Smart Meters - good or bad?

What are they? I assume a meter to say how much electricity you use? How are they different from the millions of telecommunications masts all over the world in output ?
Here we have meters inside or out and a guy from the power company comes to read them every few months or so.

We don't have them here in my area of Florida. What we do have is a device that rotates power away from some items based on the observed usage of the item (hot water heaters off at night or air conditioners lowered at night). I don't like this for "government should stay out of my home" kind of reasons but I do like it in that it saves a little money and reduces usage.

Yes it is a controversy about paying more money at peak power use times. Also some folks say you have to pay $7 dollars more on power bills than before. Also folks upset about the two kinds of radiation emitted by smart meters. On of these kinds of radiation in the smart meters is emitted by all our every day use gadgets like wireless phones, electric clocks, TVs, computers, some kinds of lights, microwave towers and some kinds of microwave ovens. We are constantly bombarded by harm full radiation in office buildings, malls, stores, hotels, in the car, in the home, towns and in cities. The wild woods is the only safe place away from radiation if you do not bring electronic items with you like a cell phone. Some studies have proven this radiation can cause a variety of illnesses like cancer.

Yes, the amount of radiation is nominal. It is really a ploy, in my view, to have better ability to monitor electrical use so they (being power companies, which probably have their hands in some politician's campaign accounts) can charge more for power used during peak hours. Kind of like how insurance companies can charge you more if you are using up your insurance (that deductible +20% more of whatever the total cost is, despite paying for 10 years of good health with no problems) but if not they will just take the monthly fee which is more than you are getting back in care. Or airline companies that have gas that costs 100x more if you want to fly around Christmas than it does to fly off season. Same plane, same gas, should be same price.

I think if the intention was actually to conserve energy it would be fine, but it's not being applied as such. They charge you for what you don't use while you are at work and then charge you that plus extra for being home. My advice, find a night job. Lol. It's very aggravating being abused by large companies that you can't avoid using, like insurance, power company, phones, banks- especially banks, bunch of crooks. I have to direct deposit and therefor pay all these ridiculous fees to whichever bank I am forced to "chose" because it's "paper reducing"- really? Then why print me an additional pay stub anyway? It is not at all about the customer anymore, it's all about the institution. And they know they've got you so you just have to grin and bear it.

In my part of Florida we have remote meters that are checked every so often. It's said because it avoids dogs, but really to make checking meters faster because they can scan your house from their car now which means one employee can now take up what used to be 10 people's jobs. I'll stop because the way business is allowed to treat the American people (and other nationalities in their respective countries) is very discouraging and it just makes me aggravated more than I can express. Gets worse and worse. Politicians and CEO always out to help themselves to a large portion of your hard-earned meal and now the politicians are cutting the crust off the sandwich for their CEO buddies. Any day now I expect to hear "then let them eat cake."

Yes, there are still meter readers and I do know that dogs are a serious problem for service personnel in general being an owner of a large dog myself. But there are much fewer of them than there used to be even though there are much more homes to meter-read. The postal service also went this route some time ago, getting rid of almost all walking post people by requiring median-mounted boxes instead of those that used to be found on the front of the house near the door. You really only find those in historical neighborhoods anymore where coding or infrastructure make the former impossible. That was literally done to reduce the number of postal workers. I strongly suspect the remote meter readers are also along those lines, just as the "smart meters" are- after all, I have a dog but my meter is well outside the 5 foot tall fence (because I thought about that when I put my fence up) and they still put a remote signal on it a few years ago. It is more efficient for the company and therefor probably me too in a small and immediate way because I would no doubt have to pay part of the extra personnel's salary in the form of extra fees on the bill. But it also means a lot of people lost there job and in the long term it is going to cost more because the rest of us have to help compensate for the loss to the economy of working people. We all can see easily now what happens to a country when more and more people are becoming unemployed or are losing good jobs and having to take the lowest end substitute. I don't mind paying a small amount more if it contributes to the health of my local economy, I mind paying more when it contributes to the not-locally owned but locally operated business that is laying off my neighbors while extracting more and more money from us for fewer and fewer services. If smart meters are just going to be used as a tool for this mode of thinking then I don't want them.

Here's a link to very interesting video on smart meters. After watching it, I'm thinking I'd much rather not have the power company installing one on my residence.