For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.

The problem is that distribution networks are highly regulated monopolies, many of them operating in the red because of fire-related lawsuits or government-mandated rate limits that don't respect the costs. They have no real incentive, and in some cases no funding, to expand to meet the ever-increasing demand.

There's a long backlog of electricity producers waiting to be connected to the distribution network, but that network is expanding very slowly.

Meanwhile, supply meet demand. Consumer demand is increasing, AI demand is increasing, all uses of electric power are seeing increasing demand. The supply is choked by the distribution network. Increasing demand, limited supply -> increased price.

This is retarded.

1. It isn't for profit healthcare that is the problem, it's THIRD PARTY PAY.
2. I don't use third party pay, ever, for healthcare. I've been insured nonstop for over 30 years, and NEVER ONCE has my insurer paid my doctor.
3. Even when I've had emergencies, I still called around, negotiated a fair cash up front rate, paid cash up front, and billed it to my insurer. My cash up front rate was sometimes below any co-pay negotiated with my insurer, lol.

I just recently had some elective surgery that would have cost me about $2000 on my annual deductible, but I was able to cash pay a negotiated rate of $400 including a follow-up "free". I submitted the $400 to my insurer and they reimbursed me.

Third party insurance exists because YOU VOTERS demanded the HMO Act of the 1970s, which tied health care to employment, and then employers outsourced it to third parties.

Health care is remarkably cheap in the US (cash pay, negotiated) and I don't have to wait months to see a doctor when I call and say I am cash pay. They bump me up fast.

I can't remember the last time I pirated something from HBO MAX, let alone paid for it. What shows do they even have?

For clarity:

Possession is zero tenths of the law.

When I worked at the DNC, our practices for composing the email list left a lot to be desired. They were notionally opt-in, we didn't intentionally buy spam lists, but if "someone" dropped your email address into a form on our web page, we didn't ask twice. And I know for sure that a couple of my own email addresses that should not have found their way onto the list did so, seemingly by collection from downstream politicians' lists who had been even more careless about their list collection. I doubt that has changed for the better.

As near as I could tell, the RNC's practices were worse.

Nah.

Iâ(TM)m 51. Iâ(TM)ve had health insurance continuously for 35 years and have used it exactly ZERO TIMES.

I am self pay. For everything but true life threatening emergencies, which Iâ(TM)ve had zero.

Even the ER is cheaper when negotiated self pay.

My urologist is stunned that I pay $85 for his visits. Self pay. Including labs. My colleague goes to the same urologist and his insurance pays $550 for the same visit and naturally it comes out of his deductible lol.

Insurance is a scam. All insurance is legal gambling and gamblers never win.

Supply and demand dictate this is exactly the case.

If something is valuable to everyone, it should only be accessible to those who have enough saved value to acquire it.

The poor fucked themselves. My parents are poor but worked hard so I wouldn't be.

Being compensated for it means it wonâ(TM)t get wasted and will always have a fair valuation.

Compensation is as cooperative as it comes because nobody can hoard it.

The top-most gear in a modern car locks the torque converter so you get the same efficiency as a manual transmission in the same gear.

Doesn't matter. They have little choice. The ones that aren't suicidal WILL do the best the can. It helps that they'll be indoctrinated from birth about the heroism of the mission.

You said it yourself: the heritability is 0.8. When you start with people at the top of the scale, the second generation won't be average but they also won't be as smart as their parents. The third generation will be dumber still.

Yes, after multiple generations they eventually reach a new stability point with higher than the original average intelligence of the human race. But that new mean is far below the intelligence of the original group that set out, and includes a significant number of individuals who are not mentally competent to maintain and operate a spaceship.

The classic problem with a generation ship isn't engineering, it's biological reversion to the mean.

You pull 400 crew from the brightest, best qualified of the 8 billion people on Earth. Their children will be smarter than the average human, but not nearly as smart as their parents. And the third generation will be dumber still as the average intelligence and competence ebbs toward the overall human average.

Can a team of essentially random people plucked off the street keep an interstellar spaceship in good working order and successfully deal with unexpected crises? It seems unlikely. Our best and brightest could, but they'll only be around for the first half century.

It would be amazing if there was a document that stated in very clear terms just how limited our federal government is and what it can't do at all no matter what.

Feed UTF-16 to the C compiler and let me know how that works out for you.