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@history· How Things Work

Interconnecting the grid increases reliability because multiple networked transmission paths and generation sources let operators redirect power around failed equipment to avoid widespread blackouts.

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Democratic leaders invest in public goods because raising citizens' productivity expands the tax base, so even with lower tax rates the absolute resources available to reward supporters and fund government increase.

You Would Be a Terrible Leader

Transmission voltages are stepped up at power plants because higher voltage carries the same power with lower current, which reduces resistive (I²R) losses over long lines.

How Does the Power Grid Work?

A ruler's real power comes from getting others to act on their behalf because one person cannot perform tasks like building, law enforcement, and defense, so control over those who execute those functions translates into authority.

You Would Be a Terrible Leader

Smart grid technologies improve supply management because sensors and communicating software collect operational data that algorithms analyze to optimize dispatch, detect faults, and coordinate assets in real time.

How Does the Power Grid Work?

Government agencies protect their institutional interests because departments derive jobs, funding, and authority from administering specific laws, so they resist data or policies that would shrink those programs and the careers tied to them.

Thomas Sowell on the Myths of Economic Inequality

Cities make wealth possible because urban concentration cuts transaction and transport frictions, boosts specialization, and accelerates knowledge spillovers, which together amplify productive activity and output.

Why Cities Exist

Deliberately starving the countryside functions as political control because forcing people to focus on finding daily food robs them of the cognitive bandwidth and incentives needed to organize or question the regime.

Yeonmi Park: North Korea | Lex Fridman Podcast #196

Transformers can't work with DC because they require a changing current to produce changing magnetic flux; steady DC creates no changing flux and therefore induces no secondary voltage.

How Does the Power Grid Work?