Slashdot Mirror
The Health Benefits of Wind and Solar Exceed the Cost of All Subsidies (arstechnica.com)
New submitter TheCoroner writes: A paper in Nature Energy suggests that the benefits we receive from moving to renewables like wind and solar that reduce air pollution exceed the cost of the subsidies required to make them competitive with traditional fossil fuels. Ars Technica reports: "Berkeley environmental engineer Dev Millstein and his colleagues estimate that between 3,000 and 12,700 premature deaths have been averted because of air quality benefits over the last decade or so, creating a total economic benefit between $30 billion and $113 billion. The benefits from wind work out to be more than 7 cents per kilowatt-hour, which is more than unsubsidized wind energy generally costs.
This study ambitiously tries to estimate the benefits from emissions that were avoided because of the increase in wind and solar energy from 2007 through 2015, and to do so for the whole of the U.S. Millstein and colleagues looked at carbon emissions, as well as sulphur dioxides, nitrogen oxides, and particulate matter, all of which contribute to poor air quality. There are other factors that also need to be considered. A rise in renewables isn't the only thing that has been changing in the energy sector: fuel costs and regulation have also played a role. How much of the benefit can be attributed to wind and solar power, and how much to other changes? The researchers used models that track the benefits attributable to renewable power as a proportion of the total reduction in emissions.
This study ambitiously tries to estimate the benefits from emissions that were avoided because of the increase in wind and solar energy from 2007 through 2015, and to do so for the whole of the U.S. Millstein and colleagues looked at carbon emissions, as well as sulphur dioxides, nitrogen oxides, and particulate matter, all of which contribute to poor air quality. There are other factors that also need to be considered. A rise in renewables isn't the only thing that has been changing in the energy sector: fuel costs and regulation have also played a role. How much of the benefit can be attributed to wind and solar power, and how much to other changes? The researchers used models that track the benefits attributable to renewable power as a proportion of the total reduction in emissions.
But what if we make the world better for no reason?
But what about the health benefits of me driving a '69 Charger Hemi R/T? It's great for my stress level and has cured my erectile dysfunction.
You are welcome on my lawn.
is it just me or when you read an article like this one does your "This is a crock of sh*t" alarm go off?
Seems like about 1 million assumptions and taking estimates into facts and global averages into local and assuming 100 utilization of generation and zero pollution cost of manufacture and disposal of generation equipment. Plus probably more. I mean I love renewable energy but this article just smells bad despite all the clean renewable air.
$30B / 3k people = $10 million per person
That's a heck of a lot of economic benefit per person.
But those wind farms are so god damn ugly. I'd rather die earlier. Thanks anyway.
Since nuclear has such a wildly greater EROEI than wind and solar, why isn't this story about the trillions of lives and quintillions of dollars saved by nuclear over the last 50 years?
Oh, right. mdsolar still gets paid per click for stories that push up the stock price of companies that take taxpayer subsidies in exchange for importing Chinese solar panels.
Carry on.
Of course, it has long been known that if the negative externalities of coal generation were factored in it would be way more expensive than other generation forms. Did they also count the concerns about coal ash storage, which has caused drinking water problems and even a flood of radioactive, toxic sludge in the case of the Tennessee Valley?
But if all those people don't die early, the rest of us will have to share the cost of their social security payments.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Capturing the hot air emissions from Trump would be the cheapest source of clean electricity.
It should come as a no surprise that the stuff that comes out of tailpipes is not good for you to breathe. It can and does kill people. People who want to kill themselves quickly, breathe a lot of it in a short amount of time. The rest of us are doing it over a longer period of time.
The sooner we switch away from a gas burning engine, the better.
and we create a better world for nothing?
Jokes aside, at least in the US nothing's going to change unless our electoral system does. Right now about 55,000 coal miners in swing states are holding our national elections hostage trying to hold onto jobs made increasingly irrelevant by fracking and cheap natural gas... With our electoral system it doesn't matter how you vote because we don't weigh each person's vote equally. Which was after all the entire point. It keeps change to a minimum and protects landowner's interests.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Even including the deaths from Chernobyl nuclear power has an impressive safety record. More people died from windmill and solar accidents per energy produced than nuclear.
Sure, there were a lot of accidental deaths in the early days of nuclear power but it's making a lot of safe energy now. Wind and solar combined make very little energy, and you compare that to worker deaths from electrocutions and falls and nuclear has them beat by an order of magnitude on safety. Nuclear is better for the environment too, less carbon produced per energy than wind or solar. Pretty sure nuclear kills fewer birds and bats too.
I just heard on the radio today of the health effects of the sound made by windmills. I think they called it "infrasound", it's the low frequency hum made by windmills that cause headaches, hearing loss, and all kinds of crazy stuff. Maybe that's a bunch of pseudoscience, I don't know.
