Comment Re: Varies, I suppose (Score 2) 533
First world countries generally have more capacity than needed, otherwise blackouts and brownouts would be commonplace.
Just because water flows in rivers does not make it free. Damns are expensive and need to be insured against breaking, and those costs among others make the water not free. (More fundamentally, water rights are a part of the purchase price of riverside land.) You might as well argue that coal or oil is free, because they're already buried there, waiting to be used.
Economists have developer a polynomial....
Well hooray for the economists. <sarcasm>They're like gods; they're never wrong. </sarcasm>