNBC poll

[goddess40]

U.S. Power Grid: Are we vulnerable?

Yes No
U.S. Power Grid: Are we vulnerable?
* 386 responses
Yes 88% No 12%

I wrote that we are only vulnerable to the private companies that control our power. Also that we need to end the privitization of our nessecary utilities as it has been proven over and over that it doesn't work.

Greed has no business being involved in such important life lines. I would include hospitals and health care along with our basic utilites.

[snake1306]

1. Everyone knows

elimintating the profit motive makes an industry run in a smoother and more efficient manner.

No one should ever profit on what should be basic rights (food, shelter, clothing, education and medicine) for people.

[BigDaddyLove]

4. Which industries............

run smoother and more efficiently without a profit motive?

[leesa]

2. Man, the Crime Family is going to cash in big-time on this scam!!

Using fear to loot enormous amounts of money,as usual.

[starroute]

3. It may be a structural problem -- not simple greed

I just started a thread referring to a Slashdot post on this topic:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=180953

Utilities used to invest in excess capacity in order to handle times of peak demand. Now, instead of that, they just swap power back and forth from areas of lower demand to areas of higher demand.

This means that the power grid is constantly being used to full capacity, which is something that is was never designed to handle.

The change came in along with deregulation, and its negative effects are certainly made worse by corporate greed. But the basic problem has to do with the fact that we now use the system in a way it can't handle, and that's going to have to be addressed on a structural basis.