In the traditional model, you can only play one program at a time. One radio show or one movie or one show…
Scarcity of spectrum has changed just about every element of our culture. Scarcity of shelf space as well.
There are just a few radio stations in each market, and each station gets precisely one hour to broadcast each hour. Scarcity of spectrum, inflexible consumption (listen now or it's gone forever).
There are only a hundred or so channels on most cable systems. Each viewer is precious and you can only program one show at a time. So program for the largest audience you can find, because that's how you get paid. Share of viewership is everything.
There's only one shelf in front of that bookstore visitor at a time. That bit of shelf space is quite valuable… winner take all. Either the book is on that shelf or it's not.
And every trade show booth takes up a few hundred square feet. There can only be one booth in each location, so the trade show operator charges as much as she can for this particular spot. And having paid so much, the exhibitor tries to get people in and prevent the from leaving so soon. All of them.
How can you help your community build a resilient energy system? One of the first steps is to buy back the energy system from the regional power company by condemning it and then municipalizing it (it can be run as a power co-op or as a standard company … The structure really depends on the community.). This moves provides you with the control of the local grid so that your community can:
Ensure higher levels of maintenance (tree trimming, etc.) and faster response to failure. During the two big power outages on the east coast this summer/fall, power was out for much of the region for nearly a week. In many cases, the municipal power companies get power back on to all of their customers in 1/2 the time of the big regional companies.
Cut rates and change energy mix. As a municipal company, you can select the different types of energy you will use locally.
Add advanced micro-grid features. Everything from community energy markets to local energy backup to power smoothing. Extra benefit of this approach: it will prevent the regional power company from using smart grid tech to snoop on everyone in the community by micro-analyzing energy use (which they will then resell to marketing companies or provide to the government w/o warrant for “signature” sniffing).
All of the benefits listed above will double or treble in importance as the global economy nose dives into depression over the next couple of years. So, it's better to get started early than later.
Here's a few links from the Boulder Colorado effort to condemn and municipalize it's power. A combo of bad service and a low level of renewables use prompted the effort (use whatever hooks you need to get it done, but get it done):
Citizen groups do the hard work. A technical group does the modelling and analysis for a municipal grid. They compare rates, costs, and energy mix Here's an amazingly video of a member of that team, Sam Weaver.
Homer software. The software you need to model a municipal grid from rate analysis to energy mix. The numbers.
NOTE: Great article in the NYTimes today on how the big regional companies are so focused on acquisitions, regulatory gaming, and extractative finance; they are delivering terrible service.
NOTE: Great pushback in the comments on how tough it is to do this. Basically, crony capitalism (revolving door, bribes, etc.) + regulatory capture (same mindset) + gov't granted monopoly = lots of opposition.
he Military – Industrial – Congressional Complex (MICC) is in panic city over what promises to be cosmetic cutbacks in the growth of the defense budget. The courtiers in Versailles on the Potomac, like the obedient editors of the Washington Post, are dutifully pumping out baloney about how dangerous it will be to cut the defense budget. The fact that the Pentagon cannot even account for all the money it receives is unimportant; after all, cutbacks in social security and medicare will pony up enough money to keep the MICC's party going, while the so-called deficit hawks impose austerity economics on the people (in the name of reducing federal debt — think of this as ‘not letting them eat cake') so the Federal Reserve can continue propping up the toxic private debt of the insolvent financial sector. And besides the Post needs the advertisement money from Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, and Northrup-Grumman.
My good buddy Mike Lofgren, who just retired with his sanity intact after working on Capital Hill as a Republican staffer for 28 years — no small achievement I might add — does not think much of whining in the Georgetown salons. Here's why (see CP op-ed below):
Chuck Spinney
BTW … the war between the MICC and Social Security and Medicare that is now being joined has very little to do with the so-called War on Terror — In fact, it is occurring right on schedule, if you doubt this, read this Op-Ed I wrote on this subject, in Sept 2000, one year before 9-11.
The Washington Post Boards the Pentagon Gravy Train
Over the last five years, we’ve spent money on the military – in real, inflation adjusted dollars – at a higher rate than at any other time since World War II. That includes the late 1960s, when the United States simultaneously faced a competitor with 10,000 nuclear weapons and sent a half million troops to Vietnam. The Pentagon is spending recklessly at a time of fiscal crisis when America’s debt has been downgraded for the first time since formal credit ratings began in 1917.
Yet the Washington Post has joined the hucksters of the military-industrial complex in forecasting imminent doom if one cent is cut from Pentagon budgets. Supposedly, the Defense Department has already cut $465 billion from its budget, and further cuts would be ruinous. But those $465 billion in cuts are fake, mostly paper “savings” pocketed by the president from adjustments to unrealistic past projections of the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and from other baseline manipulations.
Monday, November 7, the Washington Post editorial board published its take on the extreme rhetoric the country has been hearing on the defense budget since Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta starting talking about the “doomsday mechanism” that would reduce defense spending. Quoting the newer extreme rhetoric of several members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff defending their budget ambitions to the eager-to-listen House Armed services Committee, the Washington Post positioned itself foursquare in favor of hysterics. It was with an editorial titled “Defense on the Rocks: Mandated spending cuts could decimate U.S. military might.” Find it here (although at the web link they toned down the title with the more sympathetic “US Defense on the defensive.”) Continue reading “Winslow Wheeler: Military Spending versus Competence”
The preamble of the United States Declaration of Independence declares: “…whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter and abolish it, and to institute new Government.” Occupy Wall Street is an assertion by 99 percent of Americans that our government denies us “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” The movement should create a new Declaration of Independence.
In the eighteenth century, the momentum for the American Revolution was fueled by egregious British taxation policy. Initially, colonists were loyal to King George III and asked him to intervene with parliament on their behalf. When George instead declared them to be “in rebellion,” representatives of the original thirteen states adopted the Declaration of Independence.
Momentum for the current American Revolution, Occupy Wall Street, has been fueled by egregious fiscal policy that has worked for the benefit of the wealthiest 1 percent and to the detriment of everyone else. At the onset of Occupy Wall Street, the 99 percent remain loyal to America. They've asked Washington to intervene in their behalf. Some conservatives have declared them to be “in rebellion.” This sets the stage for a new Declaration of Independence.
The problem for Occupy Wall Street is focus. By the time the original Declaration of Independence was signed, American colonists had one objective: leave the British Empire and create a democracy. In contrast, Occupy Wall Street has a laundry list of demands ranging from job creation to abolishing the electoral college.
Nonetheless, Occupy Wall Street is driven by a unifying vision, the perception that the US system is broken. Unfair. That it works for the benefit of the 1 percent but not the other 99 percent. In this sense the current situation is like that in 1776 where our British overlords denied that, “all men are created equal…endowed…with certain unalienable rights…Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”
The challenge for Occupy Wall Street is to channel widespread discontent into a focused set of objectives that restores democratic process and drastically reduces economic inequality. First there must be a succinct problem statement, such as The United States has shifted from democracy to plutocracy. Control of the government is no longer in the hands of the people, the 99 percent, but instead is in the hands of the rich, the 1 percent. Democracy must be resurrected.
Next, there has to be a concise set of objectives. Here are three suggestions.
