Meredith Angwin - There is no free market - there are false markets

I have always been irritated when the current model for regulating electricity was called "deregulation" when we transitioned in 1999 from the monopoly utility model of regulation.I am also irritated when people call the weird anomalies during the winter onslaught "market failures." That irritation was caused because I had called what we have today regulated "markets" or artificially created "markets."My law school professor who taught the course on our regulatory scheme thought it was cool because he got to be a regulator but still call himself a market advocate. I figured it was not markets, but regulation. Not deregulation. Rather, a different type of regulation.And, the older I get, the more true the model appears to me of frequent capture of the regulatory agency by the very companies that are supposed to be regulated.I had heard that a great book to explain where we are with our current regulatory model is Shorting the Grid by Meredith Angwin. I have started into it, and already, I am liking what I see.Here is a money quote from the first chapter of the book, echoing my sentiments above.