I see a lot of comparisons of wind and solar to coal and natural gas. Why not compare it to nuclear? I know why. By comparison wind and solar is expensive, dirty, deadly, and did I mention expensive?
If these articles want to convince me that I need wind and solar power then they need to compare it to nuclear too. But they don't. Again, I know why.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Correct.
Some US lives have been saved, while billions of Chinese will suffer major lung and health complaints for decades to come.
Or we could have spend greenie funds on saving lives on car deaths, drug overdoses or fixing up those who cannot afford health care - and die early. This is called opportunity cost, and the politicians in greenie states know this.
The story isn't about nuclear because the study examined the health costs of fossil fuel emissions, not the health costs of radioactive emissions.
If a similar study were made about nuclear, it would have to factor in the health costs of radioactivity leakage, nuclear accidents, and nuclear waste disposal, which nuclear advocates never factor in because they always leave that problem for future generations to solve. Such a study should certainly be done.
I don't know why we're trying to save the Earth when we're just going to blow it up in a Nuclear Holocaust anyway.
If you're going to account for costs like that, you also need to account for opportunity costs. How about it?
I don't know if you have seen one, but windmills take up about as much land as a cell tower. It's just the footprint.
The loss to hospital revenue likely doesn't justify the green energy cost when you consider upper respiratory problems, including the higher potential for cancer. Too bad...
https://hardware.slashdot.org/...
http://news.stanford.edu/news/...
Here's TFA:
"Once you have a nuclear energy facility, it's straightforward to start refining uranium in that facility, which is what Iran is doing and Venezuela is planning to do," Jacobson said. "The potential for terrorists to obtain a nuclear weapon or for states to develop nuclear weapons that could be used in limited regional wars will certainly increase with an increase in the number of nuclear energy facilities worldwide." Jacobson calculated that if one small nuclear bomb exploded, the carbon emissions from the burning of a large city would be modest, but the death rate for one such event would be twice as large as the current vehicle air pollution death rate summed over 30 years.
So basically, to make Nuclear just fall off his chart, he assumes that building more powerplants will lead to nuclear war, and calculates how much stuff that will burn. Is that not completely absurd?
Basically, the gist of what he's saying about Nuclear is this: "We have to pretend like it's a bad idea, because if we don't, other countries will want to do it, and then they might build bombs. So, say it with me: Nuclear is a baad idea."
Does somebody want to break it to the guy that Iran and other states will pursue weapons programs no matter what sort of powerplants we build in the US? And besides, what's more likely to cause war: Clean and cost-effective nuclear powerplants that the rest of the world will want to copy, or an energy shortage which sends us looking to secure fossil fuels? I think the latter.
Anyway, this calculating methodology is so incredibly bizarre that I suspect it's bought.
So I'm always hearing about how the climate science community is rigorous and weeds out bad work, but that doesn't seem to have happened here. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong place, but it's been eight years and AFAICT this study was never retracted nor the lead scientist (Mark Z. Jacobson) confronted over it.
Why on earth would they risk their income, allowing progress to happen, for the well being of the proletariate?
You can't have people living near a windmill, so that may cut down the value of the land. Also, huge gobs of concrete are used to stabilize them. Well, everything has some negative consequences, it's all a matter of what you prefer.
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
In any case as the old saying goes one in the hand is worth 2 in the bush. They have a very clear moral argument that less pollution means better health for you and your children, why muddy the whole thing up with macroeconomics
I know you're just trying to stat an argument but why are wind turbines and solar panels leftist?
It's estimated that there are 200,000 early deaths from air pollution a year just in the US. So it makes sense that fossil fuels would actually be the most expensive once health is factored in.
http://news.mit.edu/2013/study...
The entire reason we want the clean energy sources is this hypothesis (that lives saved exceed the dollar cost).
But this kind of comparison is stupid to make, which is why the true conclusion is not believed by climate deniers.
The report depends on putting a dollar value to the human life AND on a lot of other soft comparisons.
Estimations upon estimations, making it pointless, at least for the purpose of convincing the non-believers. The green believers already know it to be true and don't need convincing.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) Vehicles emit pollution that weighs roughly as much as the vehicle- every single year.
Electric cars emit tire rubber dust (same as ICE) and brake dust (but only 1/10th as much).
That's it. No micro particulates, no unburnt hydrocarbons, no leaing fluids, no CO2, CO, or Sulphur.
Any pollution created by the cars manufacture is going to be highly localized, containable, and filterable.
Any pollution created by electrical generation is going to be highly localized, containable, and filterable (even coal).
If your town has 1 million ICE vehicles in it on a given day, replacing them would remove 4 billion pounds of pollution per year from your town.
That's going to help many over 65, and anyone with breathing problems, probably cut cancer noticeably due to the reduction of PM10 combustion emissions.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
And just think! All those power subsidies (and ethanol in petrol) will make food more expensive, which means millions more children will starve, which will keep the population down, which will further reduce pollution.
