Commentary. San Diego Gas & Electric Company installed smart meters for gas and electric in residential homes last year. It was not a request, it was a demand.
My opposition to the smart meter installations at my home fell on deaf ears. Having called the company in advance of their coming, I was not able to convince them to cancel. Instead, I was served the advantages of digital smart meters versus old analog measurements of my gas and electric usage.
We can tell how much you’re using without going out to your house.
Yeah, that’s what I thought.
Big Brother isn’t coming, he’s already here, installed, ready, and waiting to control our lives from within our own homes. And, there isn’t much we can do about it.
Two ladies in Naperville, Illinois, protested similar smart meter installations at their homes. They were arrested for resisting technicians from installing the meters, nevermind that the technicians violated the women’s property rights as homeowners.
Smart meters are just another way the government, through the utility companies, can control what we do and how much we do it. Smart meters allow constant monitoring of individual usage, which is fed into computerized networks, where central stations bent on bureaucratic control can allow or disallow further usage of the resource.
Government pressures utilities to cooperate in this effort. They present the requirement to consumers disguised as conservation, efficiency, helping us save money and energy, or whatever environmental excuse they can dig up to get customers to believe. The fact of the matter is that government controls us, plain and simple, because it knows what’s good for us better than we know what’s good for ourselves.
I’m waiting for the message that says something like this.
Hi, consumer! You’ve used up your electrical allotment making brownies with your fancy Mix Master. No blow drying your hair; you’ll have to air-dry the natural way today. And, as for the brownies, bake them tomorrow in your backyard solar-focusing sunshine oven. You’re done with the gas, dearie.
By the way, my SDG&E smart meters were free, but the Naperville ladies were not as lucky. They were charged $70 for each meter and $25 per month for its use after that. Besides being arrested, the ladies received neither remuneration for the locks that were cut open on the fence gates protecting their homes nor compensation for forced entry onto their private properties.
Oh goody, next will come government-mandated smart-metered monitors in our bedrooms and pay-per-flush machines for the bathroom, both of which will max out with overuse.
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