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Post scarcity has been true since the dawn of the agricultural revolution.
Get on half hourly tariff if you can (example for the UK is Octopus Agile).
As long as you don’t concentrate your usage between 4pm and 7pm, it saves a shitload of money over a regular tariff. The other day, they paid me to put the washing machine on.
I dont get the argument about hydrogen not being effective and too much energy going to waste in its production, when we have to stop wind turbines during windy seasons because they generated too much electricity that what can be sold. If we have too much electricity. We can store it in hydrogen and dont mind how much goes to waste. It would be wasted anyway
This BULLSHIT comes up every so often, and I’m kinda tired so I’ll to someone else to try and explain how the electricity grid actually works.
TLDR: All turbines on a electrical grid have to turn at the same speed. Hydro, Fossil fuels, Nuclear all use turbines. There is no way to dump energy into nothing to prevent the turbines from spinning too fast. So pure supply and demand capitalism is why we pay people to take our energy to allow our electrical devices to work.
I saw some context for this, and the short of it is that headline writers want you to hate click on articles.
What the article is actually about is that there’s tons of solar panels now but not enough infrastructure to effectively limit/store/use the power at peak production, and the extra energy in the grid can cause damage. Damage to the extent of people being without power for months.
California had a tax incentive program for solar panels, but not batteries, and because batteries are expensive, they’re in a situation now where so many people put panels on their houses but no batteries to store excess power that they can’t store the power when it surpasses demand, so the state is literally paying companies to run their industrial stoves and stuff just to burn off the excess power to keep the grid from being destroyed.
Lol
I just love when large organizations (governments included) skimp on something for monetary reasons, and get fucked down the line.
Too bad citizens pay the damages.
Wish there was just a faster way to get citizen input.
“Hey folks, this is going to be a cost overrun for this very very good reason, please vote yay or nay in the weekly election”.
Don’t see how it could work now though, given that half the citizens are deeply committed to destroying everything to prove gov doesn’t work.
Batteries are more than likely another type of pollution. I’m sure they can and will be recycled but just like the problem with our current capacity to recycle things it probably becomes untenable (guessing).
The state just needs to find ways to convert that energy into something else. I suggest desalinating sea water and pumping it up stream.
You gotta say what kind of battery when you make a comment like that. A bottle of pressurized gas is a battery. Not very polluting though.
Sure you can buy a compressor and some air tanks. I imagine the turbine you need to purchase might be midly expensive. The real issue I think would be the size of the pressure vessel you would need to make it worth it.
You can’t just say battery. There’s tons of energy storage that isn’t chemical based. Thermal sand batteries, pumping hydro up a hill, flywheel energy storage, etc.
Energy storage doesn’t inherently mean pollution
I can only assume op meant a lithium ion battery. Based on context.
Yeah, the cobalt and lithium is quite nasty to mine
Just send the electricity to a neighbouring state. Sure, it’ll be really inefficient to pass it through that massive length of cable, but that’s fine, we don’t care about that. If the interstate power infrastructure doesn’t have enough capacity then first priority should be to upgrade it.
America is severly lacking in UHVDC.
The peak of power demand is behind the peak of production. So sending power east makes so much sense.
That’s one of the options they mention as a solution.
Basically store it, use it, ship it, subsidize it or pay someone to waste it are the options.
Right now they pay someone to waste it, which is the option that makes adoption the most difficult, so it’s a problem.
Also, let’s be real here. The Lion battery farms, defeat any sort of environmental benefit. It is a total shot in the foot, which is why governments, and solar companies don’t advertise the concept.
For a moment I was thinking that lion battery is some brand, until it clicked in that you are talking about lithium ion batteries
Sorry, I should have put a dash in :D Li-ion. Also another i.
Rawr!
That’s not what I got from the article. (Link for anyone who wants to check it out.)
My interpretation was that decreasing solar/wind electricity prices slows the adoption of renewables, as it becomes increasingly unlikely that you will fully recoup your initial investment over the lifetime of the panel/turbine.
In my mind, this will likely lead to either (a) renewable energy being (nearly) free to use and exclusively state-funded, or (b) state-regulated price fixing of renewable energy.
Am I the only one noticing a lot of conservative economic priests in here? Is this normal?
