The scenario you describe of everyone getting standby generators is happening now in South Africa.

Recurrent power outages and rationing means that anyone who can afford it is buying their own. That’s grossly inefficient and expensive but electricity is too valuable to do without.

To watch what will happen, look at England. When they take over the public services (NHS), then a private system springs alongside it.

Power will become localized; businesses will / are building backup generation to avoid relying on the grid as a continuous source of power, and new housing will either have backup generation within their walls or from some localized, walled-off source.

“The commons” will deteriorate, and the rich will wall themselves off. It is happening with health care now, and it will happen with power soon. It has already happened for education (by moving away from the big cities) and is in-progress for air travel (private jets bypassing overburdened public airports).

This happens with security, too – you either move to a city with a de-facto private security force because the poor can’t live there (a rich suburb) or your building buys its own security guard (our city condo building).

The outcome of a public takeover is that those with the means to do so leave the system or minimize their reliance on it… then it becomes a patronage sinkhole for public servants and falls inexorably into destruction, like inner city schools and hospitals.

This is far less efficient than doing it RIGHT for all, but if the government is going to sloppily take it over (like it is kind of doing with power in a back hand way) then the logical step is to let the public system fall to ruin (will take a decade or so) and build a parallel, private system for those with the means to fund it.

This is what happens everywhere under socialism, but it is often too slow to note.

Must discount tiny countries like Sweden or even Canada… you can arrest this deterioration for a while with an efficient bureaucracy and social cohesion… but we don’t have this on a broad scale in America so it will be faster.

That’s the future of manufactured goods, folks. Robots, robots, and robots. The industrial robot is the McCormick Reaper of the post-Industrial age.

> I’m fairly confident that prices of a domestic-only product would be much higher.

I suspect we’d roboticize the f*** out of it, so, prices would be higher, but not as much as you might think. There would not, however, be a lot more jobs out of it, and the downside is that, in addition to costing us more, it would not help the other nations of THE WORLD to bootstrap THEIR economies up to at least industrial level. I believe that that is one thing missed in all of this.

The whole problem with this crap is that these idiots are arguing from the point of view of a feudal lord about the notion of an industrial economy based on manufactured goods. They cannot see how it would work, since growing food==wealth is all they grasp. The notion that only 3-5% of the populace is actually involved in the production of food would be inconceivable by their lights. Likewise, we have moved on, to the third economy — IP & Services. The notion that only 3-5% of the people will make all manufactured goods fifty years or more from now (however long it takes to bootstrap much of the rest of the world’s peoples out of poverty), is beyond these idiots. “How could that possibly be!?!?” they whine. All new wealth for the next century or so will come from creating IP and providing services. That’s why I laugh at these idiots who were protesting the WTO while WIPO is going on across town, to their total cluelessness.

Back on the overall topic — China, in particular, is an important example where there is a hidden security benefit to trade and development.

China has an excess of males approaching adulthood, as a result of the one-child-one-family policy and their cultural bias towards males (that’s about to flip-flop, as people with girls realize how much power they have as potential mates in a limited-supply market). Historically, the result of such a situation in human cultures is to get rather jingoistic. By bringing the Chinese economy into at least the 20th century, there is now another out for males to excel in — business and trade — and those run directly against jingoism. War is usually bad for trade.

Hopefully, China can channel that aggressive cadre of young males looking to compete for mates into business and trade channels. Otherwise, the s**t is going to hit the fan in a decade or two.

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What this really means is that no longer is the grid there to serve you, but now you serve the grid. The Smart Grid is build on “demand management.” You are the demand and the government provides the management – for your own good, of course.

The California plan of last winter to require remote controlled home thermostats was just one example of much more to come. By managing YOUR electrical demand, the government can now make consumption fit the limitations of the politically correct power sources. As Sol said, lights out after sundown on systems with progressive solar power!

More screwage from the liberals when the simple fix is build more nuclear power plants.

When this is applied to energy, the thought is that we don’t have to be money-grubbing. Just a bit higher price, and some encouragement to the technologists, is surely all that is needed to have plentiful energy. Twist this wire and push that button. How hard could it be? It is so easy to imagine. We sent people to the Moon, so why not energy for all? It just takes the political will.

Of course this is disasterous, wishful thinking.
There is more on this at my post Magic Power

With GM and Ford bankrupt, there will be no US automakers. High tariffs on imported cars will virtually eliminate new cars. Gasoline stations will continue to disappear. US will become a land of used cars, seldom used cars.

We will all be proud that jobs are not exported; that we hardly use any foreign oil. $10.00/gal gasoline helps, so do import restrictions. People are encouraged to walk instead of drive. Walking = patriotism (provided you don’t wear leather shoes or shoes made from oil). Processed foods will have disappeared from grocery stores; indeed supermarkets will have disappeared because cars are scarce.

Roe V Wade has been extended. Since a person is a foetus because he or she is unable to live outside the womb (ie without constant care), the Supremes rule that anyone who is unable to support himself without constant care is a foetus. Foetuses (young and old) may be aborted in the privacy of a family planning clinic. Suddenly the SS and Medicare crisis is solved. Patriotism = family planning.

Liberals are very patriotic. Liberalism defines patriotism.