Without weighing in on the article or your analysis, I would say that any viewpoint on monetary matters that doesn't gravitate in on May 2026 as a possible huge discontinuity is sort of prima facie counterproductive.
There's very little bandwidth and audience on monetary matters to start with. If we're talking about anything else, we're detracting from that.
To zoom in on how toxic the brand has become, look at the European market. Sales were down 71% in Sweden and 66% in France for 2025[1], despite ~35% growth in European EV sales. The only "bright spot" was Norway, but that's partly because EVs increased to 96% of sales there (vs ~25% in Europe.)
No word on which country might be responsible. I'm going to take an educated guess by covering my eyes with one hand and landing a finger randomly on a spinning globe with the other.
If you're wondering how a "specialized rent-a-cop" like this guy gets away with using physical force in the context of a civil law dispute, here's the relevant quote:
> When Jacobs takes on a job, he and his contractors sign temporary leases with the property owner. This move is his secret weapon.
> Jacobs is a big fan of California’s “castle doctrine.” The state law says someone has no duty to retreat in defending themselves against an intruder in their home. They can legally use force, even deadly force, to protect themselves — so long as the force used is proportionate to the threat.
The signing of a lease makes the aggressor look like the aggressee. This strategy seems really shaky to me. I can't help but wonder how well it's been tested in court.
Once someone gets seriously hurt, some of these landlords might end up wishing they had just waited out the regular eviction instead.
The squatters are very frequently committing criminal fraud, by showing a fake lease to the police to portray themselves as legitimate tenants. Leases aren't recorded like deeds, and landlords' signatures often appear in public records. So it's easy to make a good enough fake that the police will take the squatters' side. I don't know why this article doesn't mention that, but a web search ("fake lease squatter") will show this is routine.
The squatters don't expect to win their dispute in court, just to take advantage of the extended time to trial. Oakland's eviction moratorium lasted for literally years, and they're still working through the backlog. When the case finally reaches court, the squatters will get evicted but the fraud is almost never charged. So from the squatter's perspective, it makes sense to fake the lease.
From a small landlord's perspective, the tradeoff may thus be certain financial ruin waiting for the judicial process vs. a slight chance of ruin if the "nightmare cotentant" approach goes wrong. So it's no surprise the sword guy has business. The risk that his services would be used against a real tenant is partially mitigated by the risk that that tenant would sue. The fake tenants prefer to stay out of court, since the judge (and opposing counsel) will look more carefully at their fake lease than the police did.
Georgia recently created an accelerated judicial review for cases where the landlord is alleging that the lease is fraudulent, separate from default on a non-fraudulent lease. That seems like the right approach to me.
I think all leases (or at least rent stabalized ones) are recorded in NYS (I remember being able to get the recorded rent history of my apartment which included the names of all the previous renters), so it is possible for this to occur.
> I don't know why this article doesn't mention that, but a web search ("fake lease squatter") will show this is routine.
Same reason the article put "empty" in the title to imply they were just sitting around for speculative investing, when there's every indication the houses were intended to be immediately rented out, and are only "empty" because squatters moved in first.
one can combine the above issue with the force recording of leases to require every unit to pay a "residence" tax that if not recorded as being occupied by someone other than the owner is assumed (even if owner has other place of residence) to be occupied by the owner.
This does a few things. 1) it encourages the owner to rent out empty places, as empty places are no longer simply lost opportunity cost, but actually cost money in what they have to pay in this tax 2) requires people record who is legally living in a place to avoid these issues 3) enables areas to discount this tax for poor / disabled (or other logical reasons that they already have procedures for) for people who live in the area that they want to support.
If I did this to someone society liked (say, a girlfriend who had moved in and claims she is now a tenant), even as a fellow tenant, invited someone over with a sword to bear (but not "use") that sword as part of a pattern of activities intended to deprive her of her peaceful enjoyment of her tenancy including deploying "tear gas" and "smoke grenades" and play "extremely high-decibel sound" I would expect, at a minimum, I'd be looking at
At the very least I would expect to get booked, even if the charges didn't stick.
