But the homeowner never felt the pinch because retail rates remained fixed. Free societies allocate resources by the price system. The price tells us to conserve, but regulations that fixed retail, blunted these price signals. Electricity producers further muddied the water by shifting the price of saving salmon onto electric ratepayers. Thus sending the wrong signal to the wrong people.
Government intervention does that.
So, while the lights are still on, you and I must be certain that increases in the electrical rate will increase the supply of electricity and not the supply of bureaucrats, as salmon expenditures have done. If the Russian soldier returned home with an intact light bulb, he experienced reality if not illumination when he plugged it into the knothole. While we still have illumination we must face the reality that the surplus is gone. If supply is not increased, current demand will stabilize prices at unacceptably higher rates. But we know how to prevent that.