You're footing the bill for Musk and Zuckerberg's power use

Check out this video and you'll see how the so-called "free market" has allowed utility companies to make shady deals with big corporations to power their data centers, all while regular folks are stuck with rising bills to cover those costs. Are we just supposed to accept this?

From the glance through the video, it is happening in the United States. Also not all States in United States but it is happening in some states. In my country, electricity is cheap but some people are going for solar in addition if they are rich. What do you think, can individual solar not be used to replace the public electricity instead in those areas in United States? Or people earn a lot of money and able to pay for the electricity than other states?

Rich people always rule the world, get subsidies & don’t pay the taxes they really should. There’s nothing we can do about it so my advice is to just ignore it & get on with your life. There’s no point getting irritated or emptional about things that are totally out of our control.

That's just how the world works op where the rich conquered while the rest survive. We have been paying their bills throughout history and none of this will ever change sadly at any point going forward. If you detest them so much, you can simply avoid buying their stuff and stay satisfied which is the best thing that you can do plain and simple.

Well, if you will be so emotional on this, you will just hate them. So instead of blaming them, why not improve yourself or find ways how to get out of your situation, if you feel you are being left behind. Just thinking of that would give you hatred in life and self-pity. So better get out of that in your system and work for yourself. Because at the end of the day, it is yourself who will direct your fate and how you will earn a living. Even the government won't have much of a say-so of how you build your wealth. So long it is legal and doesn't harm any individual, you are free to explore your opportunities.

We don't have a choice, that is why it's good for everyone to create their own business, no matter how little, so that you plan the way the customers/end-users pay the cost of your bills, that's how it works, the brains behind establishments don't bear the cost, they pass it down sohehow. So, this is not isolated from the regular ways of business, service and production, the end-users always take the cost after the company has carefully taken into consideration every bill/cost, they will now pass it down to the customers. Be it tax, tariff and additional cost whatsoever, they all have their ways of passing it down to us directly or indirectly.

This. Utility companies take advantage of the fact that we need their services to impose the additional fees upon us. But it has always been this way, it's just becoming more apparent nowadays due to these big companies. This gives the people a choice at the very least. Still, they need to pay for installation and maintenance to have access to solar energy, and that itself isn't cheap.

Improve yourself to what level exactly? Improve yourself to a level where you won't need products from big corporations anymore? Like no more Apple products, Netflix, Samsung, Google, Microsoft, and many more software and products from big corporations? We know that is not happening. Or you mean improve yourself to a level where you don't mind paying the extra bills that you didn't use? Either way, you can't outgrow it. It doesn't matter how rich you become; paying for something you're not using is wrong. Nobody likes to be exploited. Also, it's human nature to exploit. It's just how humans are. I don't believe humans are good people by nature; that is why there is a government and a society to guide them right. In this case, the government is needed. It is their job to make sure things like this don't happen, but unfortunately, they don't care, so all we can do is find ways to make the government to do the right thing and not "improve yourself". Improving yourself has nothing to do with getting exploited.

That's the reality and sad truth. They know the sides and all angles of how to lessen their taxes, cost of operations and even avoid most of it. The trick for them is very simple. Get those stocks they own, go to the bank, and have those stocks used as collateral. Most times, they don't even need anything if they're going to borrow money because the creditors are the ones trying to get them. While they own billions in stocks and assets, they also have free cash flow. So, in all of those things including bills, we can't do anything about it.

You can name your price when you are such a large bulk buyer and if agreeing terms over long periods of time, it means security to the producer in many cases.   If you have a certain contract to pay regular large amounts, this certain income can be taken to a bank as proof and used to finance a balance sheet for example.    What the energy companies have to do and are way behind is create more ways to produce that energy.  As I understand it the infrastructure to distribute power is lacking in most countries so even where an excess exists, the means to transport the cheap energy can be missing.     I've heard of EV charging stations being powered by diesel generators because oil is so hard to beat for flexibility in remote locations and so we're going to keep hearing that story for a while at least.