I get the sentiment in here, but the poster is missing an important point: there is a reason some group of lunatics (called the TSO or Transport System Operator or in some cases other power producers) are willing to pay for people to consume electricity when there is too much of it; They are not doing it for the sake of being lunatics, the electrical system cannot handle over or underproduction. Perfectly balanced (as all things should be) is the only way the grid can exist.
The production capacity in the grid needs to be as big as peak demand. The challenge we face with most renewables is that their production is fickly. For a true solarpunk future, the demand side needs to be flexible and there need to be energy storages to balance the production (and still, in cold and dark environments other solutions are needed).
In off-grid, local usages we usually see this happen naturally. We conserve power on cloudy low-wind days to make sure we have enough to run during the night (demand side flexibility) and almost everyone has a suitably sized battery to last the night. The price variability is one (flawed) mechanism to make this happen on a grid or bidding zone level.
Thank you, it’s very valuable to correct that misinformation.
It seems like an easy mistake to make as the original post being replied to is framing it explicitly in terms of economics.
It’s just a bit of shitshow of weird communication. How hard would a tweet like “A problem with solar panels is that they produce too much electricity during the middle of the day, putting strain on the grid and requiring increased power consumption”.
That’s not as sensationalist but I’m also not a headline writer. It just seems like this shitty piece of journalistic malpractice was made to stir up outrage
https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/07/14/1028461/solar-value-deflation-california-climate-change/
It’s MIT, they’re not exactly a clickbait source.
The reply is what makes the excerpt seem inflammatory. It’s an article about the economics of solar power, so the excerpt is a fair representation of both the article and the real issue it’s discussing.
It would be sensationalist if they said “critical problem paying for solar power comes from negative prices, threatening future of solar adoption”
Framing it as though it were a condemnation of solar turns a statement of fact into something different than what it is.
All this time I thought that MIT meant Massive Idiot Team
That is of course absolutely true. But fossil fuels are still a tool of power that is used for political purposes. Of course, this also applies to the metals needed for batteries, for example. However, access to this is not so promising in terms of power, because on the one hand, as you say, you can also live and produce “according to the times of day”. On the other hand, there are untapped reserves of these raw materials - such as cobalt and manganese - in the deep sea, i.e. international waters. In short, I do think that some players have an interest in boycotting solar energy and other renewable energy sources in favor of fossil fuels in order to maintain their power base - Russia, for example.
Solar panels already turn off when grid voltage is too high
Could they not just install a series of big “resistors” that can be switched on and off to burn off overproduction when necessary?
They can, and they do. They’re typically considered safety devices since they can be damaged by having excess load dumped on them, and they either are dumb, in which case they don’t act like an actual load the generator is expecting and can maybe cause damage to the generator, or they’re smart and can mimic the type of load the grid would actually give, but now they’re expensive and need maintenance and testing in excess of what the dumb one needs.
It’s something you would need for off grid solar as well, with batteries that can only take so much charge, but at the power grid level it’s a much bigger task because you’re in the realm of “metal explodes” power, and exploding metal is bad.
This has me thinking
The resurgance of sand batteries has been interesting. While not great for converting back into electricity, it’s great for heating and cooling which is a massive portion of our energy consumption. They can also store quite a ton of energy with crazy efficiency, especially when paired with heat pumps. And from what I’ve been able to deduce, they aren’t dependent on beach sand and can use rougher or man-made sand reliably.
First if we could get enough large buildings and neighborhood/home installation sand battery heating & cooling infrastructure operating with heat pumps. Then when during high times of energy production we can dump the energy into the sand battery infra and help keep the grid stablizied and keeping our heat & cooling overall percentage of use down.
In the end, we’re going to need tons of solutions and strategies for storing excess production during low demand times. I’m hopeful to see where we go here, the crazy things were seeing in energy storage is extremely interesting. I’m super excited to see the advances were seeing in calcium and sulfur based batteries expand in adoption and the production lines can scale with demand.
Unfettered capitalism will be the end of us.
Capitalism can work to our benefit. It’s main benefit is incentivising people to get more, which seems to work well at encouraging people to be productive. The main idea is supposed to be efficient resource allocation, but that plainly does not work as it leads to wealth accumulation at the top.
