What We Learn When the Lights Go Out

James Fallows explains What We Learn When the Lights Go Out, #1. There are a few points, but this was most important to me.

"It really drives home the fact (and your other correspondents have not emphasized this sufficiently) that the US is becoming in many respects a third world country due to misplaced priorities and a shallow libertarianism. It's not just electricity infrastructure, either. Germany is a country that freezes in winter, but you don't see frost-heaved road pavement. Why? They build the roadbeds much deeper. American contractors seem to prefer pie crust roads.

Adjusted for inflation, the US has spent well over $20 trillion on the military since the cold war began. Does anyone think if we had only spent $15 trillion we would be speaking Russian? What about the $1 trillion we squandered on Iraq? Could a portion of that have gone for improved electricity grids, better water filtration (with backup generators - the fact that some water filtration plants can't pump water when the grid goes down is scandalous), better roads, and better infrastructure in general?"

He has more in What We Learn With the Lights Out, #2.

"Electricity is not the luxury it was a century ago -- it is absolutely necessary for a modern industrial society to function. The reason the power has been out for days at a time for so many people isn't because of the storm alone, but because a for-profit company made a calculated decision that it would rather its customers eat the costs of a power outage than invest in the most reliable infrastructure it knows how to build.

You didn't expect multi-day outages to be something you needed to be prepared for, and you shouldn't have to expect that, because it doesn't have to be that way. I visited China last year, where many people (rightly) boil their tap water before use. Or exclusively drink bottled water. Think of all the energy wasted, all the time and effort expended and garbage thrown out just because the water wasn't sanitized properly at the source. That's what happens when a public utility can't be relied upon. But when I got back to America, I drank greedily straight from the tap. Because I could."