“His specialty was alfalfa, and he made a good thing out of not growing any. The government paid him well for every bushel of alfalfa he did not grow. The more alfalfa he did not grow, the more money the government gave him, and he spent every penny he didn't earn on new land to increase the amount of alfalfa he did not produce. Major Major's father worked without rest at not growing alfalfa. On long winter evenings he remained indoors and did not mend harness, and he sprang out of bed at the crack of noon every day just to make certain that the chores would not be done. He invested in land wisely and soon was not growing more alfalfa than any other man in the county. Neighbours sought him out for advice on all subjects, for he had made much money and was therefore wise. “As ye sow, so shall ye reap,” he counselled one and all, and everyone said “Amen.”

-Joseph Heller, Catch-22

The easy one first: The Matt Levine piece quotes the story linked here, so he's definitely not the original source...

And then, yes: If you can make more money by not using your big resistor than actually using it, then economically you would be better off not using it. If you can make money by not using it, then someone is willing to pay you because they get value out of it or they can avert some damage. If you threatened to use your capacitor without obvious use other than destabilizing the grid, that might just look a little too much like blackmail...

If you believe in markets, then someone coming up with the means to improve grid stability (here: by overall less consumption) should somehow be able to turn it into a profit. The issue here seems to be, that American Efficient didn't actually give any guarantees that they could reduce consumption. So it rather looks like whoever admitted them to the auction didn't do their due diligence. The whole market thing breaks down when there is actual fraud or when the identical thing gets sold more than once (actually, energy savings could probably be sold once for grid stability and once for reduced emissions - I'd say they're disjoint to first order, but might be connected indirectly).

That being said, there should be limits to markets.The whole market thing breaks down when there is actual fraud, when a party/faction has a disproportionate amount of power or when there are externalized costs that are not accounted for in the pricing.

I think you could actually build a small resistor (an energy efficient appliance if you will) and then get paid for not building a giant resistor (the hypothetical crummy appliance you didn't buy). I suppose one fix at least is to tie any ability to auction your load-reduction-services to the capability to actually reduce load on command. If you reduce load around the clock or at uncontrolled times (like an energy-efficient lightbulb) then your reward ought to be just the average price of power since you're not really helping to smooth out the peaks in any way. In general though these counter-factual pricing schemes are pretty prone to distortion I think and ought be be avoided. Ideally your reward for not using power during a peak is just you don't pay an inflated peak power cost.

Thanks for the Matt Levine link! Archived version:

https://archive.ph/2026.05.02-224747/https://www.bloomberg.c...

It's worth signing up for Levine's free newsletter and listening to the podcast (though there is substantial overlap in the content, it's still fun to hear what you've already read).

His take on this, crypto, all things Elon Musk, and the current 'predictions market' are funny and insightful.

This is possible, but the interconnect queues and costs are enormous. You'd be better off using a big battery instead of a resistor, then you can sell it both ways, and not rely on the portion of the day in the right portion of the year that there are widespread negative prices in California.