Yes, you have to use the municipal electricity. You cannot lay your own power lines, it's illegal. And in most urban areas, you can't run your own generator for emissions restrictions. You also can't power your home with a bicycle. Even champion bicyclists output 50-100 watts.
Using Bing, DuckDuckGo, or other Google alternatives are incomparably easier than not using utilities like electricity and plumbing. I struggle to see how one can honestly make this comparison.
Yes, but unless you're going to move your house to the bottom of that hole, someone is going to have to install and maintain the power lines to get that power to you.
In that way it's very similar to oil.. no one has to pay to create the energy contained in oil, but they do have to pay to dig it up and distribute it. And yet, oil is not even close to being free.
Edit: a better comparison would probably be hydro.. which also isnt free.
Typically electric companies pay for the grid infrastructure and operation currently. Electricity producers like solar plants out in the desert is not paying to maintain the poles to your house.
It's not a great thing to deny new permits and then import the power from out-of-state. It's less efficient because you have transmission losses.
Modern society is pretty cool, but it does have some costs. I have little patience for people who want all the benefits of modern society but none of the costs.
> but you don't get to have petrol pipes, beer pipes or milkshake pipes laid to your property, neither you get to choose 160V DC or 430V 400Hz electricity
Sure you can have all of these. They're just not offered as part of normal utilities. Nobody will care if you build yourself some, except maybe for petrol pipes due to fire/explosion risk.
It's not illegal to supply your own electricity. It's illegal to not have the gov mandated electricity. Once you have that, you can supply your own on top of that.
Similarly. If someone wants to go off the grid there isn't any reason to force them on to it. Ditto water supplies if they want to try something alternative. And they shouldn't have to pay for a service they aren't connected too because that would be dumb. I'd probably advocate a law that you have to disclose being unconnected to major utilities clearly, obviously and early in the process when selling or renting a house.
I don't really see why anyone should be unhappy if Sam the Solar wants to power his own house. Good luck to him. He doesn't have to pay for my electricity and I don't have to pay for his. If it is much more cost effective for him he can come do my house too. There is literally no need to force them to pay or force them to consume a service that they don't think it a good idea.
And the closer the equilibrium can be pushed to a fully private free market the more cost effective it is likely to be.
I explicitly brought up wells and septic as an example of having to source your own resources, why is it any different for electricity?
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