Living in a "First World" nation

California is considered as "First World" as they come. We've got lots of food, clean water, and all that fun stuff. We've got technology up the wazoo. Compared to most of the world, we're doing pretty damn well. Depending on who you ask, we stand at roughly 7 or 8 in the world economy with the rest of the U.S. set aside.

So I find myself surprised at how often my neighborhood loses power.

In the Bay Area, we've got Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) as the monopoly that provides power to most cities. Some cities (the island of Alameda, for example) have their own municipal utility district to handle their power needs. For the rest of us lucky schmucks, we get PG&E with its spectacular service record.

They're so awesome, Julia Roberts starred in a movie about them.

On average, my 'hood loses power four or five times a year.

A year.

Without fail.

The outage can go from a few blocks to two or three cities. We're in a population-dense area here around the Bay, so that's a lot of people affected.

You'd think with a record like that, a utility company responsible for providing utilities to one of the most populated parts of the United States would fix the goddamn problem.

I mean, it's got to be expensive to send out repair crews to fix the same goddamn problem four or five times a year.

Apparently not.