Cape Wind Ready To Bring First Offshore Wind Farm

An anonymous reader writes "The Cape Wind Project, a wind farm of 130 turbines to be built in Nantucket Sound off the coast of Cape Cod, can finally move forward as they have been given a green light by the US Minerals Management service. Leaders from labor, civic, and environmental groups across Massachusetts and the country hailed the release of the report, as it is the final federal environmental report needed for the long delayed and much scrutinized project to finally move forward. When completed, Cape Wind will be capable of supplying up to 420 megawatts of electricity, potentially offsetting as much as a million tons of carbon emissions and saving more than 100 million gallons of oil every year. But the environment wont be the sole beneficiary of Cape Wind. It will likely be a boon to out of work Massachusetts residents, as well, given that as many as 1,000 green jobs could be brought to the Bay State in addition to a significant supply of clean, renewable energy."

Comments

Economics in one Lesson

[brian0918]

Please, sweet jebus, read Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt. You cannot advance an economy by moving money and jobs from the private sector to the public sector. Every dollar that goes into this project through taxpayer money is a dollar not spent on food, clothing, haircuts, etc. All those local businesses will eventually see that reduced income and be forced to downsize. With government services, the most you can hope to do in the long term is break even. There is no competitive incentive to drive the service provider toward efficiency, and so public services tend to be the least efficient out there, as well as being the most prone to corruption.

Any thing can be made to seem cheap if you subsidize it with tax money. People only look at that one thing, and not at all the other things that are negatively impacted.

Re:Economics in one Lesson

[Rycross]

How would the private sector fund, build, and run a wind farm? They'd pool capital from a group of people and pay that money out to local businesses to build the wind farm, then operate it with their own employees and charge for the electricity.

How would the government do it? They'd collect taxes from citizens (in other words, pool capital from a group of people) and pay money out to local businesses to build the wind farm. It may be operated by their own employees, and they'd likely still charge for the electricity.

The only thing that changed is that the group of investors changes from a small group of people taking a risk with their own money to a large group of people collectively (via proxy) to pool their money to get a service. Government is not some magical entity that springs forth from the nether, nor is it some evil bile-dripping monstrosity. Government is simply the people working together, either literally or by proxy, to accomplish some social goal not being satisfied elsewhere.

The way the money flows through the economy doesn't change just because you call it government instead of corporation.
All those private companies and their employees are still going to be payed, and they're still going to contribute to the local economy. The only difference is that the risk and reward is socialized, rather than owned privately. The people obviously demanded it, and since no private company stepped up to the plate, they decided to handle it themselves.

Re:Economics in one Lesson

[Scareduck]

And the people get one opportunity every election to toss out malingerers, incompetents, and hacks. Good luck if your pet issue isn't the one that happens to be hot that year. Businesses have to answer to the customer EVERY DAMN DAY. People who fail to notice this difference are arguing about strawmen.

Re:Economics in one Lesson

[Rei]

So, if I were in the private industry today and wanted to turn our patchwork of local electric grids into an actually coherent national system so it wouldn't be so gorram unreliable, unable to handle localized variable sources, and unable to tell less important consumption to shut off rather than take down the whole grid with it, how would I go about doing that? Who do I turn to in order to loan me the tens of billions of dollars needed to make it a success?

Re:Economics in one Lesson

[Rycross]

Companies will only answer to the customer if it becomes a hot issue too. Do you think Comcast gave a shit when my internet connection wasn't working? Given that they refused to fix it for a month, they sure didn't seem to. Any sufficiently large company is not going to care about their customers unless those customers collectively make them. In other words, unless it becomes a hot-issue and they are in danger of losing a lot of them. Like a politician. You're also ignoring the fact that even though election comes up only periodically, they have to keep their constituents happy pretty much over the entire term. Polls matter.

Now, I'm not saying its exactly the same. Thats a strawman. What I was getting at is that the flow of money is similar enough that the argument of government being a black hole is silly. But to claim that companies are accountable and government is unaccountable is blatantly false. Companies are far less accountable than you think, and governments significantly more.

