I have expanded the beer analogy when discussing PF with power providers as follows.
In the classic mug-o-beer transaction, there is a bar owner (barkeep) and a customer (sot). If you are the sot, you are paying for a full glass of beer, not foam. If the barkeep hands you a glass that is half foam, you will send it back to be topped off. In doing so, the foam goes out of the top of the mug, down the sides and down the drain. But as the sot, you couldn't care less about the losses incurred by the barkeep, that is his problem. (or so it seems).
If you are the barkeep, you bought a keg of beer; that is your source of supply (analogous to generating power). The foam which ends up down the drain represents lost revenue; it is inherent in the act of delivering beer to sots, but you get nothing for it because the sots refuse to pay for foam and the beer manufacturer does not give you a discount for the foam. So if you can require all of your customers to use slanted beer mugs that reduce the amount of foam created in the pour, more of the beer from the keg generates revenue. The sot gets the same amount of beer, you get A better return on your investment. You are happy, but the sot is not as happy because you made him buy a special slanted mug (analogous to pf correction equipment), and he sees no immediate tangible benefit from that investment.
But wait. Still from the point of view of the barkeep, if a new sot comes in wanting a mug of beer but refuses to use the slanted mug, then you can make an argument that he must pay a "foam penalty" (analogous to a pf penalty) by charging him more for each mug of beer. That puts him at par with the revenue you can get from the more cooperative sots. You recoup your losses, but he pays more for a weekend bender.
Back to the point of view of the sot then, if you come in with your own slanted mug, you end up paying less for a bender than the sot who refuses to. So indirectly, you DO benefit from improving your barkeep's pour effectiveness.
