[caylus]

> Lack of price controls did not prevent blackouts to Texans in the US last year. It did cause many folks to be saddled with insane bills.

You're conflating two distinct sets of people:

- Most consumers pay a fixed price for electricity set by their utility. Many of these people experience blackouts when there was insufficient supply at that price.

- Some consumers opted into paying a variable price for electricity. As supply decreased, the price they paid massively increased. But in exchange for the high bills, these customers did not experience blackouts, or at least experienced them later than others.

Some in the second group, in retrospect, would have preferred the blackout to the increased price, or perhaps didn't understand the implications of their decision when they originally signed up for a variable and uncapped price. But overall, this situation perfectly illustrates the tradeoffs of controlled vs. uncontrolled prices in the face of supply shortage.

[kajecounterhack]

I'm not conflating them, I'm explicitly talking about the latter group.

> But in exchange for the high bills, these customers did not experience blackouts, or at least experienced them later than others.

Yeah, so regardless of timing or how much blackout they experienced relative to everyone else, they did experience blackouts. And still paid a lot of money too. Lack of price controls didn't help them in the short term, and in the long term hurt them a lot.

[chii]

> so regardless of timing or how much blackout they experienced relative to everyone else, they did experience blackouts. And still paid a lot of money too.

free market doesn't guarantee anything. You're assuming that the free market without price control is supposed to guarantee the access to electricity, even at exorbitant prices.

Those who paid a high bill who did eventually got cut off - they got a bad deal because they weren't savy enough to do risk management, and didn't have enough information on such rare events.

[rtpg]

Free markets _do_ presuppose supply being available if given enough money! Free markets assume atomic actors, instant feedback loops, and nothing like a supply ceiling.

The Texas blackout had a supply ceiling, but no price ceiling (and low elasticity in choice from the consumers, because people didn't want to freeze). It's a far cry from a free market during that week.