Our problem is twofold. The first problem is we externalize negative costs onto society. So environmental damage, health costs, workers pensions, roads, bridges etc.
The second problem is efficient wealth distribution. Currently we focus on income rather than wealth. We should tax wealth just as much as income. We certainly should make any use of an asset as collateral a taxable event.
Some things that might help. We should look at changing taxation systems to be a formula rather than bands. The more income you get, the higher it goes. The lower your income, the lower you’re taxed. Same as now but rather than having to meet a threshold to move bands, every dollar is taxed based on where it falls in the distribution curve. It would be more complex for people to get their heads around at first, but actually simpler for all calculations going forwards.
UBI would also help with redistribution and make society more efficient overall.
This is a great write up. I think the problem with economic theory discussions is it is an extremely complex and nuanced topic. Saying ‘capitalism bad’ is popular, but not very constructive.
I think one big point that gets bungled in these economic debates is markets. That’s supposed to be the shining light of capitalism because of how efficient markets are at allocating scarce resources. The point that I think is missed, is that markets can be used very effectively outside of a capitalist system. They need to be designed for other economic systems, but they can easily handle the biggest argument with socialism; centralized control.
I feel that is a major point missing in these debates and I just wanted to give it some attention.
I get what you are trying to say, but you sound like someone in an abusive relationship that still believes they can fix the abuser somehow.
40 years of néolibéralisme cannot be undone overnight, it will take small steps to reverse the damage done, and to normalise societal expectations
I think these are reasonable suggestions to make society more equitable. Do you disagree with any of them? Or just don’t like them because they modify the existing system instead of tearing it all down?
Bbbut be just needs anger management classes…
They are reasonable suggestions if you refuse to think outside the box of capitalism.
And no, thinking outside of capitalism doesn’t require to tear it all down. That is exactly what the capitalist want us to think with their TINA.
What would you change it for? We’ve tried many systems globally and historically. Capitalism seems to be the best at reducing poverty.
No it’s not. Russian and Chinese state capitalism turned two preindustrial countries into global superpowers in a matter of decades, and lifted unprecedented numbers of people out of poverty. And they weren’t even communist! Communism has been tried in places like Catalonia and economically, it succeeded. Militarily, not so much, but only because all the capitalists turned against them. Capitalism is the bottom of the barrel when it comes to lifting people out of poverty.
Yes, China and Russia had rapid advancements in reducing poverty by embracing capitalism market principles. That’s partly the point.
Nobody is advocating for pure capitalism. No country practices it. It’s theoretical and has no restrictions, or regulations.
That’s a completely ahistorical take. Capitalism is best at creating poverty when you look at it globally. Yes it is good at concentrating riches in a few places, and from a rich western perspective it may look like it “reduced” poverty, but even that is starting to become questionable these days.
No, its really not. Capitalism increases productivity and wealth. How that wealth is distributed varies by country. Russia for instance has oligopolies that mean most goes to individuals. Europe has social programs that mean its more evenly spread. Its up to the countries and law makers to plan that well. Its not the fault of the concept if its misused. Its a tool, like any other.
UBI would also help with redistribution and make society more efficient overall.
UBI is a band-aid, not a solution. It’s a way to keep a broken system working for a little bit longer until it’s no longer politically expedient to help those in need. It props up capitalism in the guise of giving people a leg up.
It’s selling people bootstraps so they can lift themselves up by them.
UBI is not a band aid. It would be a complete overhaul of our economic system with a major change in how we value people, time products and services.
It is not a way to prop up capitalism, but a way to use capitalism for better equality and minimum standards of living.
What you’re describing could just as well not be capitalism. Why cling to capitalism?
Practicality for one. How do you change the world economy when they couldn’t even get together to manage a respiratory disease by wearing masks and isolating for 2 to 3 weeks.
There is nothing inherently wrong with capitalism as a concept. It’s how it’s abuses. Regulation and rules to circumbet that can help.
Communism doesn’t work. China shows some totalitarianism works, but I don’t want to lose personal freedoms for the greater good.
What system would you suggest would address capitalisms faults yet has a chance to actually happen?
Practicality for one. How do you change the world economy when they couldn’t even get together to manage a respiratory disease by wearing masks and isolating for 2 to 3 weeks.
