Originally Posted by
alydar
But isn't this how a deregulated economy works? Corporations bet on not building safeguards in order to make more money. The photo of Sweden seems to indicate turbines run perfectly well in the cold, if you do it right. In the absence of regulation, a deregulated system works by people suing for relief. That won't help anybody now, but may in the future. But Pickens and his buddies probably bet that the cost of legal troubles will still be much smaller than the profit they make by not building the safeguards. It's the same as the City of Houston not investing your tax dollars on a fleet of snowplows and road salt. That would be a money loser, given the rarity in Houston of the current weather. That's a "spirit of deregulation" that's been growing ever since Reagan, and probably before. Pickens wouldn't like your socialist attempt to take away his liberty and freedom to make millions.
And, by the way, are you saying the freezing old folks of TX are to be saved while the old folks dying of Covid are just collateral damage? Will someone start arguing the old folks didn't actually die of the cold, but of existing medical preconditions the cold may have amplified a bit? (Because 99.9% of people who get cold don't die). I'm confused, because you just said something to the effect at the beginning of your comments. "It always has been trivial relative to the destroyed world's economy." I'd guess Pickens would see your complaint as trivial to his happy version of "economic freedom."
Sad. In my earlier days coming of age out West, the men I knew would never be heard uttering such vulgarity. The ranchers and farmers of my acquaintance took pride in never showing such a juvenile lack of self-control, or demonstrating so publicly such a filthy mouth. And this word, the "C-word," especially. To use it to insult a man you do not like is to insult women just as much, by suggesting that their qualities - physical and spiritual - are to be seen as negative, even loathsome. As one old fellow I knew long ago would have said, "Time now to grow up, son."