Aha, good point good point!

“Furthermore, Lew and Seamus get nothing out of defending the status quo”

Not that I have any reason to think it has affected Evan’s article, but be aware that it was written under the ISCR banner. Contact and Meridian are both ISCR corporate members (http://www.iscr.org.nz/n43,36.html) – which I take it to mean they frequently contract ISCR to perform analysis.

I am sure you both are. I’d note that only one thing wound me up – and that was having “policy benefit” numbers that appeared to be very inappropriate, and used as a marketing device. The usual “missing costs” and “weakly thought out benefits” were on show all through it – and many of my friends who aren’t economists were “focused on” the annual power bill cut, as from what they could tell this is what the policy was … nothing more!

This of course gets me inherently wound up at any piece of political advertising, I mean policy release, so it can’t be helped 😉

I wonder whether that means we are both in Matt’s camp of having an open mind on whether something along these lines could be beneficial.

I am paying no attention to the political responses to the political policy announcement (which takes out most of the compare-to-Albania-type comments. So maybe “angry” is not the right word. But I am saying the reason for the exasperated responses is not that whole policy is not fleshed out, but that the details clearly haven’t even been thought about, or alternatively, have been thought and hidden.

Are you saying that the anger is because the whole policy is not fleshed out Seamus? If that was right, wouldn’t the angry folks be screaming for more information instead of comparing the whole idea to [insert communist country here]?

It would be very nice if innovative proposals did emerge fully formed at the time of announcement, but that doesn’t often happen (eg UFB, charter schools) and anyway there can be benefits in allowing scope for modification. This is standard practice in regulatory settings – draft decisions are followed by submissions that often change the outcome for the better.

John, as I just noted in reply to your comment at Offsetting, I can easily imagine reducing average power bills while keeping prices efficient at the margin, I just can’t see the point, and I see nothing in the supporting discussion of the single-buyer model that suggests the proposers are likely to set a marginal price anywhere near marginal cost.

And yes, it might be *possible* to have a single buyer model that avoided most of the problems that people have raised with the model, but the problem is not that the details have not been released yet; it is that they clearly haven’t even been thought about. And yet, the policy has been released. Hence the angry reactions.

Aha good comment – and to be honest that is also how I largely read your post on frog blog! Cheers!

The lack of detail may partly explain why all of these “anti” links miss the point in places. Brent’s discussion of “pay as bid” markets is a good example – this not part of the policy as I read it. Lew has a nice discussion of the value of water but avoids acknowledging that generators get water for a zero price (i.e. free). Seamus can’t imagine that one could reduce average bills while keeping prices efficient at the margin, though that is exactly what the Greens are proposing.

Its no surprise that lots of people hate this idea. Thats all the more reason to try to discuss it in a disciplined way.