Pic Of The Moment: How You're Paying For Billionaires To Get Richer

[EarlG]

Large version

No Way!!! While Average US Residential Electrical Rates Rose 10% 2022-24, Industrial Rates (AI) Fell 3%

[dalton99a]

1. Another transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich

[SergeStorms]

2. Somebody had to pay for those campaign contributions to Trump......

from the tech industry, and it sure as he'll wasn't going to be shareholders or CEOs.

[orangecrush]

3. Started with Reagan

And came to full bloom this year

[LetMyPeopleVote]

4. K&R

[FakeNoose]

5. Those AI datacenters are being built for cryptocurrency generators

It takes humongous amounts of power to run those supercomputers ... all to find the next crypto numbers.
THIS is why we're going broke! We're paying the cost for them to make their next $ billion.

It's not the one-per-centers who are exploiting us ....
This is the one-hundredth of one-per-centers. They're getting almost all the benefit out of this.

[jfz9580m]

6. Unbelievably stupid

I was about to launch into a rant.. its some 15 years of near constant febrile rage..
Then I stopped myself.

These guys need to held criminally liable - Google, Pentland, Thiel, Facebook, Microsoft, Palantir, Musk, all the small creepy little ai cos/data miners out there.

I am going to work on making that a reality irl. That should be a grim lesson on how ubiquitous sleaziness does not pay. We need a drastically different legal landscape.

After Trump 2.0, the effects of these tech cos is palpable.

[FakeNoose]

7. I think about how the ancient Romans died out from lead poisoning

They coated their dishes and pottery cooking items with a clear glaze that fed lead into their system every day.
How stupid was that?

We're killing ourselves too, in another unique way. How stupid are we?

[erronis]

10. Actually, I think most of them are for AI - and many are being built on land used by the crypto miners.

There was a good article yesterday about how there isn't really the electrical infrastructure to power these anyway.

[FakeNoose]

12. They haven't figured out how to make a profit from AI yet

Crypto has been extremely profitable for a lucky few.

[relayerbob]

8. Quantity discounts

Yeah, that’s the ticket.

[ck4829]

9. K&R. Needs to be a whole book. "How billionaires become billionaires"

Chapter 1: Crime
Chapter 2: Crime... if you did it
Chapter 3: By you paying more

[modrepub]

11. AI Companies Been Buying Up

Power generators for a while. Crypto bought plants on the cheap to mine bitcoin. Others doing it to pay at cost prices for electricity and not be subject to wild swings in market electric prices. The rest of us get to pay more as the public electricity generation shrinks.

Another example of privatize the profits and socialize the costs. All of us should pay market price for electricity. It incentivizes efficiency and lowers greenhouse gas emissions through efficiency.

[Bengus81]

13. LOL 10% in three years? We just got JACKED on Oct 1st for 9.6% with Evergy

Shit in three years...probably more like 20% in Kansas,much more in other places. Total fucking rip-off as they pay their shareholders $2.80 dividend per share last year.

[Aussie105]

14. The big consumers can dictate or negotiate the price the pay.

The little consumers just need to make up the shortfall.

Prices here (South Australia) for household consumers have gone up over the years too, but it's not AI at fault.

More:
1. Government has put up a seawater desalination plant for drought years.
Consumes power even when idle, as it is now.

2. Green energy infrastructure - windmills, solar farms going up.
Closing down older coal fired power stations.

3. Government funded battery emergency standby, enough battery in place to run the system for 30 minutes if country wide interconnects fail.

Our bill for an all electric home adds up to about AU $6K pa.

Quarterly bills, I imagine they will go to monthly bills soon to make it feel more palatable.