Australia’s main energy companies are buying up big with grid batteries. Unsurprisingly the much lower cost…

Australia’s main energy companies are buying up big with grid batteries. Unsurprisingly the much lower cost of generating the renewable energy to fill them isn’t being passed on to consumers. You can’t ‘market’ your way to a revolution in anything, including energy. 1/6

All a ‘market’ means is the absence of regulation. It’s regulation that creates optimal outcomes, there is no invisible hand. Leaving things to the market initially creates a sort of ‘competition’. But economies of scale and status eclipse that quickly. 2/6

Leading to a consolidation by a handful of players, the oligopolies and duopolies we affect hatred for. But it’s the natural state of things, economies of scale, and of status. People don’t like negotiating lots of players, and logistically it’s more expensive as a whole. 3/6

Until we drop the idiot belief system that says ‘the people’ (in any sphere of life) will drive optimal outcomes by being allowed to compete with one another, this see-saw of regulation/de-regulation will continue. Know what an unregulated people always do? 4/6

They form and join status hierarchies. Regulation exists as a counterbalance to that deepest human behaviour. It’s why ‘branding’ is such a thing. It’s all about status, always. Everything is. 5/6

If we want the energy revolution to succeed, we’ll need to follow the ‘authoritarian’ Chinese, and lead it from the ‘top’. They’re miles ahead, their culture isn’t subject to fads like market-based thinking and people-led democracies. /end https://t.co/8krLHUWb9I