Greed is arguably the "fatal flaw" in mankind, but could it also be our salvation?

The real Y2K "Showstopper" is electricity and our electric power industry is currently engaged in a deregulation effort that parallels the conversion to the Euro across the water.

Rick Cowles pointed out about a year ago that deregulation may drive the electric utilities to fix Y2K as well as to distort the truth (in this article) .

The NERC report to DOE said: "The reality is that industry restructuring is moving rapidly and cannot be temporarily halted to address Y2K."

I have no doubt that they will fix it, if they can, which leaves us with the question: Can they do it, even with such a powerful motivation as greed?

-- "C" Student (midas@greed.com), October 02, 1998

Answers

Nope.

-- Joe (shar@pei.com), October 02, 1998.

Welllll, if they're out of business, they'll have plenty of time to fix it though.

Plenty of incentive to fix it, too.

Not a lot money to fix it though.

Not much time to fix it in though.

Not a lot of power to fix it with though.

Based on these pro's and con's, I'd say the con's win. Hope the prison cells stick shut.

-- Robert A. Cook, P.E. (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), October 02, 1998.

Unfortunately for this situation, greed is often overcome by a more fundamental human attribute, to whit:

The two most abundant things in the universe are Hydrogen and stupidity. -- Harlan Ellison

Greed's only a driving force. Stupidity too often is the one behind the wheel. Just my $.02.

-- Mac (sneak@lurk.com), October 02, 1998.

Mac! Quoting first Murphy in "Murphy's Romance", and now my man, Harlan Ellison? Where have you been all my life? I just finished reading Harlan's book "Slippage". Three words...Excellent, excellent, excellent!!!

-- Donna Barthuley (moment@pacbell.net), October 02, 1998.