"Ray E. Harrell" wrote:
>
> December 10, 2000
> California Screaming
> By PAUL KRUGMAN
>
> [C] alifornia's deregulated power industry, in which producers can sell
> electricity for whatever the traffic will bear, was supposed to deliver
> cheaper, cleaner power. But instead the state faces an electricity shortage so
> severe that the governor has turned off the lights on the official Christmas
> tree — a shortage that has proved highly profitable to power companies, and
> raised suspicions of market manipulation.
[snip]

Isn't this the usual story?

People have short memories.

Shave a penny today, and cough up a dollar a few months down the road --
and then wonder what went wrong.

[da capo]

Why isn't our society rich enough to build slack and redundancy into
the systems which sustain our life?  (Yes, I know, we've "displaced"
all our safety-mindedness onto automobiles,
which now have incredibly un-cost effective "safety
devices" to deflect people's anxiety about the
underlying dangerousness of the basic technology by distraction.)

--

There is the unforgettable story of the DC-9, which, in
a long essay, The New Yorker explained was an "adequately
engineered" jumbo-jet.  The L-1011 and Boeing 747 had triple
redundant hydraulic systems; the DC-9 had only dual systems.
The other jumbo-jets ran their control lines thru the body of the
wing, where they were better shielded from being severed
on impact than the DC-9, which ran its hydraulic lines
along the *forward edge* of the wing!

    Buy American: It's adequately engineered!

And the old NASA joke about the secure feeling it gives you
to lift off in a rocket produced by the lowest-cost bidder
(Morton Thiokol, e.g.).

[If I had my way, the heroes of today's economy would not
be the dotcommies (Oops! did I typo something that might ruin
somebody's career, there?), but: TOOL AND DIE MAKERS!]

+\brad mcormick

--
  Let your light so shine before men,
              that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)

  Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)

<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [log in to unmask]
  914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua NY 10514-3403 USA
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