If I did this to some random homeless person or gang member, I'd expect basically a high five from the cops and nothing else.
Of course I do not live in CA, I live in AZ. In my state, ranchers have just straight up shot trespassers and nothing happened to them, despite the fact that by the book this would be highly illegal.
The guy doing this has discovered that in order to be convicted someone has to complain, then the police have to care, then a judge has to let it go to trial, a prosecutor has to actually want to competently build a case, and then after all that a jury actually has to convict you. I'm guessing the chance of all those stars aligning when the squatters are people literally spray painting "Kill all Bailiffs" (in one ASAP website screenshot) is next to nill.
Your analogy breaks down because the girlfriend might have a genuine claim to being a tenant and can defend that in court.
Squatters can't and won't. The whole point is it's time and money consuming to prove they're not tenants and legally evict them, not they they're actually tenants with rights to peaceful enjoyment of the property.
I've never lived in AZ, but it sounds like this may have a lot to do with it. ;-)
Personal injury is an area where plaintiffs start out with a huge advantage. Judgments are large and cases are often settled out of court by landlords' insurance companies. Not only would you have no trouble finding a lawyer, they might actively seek you out.
The article might be a modest proposal [1], but sooner or later we're going to have to answer questions like these.
An even more interesting one is: What will we reward?
We've been rewarding labor quantity, as well as quality via higher wages - as motivation and as incentives for more education. This reflected the productivity primacy of knowledge work in modern economies, but that might not be the case down the road.
We've also been rewarding capital. Originally this was a way for the elites to keep themselves in place (a.k.a. economic rents), but in modern times it's been more of an entrepreneurial incentive (a.k.a. economic profits.)
Without the economic profit rationale, there's no reason to reward capital accumulation. Only pro-profit decisions are good for society, pro-rent decisions are awful. If there's no profit to incentivize, capitalism is just bad all around.
If AI becomes a better profit decision-maker than an entrepreneur, any humans left in the loop are nothing but high-rollers gambling with everyone else's money.
Meh, I was going to use the preprocessor for __LINE__ anyways (to avoid requiring a variable name) so I just made it an "old school lambda." Besides, scope_exit is in C++23 which is still opt-in in most cases.
I think I would be more interested in Rust the language if Rust the PR sphere was not suggestive of certain all-powerful online influences that I've developed antibodies against. I'm not claiming that they're the same people that dig tunnels and launch satellites, just that my immune system is getting activated as if they were.
Hoping this mega-mess pushes the city's effort to buy its own grid past the finish line. PG&E has been fighting it tooth and nail.
Not that it will necessarily make for fewer blackouts, but a ~50% rate discount would be nice. That's what users in Santa Clara pay IIRC, and SF even owns the hydro generator at O'Shaughnessy Dam.
> SF even owns the hydro generator at O'Shaughnessy Dam.
They own the dam, but the Federal government still owns Hetch Hetchy water and land. Permission to use Hetch Hetchy is governed by the Raker Act, which stipulates[1] that SF can only resell the electricity and water through public municipal districts, not to private utilities:
> Sec. 6. That the grantee is prohibited from ever selling or letting to any corporation or individual, except a municipality or a municipal water district or irrigation district, the right to sell or sublet the water or the electric energy sold or given to it or him by the said grantee:
> Provided, That the rights hereby granted shall not be sold, assigned, or transferred to any private person, corporation, or association, and in case of any attempt to so sell, assign, transfer, or convey, this grant shall revert to the Government of the United States.
The original plan was that SF would build both aqueducts and transmission lines to SF, branches of which could serve other municipal districts. But they only ended up building the aqueducts, and contracted with PG&E to transmit the electricity. The question is, is SF violating the Raker Act? Previous administrations have said no or demurred requests to answer the question; typically the people raising the issue want the dam removed. SF claims PG&E is acting as their agent and everything is above board. But, above board or not, I've read some old articles that suggest there's a 50+ year-old understanding or gentlemen's agreement between SF and PG&E, that PG&E would give the City of SF (if not its residents) sweetheart pricing on transmission, etc, and defend the status quo in DC so long as SF didn't attempt to buildout it's own transmission lines or otherwise cut PG&E out of the loop. But if SF did do that, PG&E would lobby DC to terminate the grants under the Raker Act. From the beginning, many cities in California, and even politicians outside California, have resented the Federal grant to San Francisco, so presumably with the right trigger a very large lobby could quickly arise and demand the Raker Act be replaced with a new deal that gave other municipalities in California a direct stake in Hetch Hetchy. It's even possible PG&E comes out on top, because who's going to transmit the electricity?
