Re: [gentoo-user] Alternatives to knutclient

[Mick <michaelkintzios@gmail.com>]

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On Monday, 30 October 2017 21:04:00 GMT Rich Freeman wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 30, 2017 at 4:50 PM, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
> > have we profited on today'.   However, when a company is public, stocks
> > and such, then it is about what have we made today with no one caring
> > about years from now.  After all, the people owning the stocks may not
> > even own them next week.
> 
> Nor should they be concerned with the long-term.  

Not all shareholders flip their stock in milliseconds to front-end retail 
investors in market movements.  There are also few(er) long term investors, 
but they have been crowded out by big banks and hedge fund algo desks.


> This should be the
> role of the regulator.  If the regulator wants spare capacity, then
> they should take bids for companies to have spare capacity available
> and they get paid to just sit on their excess capacity.  If the
> regulator wants more redundancy in the transmission network then they
> should set specifications for what is desired and take bids from those
> able to build it out.  If the regulator wants everything to be
> replaced within a certified lifetime based on testing then they should
> specify this, and take bids from those willing to maintain the grid to
> this standard.

The problem is the regulator is typically a toothless entity, a paper tiger, 
put in place to apply soft touch intervention by issuing corrective notices, 
when step-in required to curtail the abusive behaviour of market participants 
is long overdue.

The regulator does not hold the budget, central government departments do and 
the regulator cannot (or will not) control abnormal profits privatised 
utilities are making year after year.  However, the regulator will engage 
enthusiastically in the a theatre of regular reviews of market conditions, in 
an attempt to convince consumers and tax payers the most gratuitous abuse of 
power is kept in check.


> The problem is that the general public does not see the value in
> infrastructure, so they don't think about it when they're voting.
> Instead they vote based on whatever fringe issues the politicians want
> them to focus on instead.
> 
> If a company is going to get paid the same whether they build for
> extra reliability or not, they're going to opt not to.  Not only does
> this give them more profits, but it makes their bids more competitive
> vs some other company that would just undercut them for
> "over-providing."

Even worse, on the usual design-build-operate contracts they are often 
motivated to undercut reliability for a more competitive price, hoping to bail 
out of the operate part just as the infrastructure is about to fall apart.


> Lax regulation just punishes conscientious market participants.

On tenders evaluated on a quality:price ratio basis this does not happen as 
often, although it is hard to change entrenched behaviours among competitors.

-- 
Regards,
Mick

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