You could say the same about UBI. Proper implementation requires wealthy to give up their wealth. Do you see that practically happening?
There is nothing inherently wrong with capitalism as a concept. It’s how it’s abuses. Regulation and rules to circumbet that can help.
Except that the system inherently causes capital accumulation and rewards abusive behavior. The kind of rules and regulations you’re thinking of work against capitalism and the wealthy are allowed to circumvent those rules anyway (see how they avoid paying tax).
Communism doesn’t work. China shows some totalitarianism works, but I don’t want to lose personal freedoms for the greater good.
I’m not going to get into the details of what communism actually is supposed to be or how the USSR or China are not necessarily the way to communism. I’m just going to point out that socialism does not have to go the way of USSR or China.
What system would you suggest would address capitalisms faults yet has a chance to actually happen?
Socialism. Not the Leninist way but the Marxist way. Marx described socialism as a process, a series of steps necessary to dismantle capitalism and establish communism. He didn’t go into details on what those steps are or how many steps they may or may not be. So to be true to Marx I’m not saying “let’s completely throw capitalism in the bin and go into planned economy” but rather lets treat it as a process. We don’t need to establish communism, but lets take step by step towards a better future.
And as such I think the smallest first step, which in many ways is already a huge step, is changing the ownership of companies. Everyone working at the company is also the owner of the company and gets a say in how the company operates. That change alone would improve working conditions and arguably have companies do less shady shit. But realistically I don’t see it happening any more than I see UBI happening in the way that you imagine.
UBI can be changed gradually. It loses some of it’s efficacy in distribution but it doesn’t need to be revolution. It can be evolution. It also does not mean a high risk of capital flight for the first movers. This means countries or areas can do it incrementally, one at a time, rather than a complete global shift at once. The wealthy won’t want to give up their wealth, that’s a given. That is the case for any change we plan for better distribution, so it’s not really an argument against or for any change.
Yes, it favours capital accumulation and rewards poor behavior. So what I have suggested adding is a method that leads to better wealth distribution and to disincentivise the negative externalities. Correct the flaws, so to speak. There is no perfect system that cannot be exploited. It’s a case of risk mitigation not elimination.
Socialism may stop companies doing shady shit, but will it make them.less competitive on the world stage? Remember, they are competing with non socialist countries initially. As you mention, it would be a means of transition. Yet, every country that has tried communism has failed, often with devastating consequences for the people there. Our world and nation state economies are much more complex and intertwined than before, yet efficient use of resources was not possible then. The problem is not the theory, it is people. Power corrupts.
I don’t have a problem with changing the ownership structure. However, can you point to any cooperative that was able to scale in the way that modern companies in a capitalist system do? Cooperatives exist and on a local scale can be beneficial. On a macro scale, they are less efficient and society as a whole is worse off for that loss of efficiency. That is the problem. Capitalism priorities profits, which require growth. The key is not to ensure broader ownership, but rather broader distribution of the wealth and profits created by that. We already have examples of that with share disbursement as a reward. Perhaps we could look at that being a regulated norm, in tandem with pensions payments etc.
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The rise in productivity, wages and wealth in most countries that adopted it would bef to differ. Yes, there is more wealth created at the top, but that can be corrected with other policies.
You’re confusing capitalism with communism.
You just mentioned a number of ways that capitalism could be “fettered” to work more for the benefit of all. But the person you responded to said “unfettered capitalism” (unless they changed it later). :-)
I assumed they were using hyperbole as no country has unfettered capitalism. All our restrictions on it in some form. My suggestions would be one way we could do this. There are others.
One problem is that most of your solutions have been attempted before and they failed to stick - e.g. a majority of people who are alive today were present when the top marginal tax rate in the USA was 90% (I am focusing on that b/c the OP referred to MIT), and when that was true, government programs were so well & sufficiently funded that we literally went to the moon! (but how often have we been back there since? granted, there isn’t much real reason to go…:-P)
e.g. people started hiding their wealth in offshore tax havens, only bringing in what they need in the short term to get by at any given moment. This relates to globalism as in how much is a wealthy person even a resident of any one country, despite them living in it 100% of the time and getting 100% of their income from it? If you open up a broom closet and maybe assign 0-1 employees to it, but file the paperwork for thus you can make anything into your “global headquarters” even for a multi-national, multi-billion dollar corporation - Amazon does this all the time, and moreoever keeps shifting it around to take advantage of tax incentives offered to them to move it there (for awhile).
