| Libertarian Party of NY -- Press Release -- NY Libertarians blast politicians' "Mental Power Failure" in handling the Northeast Blackout |
Likewise shaky, said Clifton, was the rush of many to blame "deregulation" for the transmission failure, "as it's far more accurate to say that utilities were re-regulated under the sham reforms of the last decade," with no net decline in total government involvement. "It's as if the politicians are suffering from a mental power failure, to match the electrical one New Yorkers experienced," he charged.
Other Libertarians, such as Buffalo area attorney James Ostrowski also noted the oddness of blaming "deregulation" for the grid failure, considering that the transmission grid is the one aspect of the power system still firmly under government control. Ostrowski points to state-imposed artificial price caps on the industry, that have delayed upgrades to the overburdened network. "The New York Times backs up my analysis of the power problem," he says, citing its 8/17 editorial which revealed that "the companies that transmit the power are regulated by the State Public Service Commission, and would invest in new transmission lines only if rate increases were approved, something the commission has been reluctant to do"---for political reasons, Ostrowski suggests.
Problems with inadequate power grid back-up systems are thus more likely the result of government neglect. Drawing on his naval background, Mr. Clifton explained that "unlike the electric utilities, the military designs its hardware with redundant features, to help it survive once parts of it are damaged or compromised. On a ship, if the 'port' power bus fails, the 'starboard' bus takes over immediately to maintain service. But there seems to be only one consumer grid, or bus to transport power across entire regions of the U.S. When it comes to the energy distribution system, vast sections of the country appear to be operating on a single engine."
The mystifying inability of officials and experts to account for just how 50 million Americans across one quarter of the U.S. could be deprived of electricity is highly suspect, Clifton says. "When I worked on submarines, the computer systems performed self-diagnostic tests 8 times per second, and instantly printed out the exact location of any component that failed. That was 12 years ago. Post-Y2K, post-9/11, how could no one know what went wrong on August 14, 2003?"
By contrast, Libertarians point to the resilience and clarity of the market, as displayed by the extraordinary courtesy New Yorkers showed each other in the crisis, and by the "spontaneous negotiations" that transpired between stranded commuters and car drivers in Manhattan, to work out ways to get home. Such voluntary transactions demonstrate that non-coercive private exchanges are far more effective at solving problems than public sector, centrally-planned systems that, one week later, still can't quite figure out what happened. The path to long term improvement in the reliability and supply of consumer energy lies with free market solutions and the true, full and complete deregulation of the power industry.
| LPNY Home |