What I don’t understand is why burning plastic waste and using the generated heat (for example for district heating) is not discussed more often. I think recycling offers very little benefit over simple burning of plastics due to the amount of oil still being burned everywhere compared to the amount of oil used for plastic production.

OK if it isn’t profitable the state owned company would take tax money to compensate - so in the end it is still paid by the citizens (but more evently distributed) … What’s the root cause for building the power plant is in the end not that important I think … I agree that the overhead is a possible non-issue. State owned company would be a monopoly from day one ( but controlled). But the risk stays that something happens with it and then there is no possibility available on short notice (because it may be impossible/illegal to even start a private power plant … Monopoly building is a problem - but if the price is artificially driven high there should nonetheless come new players on the market (if that is not possible, we don’t have a free market and should change something (antitrust laws,…) - of course the transmission lines are a “natural monopoly” and therefore a (hopefully) trustworthy state owned company is the right thing here (for a free market, there have to be multiple parallel transmission lines which would be ridiculous).

For your telecom example: I visited the website of SaksTel and don’t really understand their plans but do I see correctly that they are charging 70CAD (~50€) for 15gb (and unlimited calls/texts) SIM only? I am from Austria and don’t know what the average for the US is but we had this prices like 20years ago … I am paying ~15€ for 17gb LTE (10GB for whole EU, including tax of 20%)… And this is an old and not quite cheap plan … I cannot compare the quality, but if you are not in a very remote area, a speed of at least 50mbit is normal … (Privately owned telecom company) – what are you paying for mobile data in the US?

And how would that be better than a electricity market? The saved profits (of the owners) would need to be higher than additional overhead (that is often observed in state owned companies - also additional law and control instances) to get cheaper electricity for the citizens …

And of this single state owned company does not operate in the best interest of the citizens (which is sadly some thing to consider) there is no simple control mechanism (you would have to define complicated laws and consitently check) where in free market - if the difference between costs and end price is too high - anyone is free to build a power plant (nowadays even very small systems with photovoltaic) and therefore reduce market price.

The more power a single entity has the more risk is involved in my opinion - even (or especially?) if the entity is state-owned…

I see the post is in political humor - OK … But its an interesting topic - what system would you propose instead of the current free market for electricity? The exact same amount of power must be produced and used in the grid at any instance of time … With negative or low prices it is implicitly incentiviced to build pumped-storage power plants and alike …

I for my side would prefer a model where even a normal private person can buy directly from the market for current price (with some automation it may be possible to use some devices when price is low and therefore regulating the grid without expensive storage plants …)

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