Another way that people hide their wealth - Donald Trump is famous for this (among other things:-) - is to keep the actual financials low while still having the full quality of life experience. So he and his family may not “earn” much, yet still live in a fantabulous apartment that they value in the millions if not billions of dollars. Their cars, helicopters, private jets etc. also may not be directly “owned” by them, but rather by their corporate entity, which is subject to all the tax burdens and benefits of such - so even though he gets the exclusive use of all of his “stuff”, does he truly “own” it, at least as far as tax reporting purposes go?
Even UBIs have been tried before - e.g. slaves might be given their rations regardless of output, so that their families could eat even while taking care of the next and present generation of workers rather than produce work product directly.
So it is not that nobody has ever heard of these things before, it is just that they do not “stick”. e.g. Donald Trump, after taking advantage of that whole financial system, when he gets into power decides to defund the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), essentially the police who monitor for such excesses and abuses as he and others like him are exactly likely to try to get away with. (And yes, the IRS - the general taxation services & enforcement division - got its funding reduced as well, but that gets off into a whole HUGE tangent where it is not just its funding level, but direct mandates to specifically not go after the most wealthy offenders, or rather the particular style of crimes that they are able to abuse, which are more complex and can be held up in court for years and thereby take up a disproportionate amount of resources to enforce) And then on top of that, Donald Trump also lowered the wealth taxes - so both by making things legal, and also by reducing the ability to enforce certain particular styles of crimes that are illegal, he steadily moved the notch more towards “unfettered capitalism” and away from “placing restrictions on it in some form”. Nothing ofc is 0% or 100%, but there is a spectrum, and we do move along somewhere on it.
So, extremely unfortunately, it is not hyperbole at all - the most narrow interpretation of it as meaning equal to precisely 0% restrictions would be, but the common interpretation is to look at the spectrum and see the direction we are moving along it towards that particular extreme end, as in “more unfettered now than it was in the past”. You may actually therefore be in agreement with the person you are arguing with, but missing out on that b/c you keep talking about how to “solve” the crisis, as if the solution could be to simply pass a handful of laws and the problem would be over. However, pass those laws how - through Congress? And with the Supreme Court now having been stacked with judges that each day are revealed to be even more corrupt than we suspected in the past, ready to strike down any law that may cause their own personal quality of life to degrade i.e. they might receive fewer free rides on private jets if they displease the billionaires that they have befriended?
Well, anyway if you are speaking on purely theoretical grounds, or perhaps in Aussie land it may even be possible on practical ones, but in America we do tend to feel that we are well and truly and even royally fucked by the system, and any such “solution” seems unlikely to ever be possible to implement, for the simple fact that our overlords do not wish it. We may have come too far down this road, to the point where even the entire federal government cannot fight against them any longer, except in perhaps specific areas, but not overall, not anymore:-(. Ironically this illustrates the dangers of unfettered capitalism: I get that capitalism isn’t so much “good” as it is the lesser of other competing evils (socialism being demotivating etc.), but it really is like harnessing the power of this giant behemoth beast, whereas if you let the beast take over control then you can become well and truly and royally fucked…:-(. When riding a mount, one must always remain in control, or else… well, we are about to find out I suppose.
i.e. capitalism may be good, but only if properly restrained.
Capitalism is neither good or bad. It’s a tool. It’s the people that design the system that hold ultimate responsibility.
All the things you say about things having been tried previously applies just as much to socialism, Marxism and other forms of non capitalism economies.
Slow incremental improvements pay off dividends in just the same way that slow incremental worsening has made things worse.
I think faster broader changes would help more, but that doesn’t make them easier to implement.
Yes, there is a despair with how the world is worsening. We have a lot of things to blame for it. Facebook, trump tax laws, tax havens etc. Yet people continue to use facebook and continue to vote for Trump.
What needs to be done is fight and push for better candidates and better policies. Many are doing that but not at the level that is required. When was the last time you went to a political meeting? Or a rally or march? Those questions are rhetorical. I know I haven’t been in a long time. We have become complacent and despondent as a society. Things are harder, but also easier. We have lots of conveniences now that were unthinkable at the times you mentioned where things were subjectively better in the past.
