Once again tonight, likely shilling for his oil and gas donors (at his hard right 501(c)(3) “think” tank), Hinderaker intentionally misstates what utilities are, and why they exist.

As my graphic at right indicates… there are some goods and services that cannot be provided with a profit motive, without deeply injuring (freezing them in the winter, or baking them in the summer — for inability to afford electricity to heat or cool their apartments) those of us with the most limited means. These goods (like health care services) literally make the difference between life and death.

And they are not consumed in predictable enough regularity that one can budget accurately in advance — for peak demand (or slack supply). Moreover, they are wildly capital intensive.

So, as a nation, we decided over a century ago to set up what amounts to a mutual insurance company: a not-for-profit operation, that would be underwritten by all of us… and would charge each of us only the actual direct cost of a given number of kW/hrs. In that way, we would be our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers — to keep homes heated… and cooled. We would all agree to do what’s best for our children — and theirs.

But John inverts this whole notion, complaining that he is being asked — very politely, to be sure… to try to be efficient in his use of this public good — for the betterment of all of us.

He feels the utility exists primarily to give him (personally!) everything he wants — whenever he wants — and however he wants it. In sum, he feels that since he can buy ALL the electric power he’d ever want, and more — the utility is duty bound to think of him first (and perhaps even last, and always). What an… idiotic ass.

At bottom, what he truly hates… is any US system (voluntary or semi-mandatory) that might put the good of the many… in any manner ahead of what he personally feels he’s entitled to demand — by throwing his cash at it. [Idea: why doesn’t he just build his own solar grid, and waste all the electricity he wants — by investing perhaps $1.5 million, to have way more juice than he could possibly use? Then he could ignore all us little people out here, willing to pitch in and help one another.]

Yes… he hates cooperatives — and yes… communal benefit organizations.

Me? I think it ironic. And… I think he ought to shut up. These very “communal benefits transfers” (whyte privileges) are the reasons he was able to go to college and law school — and the way he avoided the draft in Vietnam, by staying in higher education institutions until we pulled out in 1974. Yep — thus again, a communal benefit (one that the poor kids he grew up with in the Dakotas…) transferred to him, by fighting, bleeding and dying in the sweltering jungle… while he occupied a Deans office in protests against the very benefit they died to pass on to him.

What a shameless, feckless… ass he is, indeed. Just shut up, you old man.

Damn.