Not entirely true...

Environmentalists in California have actively fought the building of new power plants for close to 20 years.

Heck, in one article I read during the power crunch, a major Internet company (Cisco?) even opposed the building of a proposed power plant next to their new corporate HDQ.

The same article said that only 1 or 2 power plants had been built in the 1990's in CA, versus 20 (or more) new plants in Texas.

Also, if CA does buy out of state, a lot of electricity is lost in the delivery of enough KW hours to CA through the power lines.

So, I blame CA legislators and environmental goobers for not building enough power plants to keep up with the growth, and then I blame the CA legislators again for creating an open market system where companies could exploit them, when they had the option to leave some controls on the sale of power.

Finally, I'm scared to death of the fact that Texas just deregulated their power, and am concerned that we'll run into the same market manipulation by power companies in the near future.

A few things must be regulated.

Water, natural gas, roads, power, local phone service (the wires and switches anyway), the stock market, and now I'm even beginning to think that maybe we should include the Internet in there.

...in everyday life.

I've had this idea floating around in my head about the three branches of "life" - and for some reason, your post made me think of it. In a (vastly oversimplified) view of the world, there are three "branches" of society which deal with three needs:

1. Body - The entity (AKA Government) is responsible for providing the basic framework of society - the business of guaranteeing basic necessities for survival. Note that what is essential for survival varies from culture to culture - 2000 years ago, clean water, some land, and a hut was about it - these days, it's medical care, proper nutrition, food, housing, transportation frameworks and communications, possibly including power. This doesn't mean that the "Government" has to produce said items - just that it should guarantee reasonable and efficient access to those items.

2. Mind - This "entity" (AKA Economy) is responsible for providing material goods that are not "required" for survival, but are not "free" to everybody - basically "luxury" goods.

3. Soul - This "entity" (AKA Religion, but including agnosticism and atheism) is specifically for dealing with the metaphysical questions - why are we here, and now that we're here, what should we do with our lives?

So, what's so important about these distinctions? Well, I think that each "entity" is more efficient at providing the kind of "goods" that it is originally from - and that the philosophy that works for one "entity" does not work so well for another. Government trying to run business and establish religion == Bad. Business manipulating government and twisting religion for commercial means == Bad. Religion dictating law and running a business == Bad. This is all IMO, but there are plenty of examples out there...

This is just a random seed of thought put out by some guy who hasn't had enough sleep in a few days, so it may not be too clear - but if somebody knows what I'm saying, then feel free to translate for everybody else.

Welcome to IWETHEY!