Things were not better for women and minorities. Things were not better for child workers. Things were not better for lgbtqi people. Slaves were not better off by having a UBI. Please be aware that ubi means you have no obligation to work. Any income from work would be on top of the UBI. With advancement in productivity. I don’t see how society will function without UBI or cutting hours significantly. Jobs in transport, logistics etc will all go. AI will kill many more in communication.
Exactly - bad implementations of communism, bad implementations of capitalism, bad implementations of whatever utopian form of government we can dream up in theory, all suffer b/c they are bad implementations, even if in theory they are perfect. Beyond that, some theories may themselves just be “bad” overall, if the theory is too far removed from reality.
One problem that the USA has found for itself is having allowed itself to devolve to become a 2-party system, where no other parties matter. This is a fundamental phase shift b/c at that point the parties no longer try to accomplish positive aims, and instead merely try to “not” be the other side. Biden won b/c he wasn’t Trump, Trump won b/c he wasn’t Hilary Clinton, Obama won b/c he wasn’t Romney, or McCain, Bush won b/c… well it goes back many, many decades. Afaik, no democracy has ever survived that.
Nor does it seem to matter even, b/c regardless of who wins, the wealthy are in charge. School shootings are a perfect example of that - our CHILDREN are being MURDERED… and nobody gives a damn. I recall one poll result where 80% of the American people were for some form of gun control, and that rose to >90% of responsible, registered gun owners! Also that was a decade ago, so surely after all that we’ve seen since, it could be even higher? There is nothing that engenders bipartisan efforts in Congress these days - but 80-90% agreement among the American populace is astounding!!?!! However, it does not matter one bit what we want - b/c the lobbies want something else there, and they are willing to pay 10-fold more than the counter-lobby, hence children continue to be murdered all across the nation (typically in poorer schools though).
In addition to being horrific, that example also reveals that our democracy is beyond broken, it is no longer “democracy” at all, but a plutocracy where regardless of whoever votes for whatever goal to be done, the rich control what actually gets done, regardless.
So to fix something like that… assuming that it even could be fixed, would take… I have no idea. But going to a political rally will not begin to cover it. We may literally have a civil war coming up, or at least it is highly expected (among experts, it is said) to have some kind of “constitutional crisis event”, much like the January 6 protests where Donald Trump attempted the most ineffective coup that I have ever heard of, yet still was solidly an attempt.
And one potential reason for all that is that whereas the wealthy previous wanted to use middle-class workers to be the underpinnings of society - doctors, researchers, lawyers, engineers, etc. - now they gloves are coming off, and they would have divide the world into the haves vs. have-nots. That CPG Grey Rules for Rulers really helped me see this clearly, though also depresses me:-).
Yes, that’s a great response. I would disagree on some points but agree overall.
What people fail to see is that all these systems are just that, systems we use as a tool. Its up to us to design the system such that it benefits more people. However, those that design the systems have an incentive to design them to be reelected rather than what’s best. We need to overcome that. One way that can help is sunset clauses on bills. They expire after a set time and need to be devoted on. It should reduce the effect of interest groups, or at least require more funding for them to be able to intervene multiple tines over multiple years with more and more politicians and beurocrats. Basically, reduces their investment. Next one is term limits.
Its a great video, by the way, I hadn’t seen it before. It does emphasize why democracy is better, but what might be missed is capitalism as part of democracy is what also provides that extra wealth that mininoses the risk of revolt and increases number of stakeholders or power brokers.
Those whonarguse socialism or communism forget that there is still a ruling class working in their own interest and that ruling by committee is slow and inefficient. Just ask anyone on a committee.
I agree, the wealthy have an outsize influence. The wealthy is not one person. It is a constant rotation of power brokers coming in and our of power. Take the USA, the 1% is 3 million people. Sure, there are a large number who stay at the top and corrupt society with their interestd, but they don’t control all the levers. They focus their efforts on controlling the interests that will benefit them most, usually taxation.
