alt Hacker News> Privatization supporters seem to always use waste as a boogeyman, but never the inevitable profitmaxxing for management and shareholders
That’s because under capitalism, waste and inefficiency are touted as the ultimate evil. Making profit is the entire purpose of the whole system, so it’s inherently good, and “the right thing”.
Especially in the US, even talking about a reduction in profit is akin to blasphemy, and quickly gets one labeled a quack.
It's unfortunate, for sure. Luckily, clean tech manufacturing and deployment will eventually outpace the ability to capture energy for returns [1] [2]. China currently has enough solar PV manufacturing capacity for double current global demand, and battery manufacturing capacity is catching up. Prices will keep coming down, and eventually everyone who wants to go off the grid and has space for batteries and solar should be able to.
Just like China is cramming down legacy auto export TAM through their EV exports (BYD has surpassed Ford in international sales as of this year, as is constrained by not having enough marine vessels to export more), solar and batteries will come for investor owned utilities as well.
[1] https://ember-energy.org/data/china-cleantech-exports-data-e...
[2] https://www.iea.org/reports/solar-pv-global-supply-chains/ex...