Puerto Rico is Experiencing an Island-Wide Blackout (engadget.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: Seven months after Hurricane Maria devastated the island of Puerto Rico, the power grid is still unstable. But progress was being made; according to CBS, less than 10 percent of the island was without power as of a month ago. But now, the Associated Press reports that the island is undergoing yet another full blackout. The power company is still investigating the cause and estimates it will take 24 to 36 hours for power to be restored. The saga of Puerto Rico's power grid has been an unhappy one. The US territory was already facing a financial crisis before the hurricane hit. The island only has one electric company, and prior to Maria, it was $9 billion in debt and utilizing outdated infrastructure and equipment.

Comments

Re:How is that possible??

[bobbied]

The government of PR has over spent on other things so are incapable of bailing out the electric company. The electric company hasn't been maintaining it's infrastructure for decades. Hurricane comes though and blows away what little infrastructure was there. This is the result.

It's a catch 22... Folks are leaving the island in droves because living conditions suck, reducing economic activity and reducing tax receipts the government has to service it's debt and sucking any cash available to improve living conditions, public infrastructure and law enforcement which leads to a lower standard of living... Rinse lather and repeat... But this downward spiral has been going on long before last year's storm, it just hastened the process.

Re:How did the people of Puerto Rico allow this?

[Solandri]

"The government" is the one responsible for the horrid state of the power grid in Puerto Rico, both structurally and financially. The power company is publicly owned (i.e. government controlled) and they prohibit anyone else from selling power.

Any time you create a situation like that, there's a risk the people managing the utility will become complacent about doing their jobs or in some cases simply not doing their jobs, because there's no way for them to lose their jobs. There's nothing wrong with government-owned utilities and programs so long as you're careful to monitor for and stomp out such complacency. But if you fail to do so, you wind up with a sub-par infrastructure which costs far more to operate than it should.

That's the thing most people don't seem to get about the public/private debate. It isn't that public ownership is always better than private ownership, or private is always better than public. It's that sometimes public is better than private, and sometimes private is better than public. Depending on the problems you're experiencing, it can be beneficial to make a publicly-owned company private. Or make a privately-owned company public. The key is to take the right action depending on the exact circumstances which are causing problems. Both have their advantages, and both have their failure modes.

Unfortunately, we've developed philosophies where people think public ownership is always superior, or private is always superior. Meaning the people will keep voting for the very people who caused the situation they're suffering with, and the problem never gets fixed. That's the Achilles heel of democracy - it relies on the public being informed to function properly. A deceived public can steer a democracy straight into the ground (or in this case, into bankruptcy).

Re: How is that possible??

[bill_mcgonigle]

Congress is responsible for a lot of the poverty in PR. Christ, a ship from China isn't even allowed to dock in PR because of US laws - everything has to go to mainland US and brought over on US ships. The costs are staggering - one Walmart with access to direct shipping could do more to help PR than dozens of hair-brained political schemes. And good luck attracting private capital when the markets are regulated beyond the breaking point.

Re:How is that possible??

[dgatwood]

PREPA - Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority [aeepr.com] is a public corporation, not private. One of the benefits of socialized utilities is that they can spend other people's money forever.

Socialized utilities work pretty well in other parts of the United States (e.g. TVA). So what's different about Puerto Rico? Oh, yeah. That's right. It's dirt poor in large part because of bad U.S. trade policies that actual states don't have to deal with (the Jones Act in particular). They wouldn't be in this mess if the Puerto Rico statehood referendum had passed back in 1998. This has jack to do with socialized utilities and everything to do with Congress treating Puerto Rico like America's bastard child.