Gun law is a great example of people wanting change but not having consensus on that change. However, much ofnthst change was thwarted nut the NRA using membership moneybfron the same people that claim to want change. We now know they also took money from Russia, in an effort to destabilise. Russia understands that a large mass of people effects vhsbge. They have weaponised it. Those seeking to stabilise and improve the world need to do the same.
The fact that Trump, who staged a shitty coup, is a horrible person and has clear mental instability is on line to be reelected is a shitty endorsement of current politics. That’s not the fault of democracy as a concept, that’s the fault of bad rules, like the electoral college, like campaign finance rules, like citizens first etc. All of which the democrats have not touched, ever.
I don’t see a civil war coming. Society is too comfortable(even if financially very tough) for people to revolt violently end masse. I do expect some form of constitutional crisis. I’m surprised it hasn’t happened after the coup. Many of the problems identified by that, remain uncorrected. If something is tradition and not codified, it is useless as a protector of democracy.
I think the complexity of society and the intersecting interests of so many people and groups is what makes civil war so much less likely in developed countries. I can’t think of the last time it has happened. The closest thing is middle east or eastern Europe, but that was fallout from global power struggles more than general unrest.
They probably meant “unchecked capitalism” and it would have worked had we continued to keep it in check. The inequality is so excessive now that correction would be criticized as demotivating to industry and innovation. At this point, I think they’re just trying to run out the clock so we don’t collapse before the world burns.
Sadly it does kinda look that way, but even more devastatingly sad than that is the near certainty that we are giving them far too much credit for forethought there. To think that the likes of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg has that level of strategic capabilities, rather than simply “gimme monay, now puh-lease”, is rather generous. More likely they will be shocked that the leopards (themselves in this case!!?!!?!!) have eaten their faces off too, and as the move Don’t Look Up perfectly illustrates, they too will be more surprised than anyone else as the world ends. But hey, at least they got theirs while the getting was good, right? :-(
i.e. Business Intelligence (acumen) is not the same thing as actual intelligence (IQ), and definitely not the same as emotional ability to empathize, with others and even one’s future self (EQ?). If these people could understand something, but it is to their financial detriment to do so hence they won’t, then it is no longer a matter of helping them understand (IQ), but rather of motivating them to care (EQ) and thereby actually do something about it (business).
The only point you have going for capitalism is the supposed productivity, but any system that has a way to reward performance can do the same just fine. There is a range of economic models between capitalism and communism, several of them very market based.
A good example which i always felt would work well with minimal systemic change is the free money system (freigeldsystem), which is largely private enterprise. The big differences are that all land and natural resources are owned by the public/the state, leasing it out to companies; and negative interest making the hoarding of wealth impossible.
These key changes give the public a large degree of power over the private sector, since they could simply choose not to lease any land to companies who are not compliant with the public needs, and largely remove the capitalist class - the owners, the profit parasites, the shareholders, the ones living off their hoarded wealth - from the system
I like this concept. I do think it would generally slow resource extraction because companies would be more wary to invest in the large infrastructure if they don’t have perpetual ownership of the land. I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing, just an outcome I think is likely.
Widespread UBI in a capitalistic system would see all prices immediately rise to extract that UBI money and go back to its old ways immediately after that.
And of course the tax system should be changed, but many millions in lobbying and campaign money is used to get it in its current state and keep it there. Everything is for sale, including the law.
I wonder what it’s like to be as dumb as that mit guy. Like just for a second no longer cuz I wouldn’t wanna go full retard from overexposure.
My shareholders!
My favorite solution for storage of excess power is closed loop pumped hydro. Two bodies of water of different elevations are connected by a generator/pump. When there is too much power, the pump moves the water to the higher lake. When the power is needed, the water flows through the generator to the lower lake.
This is like the gravity generators they’re looking to use old mines for.
It’s exactly like gravity batteries, but do get fooled with fancy renders and inspirational music.
Lol that’s great, and I was more talking about the ones for mines that already have deep holes, this one is hilariously stupid though. Water does make a lot more sense though, only issue I can see with it would be evaporation.
pumped hydro is pretty slick but incredibly dependent on geology and ecosystem.
Thermal storage is a similar vein, you can even use water, we do use water for this even. Compressed air as suggested, i believe there’s a mine somewhere in the US that’s used a compressed air storage plant. And of course, motion, flywheels go hard i hear, but i find those to be less preferable, even if high energy density. I imagine those would work better at scale.
