Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[hack]

Because there isn't a free market. You can have market mechanisms, and will. Because a completely free market is either a communist utopia that cannot exist, or today's Somalia. It's always a mixed system.

[hack]

The cost of compliance for CO2, on the other hand, is the result of purely arbitrary carbon numbers imposed by politicians who have probably never opened an engineering or finance textbook in their lives.

Just a punchline, but you're not making a defense of experts here, are you?

[hack]

I have addressed this at least a few times by now. I'm pretty sure that you know that and you understand my reasoning for this.


I try to make a point of keeping track of sstuff like that, so my apologies if I've missed something about you that you think I should remember for future discussions. Provide please, or link, and I will do my best to remember it.

[Hannibal]

The cost of compliance for CO2, on the other hand, is the result of purely arbitrary carbon numbers imposed by politicians who have probably never opened an engineering or finance textbook in their lives.

Just a punchline, but you're not making a defense of experts here, are you?

Since the politicians and the talking heads are the ones who consider themselves the experts, no.

[hack]

Politicians appoint people do to the work. As you know, they are showhorses, and they have workhorses behind them. To organize those various stables they can appoint people like Rick Perry, who may or may not have opened a textbook at some point in the past, or people like Steven Chu or Ernest Moniz.

[Hannibal]

The thread has 922 pages so I don't feel like looking for it.

But to make a long story short, I know that my side has lost the ideological debate WRT to free markets, so now I am voting for whoever I think will minimize the damage. Since the welfare state is here to stay, we might as well preserve the ratio of givers to takers at as high a level as possible. We certainly aren't going to sell the concept of free markets to people who lie on the opposite end of the "Individualism vs. Collectivism" scale any time soon.

[hack]

Oh, OK. I'm up to speed on what you mean. But still, if you're a freemarketeer, you voted for the wrong candidate. Objectively so.

[Hannibal]

No I didn't. I voted for the guy most likely to produce a positive outcome 20 years from now as opposed to a guy who will produce the most positive outcome today but a disastrous outcome 20 years from now. I genuinely believe that there is no bigger threat to the concept of free markets than the massive demographic changes being pursued by Western politicians. This fear is founded in both voting patterns in the US, and social studies of other cultures. I also voted for the guy who I knew would be much more likely to implement a large percentage of his agenda than any other Republican. That's important too. I could vote for the Mitt Romneys and Tedd Cruzes of the world all day, but they would never get anything done.

[hack]

But freedom of movement is a part of a free market. And part of the upside of what a liar Hillary is is that you know TPP would have come to pass anyways, lifting more restrictions on the movement of capital and goods.

[Hannibal]

But freedom of movement is a part of a free market.

But welfare, food stamps, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Section 8 housing, and universal health care aren't. I'm not arguing in favor of those as much as that my side has lost and they are probably here to stay. Or at the very least, getting rid of them won't be on the table for at least another generation. So, like I said, mitigate the damage and try to maintain the ratio of givers to takers. I love free markets but sometimes a half-free market is worse than a tightly controlled one. I used to be more of an open borders guy than I am now FWIW.

And then there's the benefit of taking a wrecking ball to political correctness, a series of rules that selectively cripples my side. Since you guys control academia, most of the news media, and Hollywood, you can't relate to this problem. It is a motivation that you will likely never have. I'm thinking long term strategy here: 20-50 years out.

[Da Geezer]

Originally Posted by Da Geezer View Post
But the case for "economic" generation is that it is continuous, or put another way, it is not dependent on location for efficiency.

This argument, to me, fails on an important level: Hydroelectric Power is no different than wind generated electrical power in terms of location dependency. Two fluids, air and water, are certainly not always available. Therefore I see no usefulness in your trying to broaden the scope of power generation to include these.

When I use the term hydro, I mean the use of water behind a dam that releases kinetic energy through a turbine. I'm perfectly happy to say that hydro power is the most efficient of the renewable forms of energy. And, it has been market-tested since the 1930's. Wind and water may be fluids, but a hydroelectric dam provides continuous flow. Obviously, that is different than the wind. Meaning hydro and wind are different.

In terms of "broadening the meaning", what I included as "economic" forms of production have all developed from market incentives. If you want to deal with just carbon-based forms of energy production, I'm fine with that too because my basic underlying point is that the market-originated forms, including all carbon forms, are continuous. and relatively inexpensive. So, that would be one defense of carbon-based generation.

A while back I was clear in saying that what many of you are talking about is the next megawatt generated, because that is where decisions are made, at the margin. But, for all forms of renewable energy (not hydro), there has to be a backup non-renewable, continuous form of energy production for when the renewables aren't generating. A necessary precondition for renewables is an existing, alternative source, and that costs money.

Let's keep in mind that generation of electricity is not a theoretical matter. The government granted generators of electricity a monopoly in the distribution of power in most cases. That is what allows government to force existing monopolists to "buy" excess electricity from homeowners with solar units. Does anyone here believe that power companies would do this of their own volition? The government is simply choosing to alter their original understanding with generators and sellers in order to encourage production of types of energy that comport with their religious views.

And, you know how I stand in my opposition to transferring the costs of production onto the public. I'm no more in favor of power plants belching soot into the air than anyone else.

[Da Geezer]

I wrote all of the above before I read Hacks post on dams.

[Da Geezer]

You just retire the coal, add wind, solar and a bit of gas as a transition source, and wait for battery capacity to scale up. And, whether Geezer wants to admit it or not, capitalists who build power plants are already finding renewables economic in plenty of circumstances.

Good point about decisions being taken on the margin. But Geezer knows of no renewable production that is not currently subsidized, even at the margin. Capitalists are perfectly capable of taking governmental largesse. Witness the agricultural sector in the US.

[Hannibal]

I wouldn't wager on battery technology ever being advanced enough to store the output of a 700 MW power plant for however many days you need it while it is cloudy or the wind isn't blowing. At the very least, I wouldn't want to base any decisions on the assumption that it will happen.

[entropy]

Interesting map using DNA results from Ancestry.com how people/populations migrated across the Americas..