steve (12/09/82)
Pacific Power and Light has started what they refer to as "Project Help" in this area. How it works is that people may give money to it, and PP&L will match such donations 1-to-1. The money in the fund is to be used to pay the power bills of people who cannot pay their own. PP&L is enclosing special envelopes in all their bills to their customers to allow them to contribute to the fund. This sounds really altruistic, doesn't it? In Oregon there are laws/rulings that prevent the power companies from cutting power to non-paying customers during the 6 months of winter. This was due to some scandals in which a couple of old people died after having their power stopped. Once spring comes, the power company can shut them down, but probably has to swallow the whole bill accumulated in the mean-time. What "Project Help" really represents is PP&L trying to get its more affluent customers to underwrite this loss 50%. Charity is never wrong, and the "Project Help" concept may be a good one, but I am offended when such a project is publicized in such a pious altruistic fashion when the motives are so base. It is a good thing for me that I take power from Portland General Electric. Are power companies anywhere else in the country doing this kind of thing?
clives@sri-unix (12/10/82)
I'm sorry, I can't see how to agree with your position. I'm going to answer in a public forum, as you published your criticism of others here, and because I think you raise issues we can all afford to ask ourselves about. Please be sure that this is not in any way a personal attack. As you said, Oregon voters and their representatives placed the burden of supplying free power to the needy upon the power companies. Why is it then hypocritical for employees of those companies to ask the voters to share the cost? Who should be responsible, in your mind? It seems to me you are suggesting that people who work for a large, licensed monopoly don't deserve to be paid (= given profit = given tokens for others' effort in return). Or do you mean that those, rich or poor, who invest in power companies ought to be forced to give the fruit of their past labors away? You (and I, far away) work for a concern much larger, if I'm not mistaken, than that power company; one which possesses a significant degree of influence in it's marketplace. If government should suddenly decide it needs more logic analyzers than it can afford, for the public good, would you think you personally should work for free to provide them? It is common to vent fury upon corporations, but they are composed of and controlled by individuals, and the range of those individuals reflects the human spectrum, of which you and I are a part. I might personally be quite interested in individuals choosing changed values in the world I live in, and so might you. I hope you'll accept my apology for using rebuttal of your submission to make a point. The following, in particular, are offered for general consideration, not aimed at you: In not a few regards, aren't many public utilities and large companies as close as we have yet achieved to an ideal of cooperative, supportive, yet free society; i.e. they provide more than a subsistence living -- hence opportunity for freedom and "pursuit of happiness" -- to many who are not always the most capable or aggressive, where they produce goods or services which significant numbers of persons demonstrate by choice of purchase or other vote to be desirable to their view of life? If any of us think of other persons or groups as monovalent, aren't we closing off insight and neighborliness which might allow us to develop wiser and more fruitful accomodation? Can we then, in any way, contribute to a world of kinder persuasion? Clive Steward not much longer at: Tektronix, Beaverton decvax!tektronix!tekid!clives