Of course, that story leaves alot of unanswered questions. But it sounds plausible to me. With CEQA, etc, there's zero chance SF could ever build out its own transmission lines today; it would take untold billions and, more importantly, decades--far longer than the Raker Act would likely survive. Currently the City of SF basically pays nothing to power its public buildings (schools, etc), MUNI buses and trains, and possibly SFO (which SF owns and operates). The budgetary and logistical upheaval that would happen if the Raker Act grant was rescinded (which, again, almost every other municipality in the state would support) is mind boggling. Even if we assume every mayor has earnestly wanted to cut PG&E out of the loop and do right by SF residents' individual power bills, what sane, term-limited administrator would invite that chaos? Plenty of mayors have broached the subject, but invariably such suggestions silently stop, so presumably it's just a negotiating tactic with PG&E that both sides are very careful not to let get out-of-hand.
Even if SF lost the hydro plant outright (which seems unlikely) there's still plenty of margin for SF residents to come out on top. SVP in Santa Clara doesn't own much generation, yet its rates are 60% lower.[0]
Then there's the state-wide need to increase transmission capacity because of the switch to renewables, the future politics of which are kinda unpredictable. It's hard to imagine SF getting singled out and left out in the cold, considering the state already has many large municipal utilities getting better deals for their residents.
Follow the money. Who appoints people to regulate electricity in California? The governor. Who mentored California's current governor? Willie Brown. Who does Willie Brown work/lobby for? PG&E.
The California Assembly is one of the weakest legislative bodies in the entire nation. It's too disorganized to engage in any effective oversight or lawmaking. It's left to the people to come up with constitutional amendments to try to manage this enormous machine.
It's a beautiful state. There's literal mountains of opportunity here. It's lately all too easy to become irrationally angry at these con artists and their ruinous agendas.
My understanding is the governor has to follow laws that are written by the assembly. If one wanted to constrain or force his behavior that would be a perfect instrument to accomplish it. Have I misunderstood this? If not, then this would be the reason for my comment.
Or is your point that the total lack of checks and balances afforded by the Assembly presents us no additional problems over Willie Brown's current employment?
They're not. Rural electricity can be had in the United States for far less than PG&E's charging. Look at Hawaii, Alasaka, TVA, etc., etc. PG&E is expensive because they have to pay for negligence, homicide, stock buybacks, dividends, executive bonuses, lobbyists, and back maintenance.
It's also worth noting that PG&E's got a history of astroturfing. Back in the 00s there was a local blogger, Greg Dewar, who ran a blog called the N Judah Chronicles. Ostensibly it was a blog about Muni and transit issues, but when muni power in SF came up for a vote boy was he hopping mad. It wasn't until someone else called him out for being on the PG&E payroll that he owned up to being paid to astroturf.
1.The last time PG&E had a stock buy back was in 2006.
2. Their dividend yield was 0.8% in 2025, the average for utilities was 3% to 5%. Alaska's APTL was 2.4% to 3.4%
3. Their state lobbying for 2024 to 2025 was less than $4 million. Federal was $60k (both insignificant)
4. California AB 1054 means that almost all of their largest liabilities will be reimbursed via the state wildfire fund. They also have insurance for anything that is not covered. While this won't cover it all the amount actually owned is likely to be low.
I also checked executive bonuses and while the CEOs pay is on the higher end it's not extreme. Not sure how much other executive bonuses could really add up enough to stand on its own as a reason for high electric rates, especially since all your other main arguments seem to be incorrect or exaggerated.
