That's why they created DoNotTrack initially. Then browsers turned that on by default, ad revenue lowered, and sites/adcompanies decided to ignore it because it was turned on by default.
1. Do not track was not the browser deciding what to do (that would be a similar shape as Firefox multi-account containers and incognito mode). It was a machine-readable way to tell the site what to do; ie the same incorrect model as the click-through banners we have now, just non-interactive.
2. It was intended to be a way to communicate an actual intent from the user. Once it was set by default, it ceased to be an indicator of user intent.
> Once it was set by default, it ceased to be an indicator of user intent.
This presumes that it isn’t the default user position. There are three people on the planet who actually want ad tracking, and they’re welcome to go change the setting, but default off was the correct setting.
Subsidies are fixed costs. They are not investments, they are one time payments. Under certain conditions, you have to pay those back, but these are commonly not related to pricing.
I don't know how much you know about energy grids, but there is a big reason why negative prices are needed. Energy can't float around on the network. It needs to be used (by direct usage, or storage). If there is too much energy on the grid it needs to be used. There's two ways to solve this, being stop energy from being pushed to the grid, or consume more energy. Both lead to negative pricing to create an incentive to achieve this.
I may be wrong, but I don't think this is accurate.
If the goal were to consume excess production, power plants could just heat a pool of water on-site, or some similar industrial scale "pointless" electricity use.
Rather, negative prices are there because it's in the interest of energy producers to shift demand from the peak, as all their infrastructure needs to be scaled to meet that demand.
So don't think of it as free energy at the time you're using it, think of it as a fine for running your washer/dryer etc. during peak hours.