No, of course, not. We shouldn't tolerate this. The question, however, is that, is it worth an ordinary mortal's effort, time, energy, even money to try fight against this system? We can even barely make ends meet despite overworking. While it may be true that all kinds of evil persist because people are apathetic, it's also true that we can only do so much. For me, I'd rather spend my limited time improving my life and that of my loved ones' rather than change the deeply-rooted system. Perhaps it's enough to bring your concern to the authorities or to legislators and regulators or whoever. If there's a drive or a petition, it's great to participate. But you can't give your all just to try changing the world. 99% of the time, it's a waste of time. Heroes have been dying in vain.

I mean we are talking about people who wouldn't be rich without it. Elon Musk can't deal with everything in a normal way like we do, that would have crushed him. Like for example, a person with more than 600k dollar income would pay 37%, but Tesla pays 23% taxes for example, and could show costs like crazy, that is a very important because that means we can't avoid, when you have a salary, you do not show your "cost", we have a cost to live too, but we don't, yet we pay that taxes. So Tesla basically pays very little taxes, Elon pays nearly none, only when he cashes out. So when you consider all of this, and put the subsidies and free money and contracts he gets from the government, and government gets that money from normal people, basically normal people pay for that subsidies. Not only that, but when his tesla team wanted to unionize, he literally decided not to build his grounds there too. So basically, in a fair world, he would have been bankrupt.

The free market is a lie and simply a lazy form of capitalism that ultimately only benefits corporations. The end result is corporate capture because they are legally bound to do everything to make the highest returns for shareholders. That includes paying lobbyists to tear down regulation which benefits the environment and the general public. The way capitalism works will concentrate wealth into fewer hands over time unless rules are put into place - as wealthy billionaires can't spend the interest that their investments make each year and it goes into buying more. Unfortunately politicians seem to be getting weaker and media companies can be formed that are used to manipulate public opinion against anyone that opposes them.

Well I might be wrong or right, from what I understood seems like in the United States or abroad solar energy or system are being handled by a particular company and not by individual and even though it's installed at your building there are still charges to be paid, unlike our country where an individual purchases a solar system and installed on their respective home. Although in our state down to our LGA electricity is free and not taxation.

This is the sad reality about the world we live in.  The rich will always protect the interests of their folks, which is why policies are made to benefit the rich. Data centres are consuming more electricity, and there have been no major protests against these big tech companies. Where are the acclaimed protectors of the environment?  This news would have been in almost all the media platforms if it were Bitcoin mining.  These environmentalists and social crusaders would have launched several attacks.

It is not a lie,it is what you voted for. Free market are only a few countries. Politicians working tirelessly on how to meddle with it. Shorter serving time, better oversight should help.

Evil people become evil, because of governments, as long as we realize that, we can do better. When you get richer, by him getting richer, you let him do whatever evil shit he wants, that's how politicians work. That's why Elon and Trump became friend and then became enemies as well, not because of principles or ideologies, but because of benefits no longer aligning together. As long as that exists ,we are going to end up with bunch of people getting richer, thanks to them taking advantage of the government. Just look at oil industry alone, they have made more money than anyone else, and yet they get subsidies, during covid period, they made record breaking profits, and yet, they still got tax cuts, we died and bankrupted but nobody helped us.

Unless the gov will force those corporate profit to build their own power supply. I believe this will never be solved. Based on the current law, it's legal. I also know those richest who owned corporate profit take our data and selling it, but we also get privilege to use their tech. This is a problem that is hard to solving.

That’s the cost of living in a country that is home to the world's database centres. The cost of electricity there is significantly cheaper compared to our country, at 9.97 pesos, whereas in our country, it's over 12.50 pesos. This is because we are not producing oil, which is why renewable energy is the answer to all the ever-increasing power bills that include extra charges. You are paying more for your limited consumption; this is the reason the solar energy industry is experiencing significant growth due to these extra and hidden charges.

There aren't that many nations that put what they put towards capitalism like USA does. That is the biggest reason, because they are believing that they have the best system. Like for example, when it comes to medical care, we all know they are very expensive, right? Like they have no free healthcare, and they pay more towards insurance than they could pay as a tax. However, do you know what their response to that is? They are making the medical world improving, and they have the best care in the world, because of this. Is it true? Yeah, if you are willing to pay lets say 5+ million dollars for a cancer treatment, do you know how amazing of a treatment you can get there? There is absolutely nothing even remotely close to the treatment you can get anywhere in the world, not even half as good. But in return of this, people with no money.. just dies. Is that really a "better" system?