That was a very cool read!
The only problem is that it is inefficient
It’s more efficient than just dumping the energy, at least some is being stored
depends a bit on how much energy it costs to build it all, how many decades it should be used how often, and if it’s then durable enough to actually earn back the extra energy it costs. It might, just sayin’
We use gravity batteries in the UK. They work well and are pretty good at their efficiency. When you are creating massive systems they are made to last decades. There is always upkeep but it is the same with coal, gas and nuclear plants. All these renewables are far cheaper and far more cost effective than these power stations and for years the main problem has been that wind and solar cannot be used as base load, but with battery storage on a mass scale, thermal and hydrogen storage, we are now at a place where building out far more solar and wind than we need is viable and mixing in these technologies to provide base load and grid stability.
That’s true
This could also be made more “local” with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed-air_energy_storage or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_energy_storage and not reliant on the difference of elevations.
Hydrogen fuel cells also. Use the excess to make hydrogen which is simple to store and then use it as a fuel to burn when you have demand. These have started to be put at the bottom of wind turbines so they don’t need to be stopped when the wind is blowing but there is no grid demand.
All these systems help balance the grid too meaning these renewables can be used as base loads instead of dirtier base load generators like coal or gas fire stations.
hydrogen which is simple to store
Hydrogen is famously not simple to store. This is part of the reason that SpaceX rockets use kerosene instead of hydrogen despite the better performance.
i mean, conceptually it’s simple to store, you put it in a container, the tricky part is doing it effectively, in a way that won’t create a massive bomb. And also at density.
Conceptually, yes, it’s like putting it into a container. But it’s also made up of the smallest atoms possible, which means it leaks out through a lot of materials. It also reacts with other materials - which makes it a good rocket fuel - but it also corrodes materials it comes in contact with in innovative and frustrating ways.
Be careful that other rockets run on liquid hydrogen, which should be kept extremely cold. That is the main problem for them. That being said, hydrogen is indeed not easy to store and transport.
True. Liquid hydrogen takes something that’s already difficult to work with and adds even more complexity to the system.
I was talking with an engineer about using a closed loop hydro system at home, maybe in a tower. He said the water wouldn’t have enough head to generate electricity. But that compressed energy storage just might be the solution I was looking for.
the other arguably more effective option for home use is dumping it into heat. Heating up water is a great heat storage solution for radiant heating for instance. Getting that energy back out is arguably harder, but hot water is also pretty useful, so.
You may be interested in gravity storage. Giant crane picking up giant concrete legos. Neat concept, there’s been some pilots.
Unlimited free energy of any sort is unsustainable. Our planet is a balanced system that has evolved over eons, simply adding energy upsets this balance and probably not in ways that will ultimately be beneficial for us. We can see many negative effects already from adding massive amounts of fossil energy to the system (besides the greenhouse effect and pollution) such as population growth beyond the bounds of the planet.
Solar panels are capturing energy that would otherwise just heat the ground. It won’t upset the planet’s energy balance. If anything, we can use the excess to capture CO2.
The Earth has an energy balance, energy comes from the sun, and much of it is reflected back out into space. .
Here’s a super simple video on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zE3x2wjslt0
If we capture a non-trivial amount of the energy that would’ve returned to space and use it in industry, that adds energy to our system and causes it to heat up – climate change. This is not an issue currently with intentional solar capture (greenhouse effect is unintentional solar capture).
I was simply refuting a claim that clearly violates the laws of thermodynamics - that unlimited free energy is without problems.
I want to be clear, I’m not anti-solar panel. I have them on my house and it’s awesome.
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If it helps you understand complex systems and thermodynamics, you needs some.
This is a real problem but you can only have so many words in a tweet. Note that the price isn’t zero but instead negative. It means there is literally too much power in the grid and it would need to be used. If a grid has too much power then it is bad. It can damage it. There are things we can build that essentially amount to batteries (or natural variants like a dam) that get charged during times of higher supply than demand and discharged during times of higher demand than supply.
run pumps, move water
No, it’s not. It’s a practical problem, not an economic one, but leave it to the tankies here to take it as an opportunity to show how many slogans they have learned.
