 the only circumstances in which a business will not be ready indeed eager to do an additional volume of business is if it is physically unable to do so because it lacks the necessary physical means of doing so or because the costs it incurs in doing so exceed the additional sales revenue it will receive that is a fully retarded view of economics and pretty much the same kind of clueless oversimplication that led to the blackouts there are a bazillion factors that affect game strategies which is what the state of california messed up and the energy producers exploited i m not convinced that the only way to prevent future energy debacles like the blackouts is to reregulate ultimately we have to blame the people who crafted the game rules in a way that invited blackouts and exploitation given that the particular set of rules crafted by the state of california sucked does there exist a set of rules that doesn t suck if there does exist a better set of rules then reregulation isn t necessarily the answer you can t blame businesses for being profit maximizers yes the people involved were heartless and corrupt but mainly they just did their jobs the guilty parties are either the mathematicians and economists who wrote the rules or if the mathematicians and economists said there were no good rules pro deregulation politicians who went ahead anyway lucas 