Technocratic Vision

Smart Meters and Dumb Technocrats - The Market Oracle

'Smart' meters are key corporate symbols of 'modernity' on the long high road to developing totally hypothetical "super" grids, which could or might follow their "smart" cousins, some day. The most simple and basic interest for corporate players is instant and radical hikes in power prices - 'smart' metering has been spearheaded by power companies and by related, often subsidiary wholly-owned technology firms happy to sell meters 5 to 25 times more expensive than the analogue ones they replace. In almost all OECD countries, this 'modernizing crusade' is also backed by political deciders, supposedly to save us from climate catastrophe (nothing less !). Related parts of this crusade include low-watt lightbulbs using rare earth metals produced in China under slave labour conditions, with massive environmental pollution, 10 times the price of filament bulbs they replace, and the ultimate political and corporate symbol of high tech modernity: electric cars.

To be sure, at least until Fukushima, the more grotesquely irresponsible and the most mentally deranged Technocrats could playact belief in a rash of new nuclear power plants recharging massive fleets of private electric cars all across Consumer Land. Today's downsized version of the Electric Fantasy features even less credible, but equally expensive, massive windfarms 50 miles offshore. These would supposedly be able to keep hundreds of millions of average greedy consumers mobile and capable of reaching the supermarket parking lot, by recharging their electric cars.