Re:Economics in one Lesson

[idontgno]

Businesses have to answer to the customer EVERY DAMN DAY.

That's the most persistent illusion about business responsibilities in this sad sad world, and probably the primary source of dissonance between business theory and practice.

Large businesses have to answer to the shareholder. Every quarter. And they have to pacify, mislead, or (if large and predatory enough) ignore the customer. Continually. While spending a relative (and relatively effective) pittance on PR and marketing, to cover the fact that the customer is the least important participant in the process.

In this latter fact, they share uncomfortable resemblance to the "public sector."

Re:Economics in one Lesson

[brian0918]

while completely ignoring the velocity of money. People employed by the govt. still buy things. Especially haircuts.

I'm not sure how my federal tax dollars are getting routed to support my local barber shop. Did they solve P vs NP?

Fundamental to my argument is that people have a right to that which they produce. Secondary to that is that people know how best to spend the money that they earn. Those that do not earn their money - e.g. politicians - do not know how best to spend it because they did not go through the trial and error necessary to learn from mistakes. They will invariably take the shortcut of funding whatever is most convenient to them - e.g. helping a friend out (cronyism), indiscriminately trying any suggestions, or simply holding out for pork projects that will buy them another term in office. The most convenient route, it turns out, often violates the most rights, and is the least efficient option.

Re:Economics in one Lesson

[JesseMcDonald]

I can't help but notice that you're completely overlooking the main difference, which is that the private sector can only pool money from those who choose voluntarily to participate, whereas the taxes which fund government projects are extracted from supporters and detractors alike. This is no trivial matter; refusing to address it undermines your entire case.

If it were just a matter of "people working together ... to accomplish some social goal" a simple (private-sector) non-profit organization would suffice. The only reason to turn the project over to the government is to impose involuntary costs and/or regulations on those with a lesser degree of political influence, so that some can benefit at others' expense.

Re:Economics in one Lesson

[extrasolar]

Secondary to that is that people know how best to spend the money that they earn.

A flawed premise if ever I've seen one. Find yourself a nation full of rational agents; there you can build your liberatopia.

Re:Economics in one Lesson

[Kenrod]

Most people exchange what they produce for money, which is almost universally exchangeable for something else of value without carrying the risk of a non-cash type of asset. The parent's point is that in a free market people exchange their work for something of value which is owned and controlled by them. People care more about that which they own than that which they do not own.

And most Fortune 500 companies do just fine in good times and bad. If you are thinking of that the banks have been mis-managed lately, think again. The banks adapted high-risk, high-return strategies because there was an implicit guarantee that the Feds would bail them out. Guess what? The Feds bailed them out. The banks would likely not have engaged in such risky behavior without the meddling of the Federal government through institutions like Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, and insipidly poor oversight by the SEC and Congress.

Re:Economics in one Lesson

[brian0918]

What you don't grasp is that whatever people spend their money on, so long as it doesn't violate the rights of others, is the best choice precisely because it was made my them, free from coercion. At best, such a transaction provides maximum benefit to both buyer and seller. At the very least, the transaction adds positive information to the market - it identifies an exchange rate where there wasn't one previously.

In contrast, forced coercion can do maximum harm to buyer and seller, and add uncertainty to the market. For example, the powers of the Federal Reserve - ie, their ability to sway the entire market with the snap of a finger - add great uncertainty to the market. Fiat, paper currency, as another example, increases market uncertainty.

Re:Economics in one Lesson

[brian0918]

Argument from incredulity. Your argument is quite similar to those used by creationists to argue that certain biological mechanisms could not possibly have arisen via evolution, and therefore evolution is wrong. Your faulty presumption is that wind farms should exist because you want them to exist. If you want them to exist, you should fund their creation, or persuade your friends, family, neighbors, etc, to fund their creation. What you should not do is force everyone to fund what you think is right. Whether or not wind farms should exist is up to people to freely decide.

