Public Fuel and Power Act of 2014 (Final vote)

[Goldwater]

NAY

[Deus Naturae]

Except that local representatives are not elected. Did you even read the bill? The only elected representatives in questions are those of the workers themselves, not the localities. Local representatives are chosen the same way we choose juries.

The workers cannot unilaterally vote themselves pay and pension increases. They are numerical minorities on each of the assemblies fleshed out in this bill.

They still have an incentive to try and benefit their local area as much as possible by hiring as many people as possible, regardless of the need. I doubt the worker representatives will meet any opposition for unlimited salary and pension increases since the other local representatives have no reason to oppose those things. At the national level, the worker reps won't win every vote, but my point is that this thing is not going to be run in the "public interest" it's going to be a special-interest battleground where various interest groups fight to secure as many benefits as possible for themselves as costs soar.

[Fmr. Pres. Duke]

Quick question: has anyone factored in the cost of buying up the entire energy sector? It has to be in the trillions of dollars in just buying up these companies alone.

[bore]

Changing my vote to Nay, not because I don't want to nationalise energy (I do, for the simple reason that's it's in the public interest to have a reliable supply of energy, and it's a natural monopoly), but so we can do at least a little more work on this.

In particular, I don't understand what's wrong with nuclear, and given it's reliability I think it should be part of the mix, and I think we should probably have some idea of the cost.

EDIT: If I did that the bill will fail, so I'm changing my vote to AYE and echo senator Tyrion's call for a redraft.

[Simfan34]

It depends. Are we also buying ExxonMobil et al? I don't think that is the intention of the bill but the wording has nothing that would preclude it. I found that power utilities produce revenue in the range of $470 billion a year, but that's not what we're looking for. If we were to go whole hog, we'd be looking in the area of anywhere between $1.5-$2.0 trillion.

[President Tyrion]

Alright, I think I am also going to change my vote to Abstain AYE. EDITED

As is often the case, I find myself agreeing with bore most of all. I do think a long term goal should be to nationalize the energy sector, but I do think that the bill might be too flawed to work.

Mr. President, would you be willing to redraft? I'd be willing to pass it if that were the case. Then, we could reopen debate and make a few tweaks.

[DemPGH]

Bore and TYrion,

Yes, I'd be willing to do a redraft that eases concerns enough so that we can pass this and not have something that those who oppose it consider egregious. In fact, I'd be happy to! I agree with the aim of the original bill, and I appreciate Nix's input as well. If several of us put our heads together, we might be able to come with something pretty good.

[bore]

Here's the sort of thing this LINO is thinking

You must be logged in to read this quote.

I wanted to cut out a bit of bureaucracy, and also clarified the nationalization and the nuclear energy section.

[DemPGH]

That looks like a good step in the right direction, having skimmed it!

The thing about Exxon Mobil and BP and such is that beyond a certain threshold we could tax the bejesus out of their profits. I'd love to do that anyway.

We should have an AEA person, at least ideally, and that person would probably be a deputy under the SoIA, or the SoIA could "monitor" this, facilitate it, whatever.

[Simfan34]

Here are some facts to keep in mind. I have found some information showing the rates of profit, after tax, in the electric utility industry. (Source)

Q2 2014: 8.27 %   
Q1 2014: 7.79 %   
Q4 2013: 7.73 %   
Q3 2013: 6.96 %   
Q2 2013: 6.04 %

Hardly exorbitant. However, I do feel very uncomfortable arguing that certain industries deserve saving from expropriation, because they are not "excessively profitable", at all. It begs the question, however, as to why this bill is necessary.

[Fmr. Pres. Duke]

How would this bill treat foreign energy companies, since the federal government cannot buy them? Are they just barred from doing business here? Has anyone considered the consequences that would have on prices and supply?

[President Tyrion]

Alright, I'll change my vote back to AYE to facilitate the redraft.

[windjammer]

Guys, I'm sorry for having to do that for my last actions as VP, but the rules are the rules, when bore voted Nay and Tyrion Abstain, there were 5 Nnay and 1 Abstain, so enough votes to fail.

So, this has enough votes to fail (sorry for having been late).
Senators, you have 24 hours to change your vote (This bill hasn't completely failed yet, because senators, you can change your vote).

[H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY]

Aye.

[Fed. Pac. Chairman Devin]

That looks like a good step in the right direction, having skimmed it!

The thing about Exxon Mobil and BP and such is that beyond a certain threshold we could tax the bejesus out of their profits. I'd love to do that anyway.