Regarding "back maintenance" this is a standard expense for a utility. Do you have some evidence that it's particularly high for PG&E, taking into account the size of the state?
Why would you make the assumption that the reasons PG&E is expensive(which I haven't even checked) are mostly due to corruption, excess pay or benefits to stock holders, or that the utility has a high liability debt? Most of the reasons you gave are ones that look bad for the leadership of the utility and maybe even the state. Is it possible that due to political propaganda over the long term you default to the assumption that anything a California connected entity does is bad so much so you don't even bother gathering evidence?
Also Hawaii has much higher electric rates than CA.
(Sources for any claims I made are available if requested)
HE is claiming a residential customer will pay around $0.45/kWh which is absolutely on par with PG&E. Keep in mind that HE currently charges fixed fees for electric service, PG&E doesn't yet but will add a fixed fee of $24/mo beginning next year. It shouldn't even be close. Practical Engineering covers it but Hawaiian Electric has some of the biggest challenges of all POCOs.
Most people agree that we need utilities to be monopolies. PG&E, for all intents and purposes, is an arm of the state. Perhaps it’s private in some sense but we all know it’s the government. It has to abide by all manner of government mandates, there is no competition. If you want it to go bankrupt just let it go bankrupt. Whatever replaces it will be the same thing. I don’t have a solution but all the teeth gnashing isn’t going to change the fact that electricity is a government issue and whoever runs it will work at the behest of the California government and the voters.
Pass whatever rules you want. It isn’t going to change the fundamental nature of the org, which is a reflection of the voters. This is a government problem, through and through
> electricity is a government issue and whoever runs it will work at the behest of the California government and the voters.
That's hilarious. The CPUC is regularory-captured like nobody's business, and our governor has been in the pocket of the utility for as long as I can remember. I guess in some sick way that's "at the behest of the government", but it sure as hell isn't at the behest of voters.
Unfortunately, we rarely have choices in every aspect of political candidates in order to change this state of affairs.
Why should people in the sustainable areas keep feeding the cancerous growth of worthless degenerate parasites? Serious question, as city folk keep ratholing into more and more socially destructive technologies, technologies designed to hamstring people, they lose the relative value.
Look at youtube, tiktok. Fine that's entertainment (set aside the issue of infotainment that has already infected public education). Then look at so called "productivity apps", or language learning apps. It's one thing to waste billions of collective man-hours it's another thing to lie and tell people they are learning or being more productive when you are wasting their time.
There are no mass assembly lines in the US, city GDP has been paper GDP for a long time now. On-shoring won't work without a total collapse of every culturally-enriched city, people need to learn hardship again.
If - if - people who live in the boonies deserve to have the burying of their tens of thousands of line-miles subsidized by others, it's by taxpayers, not by electric users in efficiently-served areas.
The difference between being taxpayer-financed and user-financed is that Ellison is on the hook for 10000x as much as granny instead of 20x. If it's a public good it should be paid by the public. A six-year-old keeping the light on at night should not incur a 120% surcharge for burying the transmission lines to a mansion in St. Helena.
This is ridiculous. What could you possibly mean? Everyone decides where they live. The cost of moving is not high, the ability to secure a job never easier.
This is a luxury belief and not borne out by any sort of reality. People have been deciding where they live for millennia and it’s never been easier than today.
Well, urban areas tend to be much more expensive to live in, especially in California. And most people don’t work in tech and enjoy relatively good job prospects.
Please note that AB 1890 which deregulated and divested electricity markets was passed during the tenure of Pete Wilson with the help of a bunch of Republicans holding the legislature budget hostage.
California has been dealing with the idiocies caused by that ever since.
I'll confess I'm a bit less than well-read on this, but I can't help but wonder. How can increasing the number of languages in use within one enormous project possibly reduce critical vulnerabilities over the next decade?
If we're looking beyond one decade, then:
- As with all other utility, the future must be discounted compared to the present.
- A language that might look sterling today might fall behind tomorrow.
There's very little bandwidth and audience on monetary matters to start with. If we're talking about anything else, we're detracting from that.
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