Alan Walters died last week

[Kupfernigk]

Remember - the guy who wanted to privatise all the roads? Because clearly building the Interstates destroyed the US economy. And that ridiculous army you have - H****b****n would obviously do a much better job. (As you note, the police and the army must be far more inefficient and corrupt than all those contractors in Iraq).

One thing I think is funny is that every time I make a comment suggesting that right wing libertarians are less than 100% correct, it gets down modded in a few minutes, while they all whine that Slashdot has a left wing bias. But I don't care...

Re:Alan Walters died last week

[Anonymous Coward]

There is an element of disbelief every time I see someone describing libertarians as right wing.

This is the sex-drugs-rock-and-roll party, right? The ones who think what's in your own bedroom is your own business, what's in your own bloodstream is your own business, and the dirty words in the music you favour is your own business?

We must have radically different definitions of right wing. They don't even match the description of political conservatism - slow, cautious, incremental changes. ... and while they might not be in favour of big government, most of them seem to think that emergency services and national defence are actually some of the few things which government can and should do.

I do think that they're a bit off the wall with their idea of founding their policies in morality (whose morality according to which code is the part they never clarify), but let's not paint them as something they aren't.

Re:You obviously have never been in the military

[Rycross]

I've never been in the military, but I was in a military family and did odd jobs for them for summer employment. I've also worked at a taxpayer funded institution and private companies. My experience is that government work is not appreciably less efficient than private businesses.

I used to think otherwise, until I saw how hilariously inefficient most businesses are.

Re:They Still Need to Employ People To Build/Maint

[Rei]

The biggest problem with this argument is that it's completely inaccurate. Its not being paid for with taxpayer money... now. It's being paid for with taxpayer money a couple years from now, plus a couple years worth of interest. The extra things that people are buying with their salaries from this are not coming at the cost to someone else *now*.

That may seem like a trivial distinction, but if that raises consumer confidence and restores the US (and world) economy even just a little bit sooner, then it's absolutely a good thing. Plus, unlike the other oft cited case of this (war spending), we actually get something out of it other than craters and rubble -- in this case, wind turbines.

Re:In related news...

[pixelpusher220]

I think comparing the number of kills by bridges/buildings/antennas to the number of kills by Wind Turbines is a bit unfair bridges/buildings/antennas outnumber turbines by well over an order of magnitude... The bridges/etc. are stationary objects, where as the turbine blades can move quite fast especially at the tips. Another reason comparing kills might problematic.

The concept gets interesting when you consider we're going to have to build many many many more turbines to make a sizeable dent in our energy demand.

I'm all in favor of the turbines, but some concerns can be valid if properly voiced too.

Re:You obviously have never been in the military

[Ethanol-fueled]

The military is still the most efficient employer I've ever had.

I think the military's increasing dependency on inefficient civilian contractors is what's causing problems. I remember in basic training we had certain administrative briefings done by this guy who bragged about leaving the military only to come back making 30 dollars an hour when they could have just used an E-3 or E-4. Many lower-level tech instructors joked about the same thing.

And then you have places like Blackwater -- if being a glorified security guard(though much more demanding than working for DHS) is your thing then you can make around 350,000 a year, though I hope to see that kind of excess come to an end very soon.

they don't even really answer to the shareholder

[Trepidity]

There's been a decades-long fight by activist shareholders to try to get corporations to actually answer to the shareholders. Especially in very large corporations with dilute control, it's not clear who management actually does answer to, if anyone. Perhaps the board, but then the boards are so terribly intermingled with management and between companies that they hardly constitute an effective advocate for the shareholder.

Re:They Still Need to Employ People To Build/Maint

[Rei]

People aren't loaning because there's physically no money left. People aren't loaning because they can't tolerate the risk, especially when we just went through a crisis where our risk models catastrophically failed. The safest entity on the planet to loan to is the government of a superpower.