We should have an AEA person, at least ideally, and that person would probably be a deputy under the SoIA, or the SoIA could "monitor" this, facilitate it, whatever.

You do realize that they tried that in real life, and gas prices skyrocketed right? That was probably a huge contributor to Jimmy Carter's landslide loss.

[Oakvale]

I resisted commenting on this nonsense for some time, in the misguided hope that the Senate would reject it out of hand. That inexplicably seems not to be the case. If this economic suicide passes it will be the final nail in the coffin of the credibility of the Senate as an institution as well as the individuals who voted in favour of it.

It's something of a running gag that a real-life Atlasia would make Zimbabwe look like a model of institutional and economic stability. Never has that been more clear than now. Unilaterally nationalising about a tenth of the economy with no apparent justification, let alone any apparent objective past tedious sloganeering about PRICE GOUGING (which I can only gather means 'making a profit') is, shall we say, economically risky. Better still, let's literally put said tenth of the economy in the hands of people selected at random. How many times do we think Atlasia wold have defaulted on its debt if this were in the real world? We'd need the largest bailout in history and make Greece look like a paragon of economic prudence. Please think about how insane this bill is before you vote.

It's baffling to me that the Labor Party is willing to be associated with this. I would have expected, of course, TNF to support this, and Alfred to vote in lockstep with TNF. But to see Senators like Tyrion and Bore voting in favour of this absurdity is shocking and disturbing. Some Senators seem set on destroying their reputations as competent legislators by putting their names to this disastrous piece of yellowed leftist dogma. Never has it been more obvious that "socialism" in 2014 is little more than a religion, and that its practitioners unthinkingly and unquestioningly carry out its divinely-ordained crusades and worship its articles of faith. I'm allergic to the phrase "workers' at this point.  In Atlasia, the Berlin Wall apparently never fell, and the lessons the world learned from the failure of socialism were quickly forgotten.

I can only hope that the members of the Senate see sense and reject this dangerous legislation. You're playing economic Russian Roulette, here, and the stakes are very high. If nothing else, please please read Deus, Nix and Duke's intelligent, sensible and important critiques - some of which were, disgustingly, ignored by footsoldiers in this dubious revolution - of this bill before you make your decision. I can only hope that if the worst happens the President will veto.

[TNF]

muh private ownership of energy

[Simfan34]

muh private ownership of energy

I think you need a better reason at this point.

[TNF]

muh private ownership of energy

I think you need a better reason at this point.

I've already outlined my reasons for supporting this. (1) energy should not be held in private hands and (2) energy should be owned by the public and democratically managed in their interests. There's really not a lot else to say about either one of those. You, oakvale and Nix (both of whom I respect a ton and consider close friends), and deus believe in private ownership. You've made your case. I don't believe in the private ownership of anything, so again, we're not going to see eye to eye on it, so it's not even worth debating. This will have the necessary votes to pass and be enacted as law at 1 pm, although I'm sure we're going to debate it further because the President has noted his support for a redraft, which I will support because I trust the President to make the correct decision here.

[Simfan34]

Ah, thank you- my next question was going to be when the vote on this closed, Mr (or is it Comrade?) PPT.

[TNF]

Ah, thank you- my next question was going to be when the vote on this closed, Mr (or is it Comrade?) PPT.

Comrade PPT is the new proper form of address.

[Oakvale]

I find it perfectly reasonable that TNF is supporting this legislation. He is, as he has mentioned, a communist, and as such this is completely in line with his professed beliefs and ideals. The thing I find confusing is why the rest of the Labor Party's Senators seem intent on putting their names on such legislation. Particularly when many of those have responded with annoyance to the Federalist cliché of "all of Labor voting like TNF!!1".

[Deus Naturae]

What exactly is expected from a redraft? In order to address the criticisms that have been leveled against this thing, the President will have to totally restructure the way this thing is governed, come up with a completely new pricing mechanism, and come up with definitions of the vague terms involved and answer questions (such as Nix's about distributed generation) that the proponents of this bill decided not to. If I were DemPGH, I'd be kind of ticked off that the Labor Senators just decided to dump this thing on my desk and leave me to address all of the issues with it...

[Simfan34]

Not to mention come up with an actual reason.

[Lumine]

I would have hoped that the original results of the vote would stand, but since we're going into a redraft I fully agree with Deus on this issue (and by extention with Simfan, Oakvale and Nix), I don't think a redraft can change this bill enough in order for me to vote for it. The arguments made for the citizens have been clear and consistent, and when the side supporting the bill can only say "muh private ownership of energy" and that private ownership shouldn't exist on the first place you know that the reasonable choice is to defeat this bill.