Pacific Gas and Electric produces money by sending natural gas and electricity into homes, businesses, schools, hospitals and any place else that wants to be warm or have light after dark.
Quite a few neighborhoods and towns have been burned down by PG&E in the last couple years.
To provide all that gas and electricity requires what can best be analogized as a "machine" of near cosmic complexity.
Like all machines PG&E's needs constant inspection, upgrade and maintenance; in the absence of those activities that cosmically complex machine will gradually decay and break down.
But doing those things is really expensive.
And expense doesn't contribute to enhancing returns and shareholder value.
So the PG&Eers decided they didn't need to do all that expensive stuff: "we've been fine so far" they said; "we'll probably be fine in the future; if it ain't broke don't fix it".
But then little things began to break dropping power lines sparking and flashing into piles of tinder and Paradise became hell.
One of the failing components was a hundred year old iron hook; after a hundred years it rusted out (how odd) broke, dropped its line and set another really big fire.
I guess that's American Capitalism at its finest.
5G is going to be one of the most significant components of the future of the human race.
That's because its inherent ubiquity, granularity and raw speed will allow the internet of things to become a reality: if one wants to one will be able to tie one's pacemaker real time to one's HIPPA compliant medical records system; I assume there will be myriad more useful, or more interesting, permutations and combinations of the impending infinite number of things with unlimited access to a blinding fast, always on, and everywhere connection protocol.
At least that's what Asia and Europe have thought.
They have had 5G deployed for some time now.
"Not so fast" has been heard incessantly from America's telecoms carriers.
"That 5G costs a lot of money; what about return to and enhancement of shareholder value"?
But some of them are finally deploying 5G, having decided to spend some money on the actual "thing" rather than spending money on advertisements touting their non-existent 5G networks.
But the airlines have started yelling about 5G interfering with the airline control systems.
"5G is too close to our control frequencies" they are shouting; "there can be leaking between them and that will spell catastrophe".
The telecoms carriers have pointed out that 5G is deployed in Asia and Europe with no complaint from the airlines.
"Yeah, but that's because over time Asian and European airlines have invested a lot of money upgrading their control systems so they don't leak; that wreaks havoc on return to and enhancement of shareholder value".
Makes me wonder what they did with the 65 billion we sent them last year.
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