Its WIN-WIN
"between 3,000 and 12,700 premature deaths have been averted because of air quality benefits over the last decade or so, creating a total economic benefit between $30 billion and $113 billion."
So, averting one premature death costs the economy $10M? Not sure why the benefit goes down per person if more deaths are averted, but where on earth are they getting anywhere near $10M per person?
Because if we don't make it a better place before, nobody will be around to blow up in a nuclear holocaust anyway...
that between 3,000 and 12,700 premature deaths have been averted because of air quality benefits over the last decade or so, creating a total economic benefit between $30 billion and $113 billion.
So what about all of the economically advantageous deaths (like that of pensioners) that have been prevented? Economically you are best off with people dying with minimal amount of hospitalization right at the end of their productive life. If the cost for that is a certain number of premature deaths, it may still well be worth it all in all.
So making this an economic argument is at best cringeworthy. It dehumanizes the suffering and ends up being a lie or irrelevant anyway. You cannot measure right and wrong in dollars.
If the reporting is such gibberish, I am compelled to assume that there is no science involved in the "paper" at all. Probably some cherry-picked data points to draw a graph for the rubes with no error bars, and a long string of questionable assumptions to raise the bullshit level even higher.
Your kind is obsolete.
aaaaaaa
Measuring the public health cost of pollution is a perfect example of picking the dataset to support your conclusion. I can work the numbers either way. Give me a few hours to make up support to the assumptions, and I can spit out a paper in a month that supports your agenda. The only problem is that it showed up in one of the Nature journals instead of the pay to play journals where this category of analysis belongs.
All there is is the joy hating people brings you. Which probably makes the loneliness forgotten for a short while, but it just ensures that loneliness continues.
Sad.
And it will further improve your health and wellbeing, right up until that tree or lightpost you hit.
Also it will be better for the environment since those engines output a lot less pollutants, other than CO2. For that just plant a bunch of extra trees in your yard (if you can afford a vintage charger hemi r/t I assume you have the money for the swap, and the property for the trees.)
Oh, it isn't. So what's the beef, moron?
And you hear that bullshit alarm? It's your own mind making it. Yuo don't want it to be true because it sounds hippy ecoloon leftist and that's bad people right there, only barely above muslims, so therefore you DON'T WANT it to be true,so you make up a bullshit alarm so that you don't have to accept it.
Even if you had a real bullshit alarm, just because it could be wrong doesn't mean it is.
But for some reason your bullshit alarm doesn't go off at your bullshit alarm. Because it's not detecting bullshit, it's detecting what you don't like. And every time what you don't like is also wrong, your confirmation bias makes you remember how accurate your bullshit alarm was.
Pst. Hey kid, wanna save the world with an atmospheric electricity collector grid?
captcha, being sentient: disrupt
No, not gobs of concrete. And they don't build wind towers in cities, so natch on the "you can't live near it". Cows couldn't give a rats ass about living near a wind turbine.
If you believe in any form of government then you believe in re-distributive taxation. The question from there is not the morality of such a thing, anyone who has agreed that government is necessary has already agreed to that. The real question is what money should be spent on.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
The last German auction for needed subsidies for coastal Wind-generators the winner asked for exactly 0€ subsidies.
They don't need that anymore.
38 species of migratory birds are back on the endangered species list thanks to windmills. Windmills are also changing the patterns of prevailing winds and altering weather patterns. This is getting blamed on climate change, but you can't sit there with a straight face and honestly believe that windmills are not changing the prevailing winds.
The environmental impact of windmills is at least as large as the impact of combustion. They should be banned right along with ICEs and fossil fuel plants.
Do you know that none of the fossil fuel extraction industries pay for what they extract. And that the oil industry even gets a tax break for pumping out the oil called an oil depletion allowance. The oil isn't even theirs in the first place.
Has a higher velocity than money sent abroad. It does more here. It is worth it to spend a bit more to keep the money here.
Wind is a health DETRIMENT if near population. There have been studies done, mostly in Europe, about the low frequency noise generated by wind turbines. It causes major mental health issues in animals (including humans).
Just in case we don't...
According to NextEra, 800 tons of concrete per windmill. A quick look shows ranges from 200 tons to 1000 tons per windmill. I'd call that gobs. Their are a lot of abandoned wind farms that no one wants to clean up, too. A clean-up deposit should be required to build them.
I don't know what cows care about, but if you can't build near it the value of the land will decrease. Maybe a little, maybe a lot.
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
No, the real question is, how much is actually necessary?
Again and again I see the argument made that if you do not agree that unlimited government is necessary then you must be in favor of no government.
So, to state the real question again, how much say in how you live your life should the government have?
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
"I'm pretty sure ..."
"Maybe that's a bunch of pseudoscience, I don't know."
Sometimes, you should just shut your mouth when you know that you don't know shit.
If you want people to pay attention to you, you really ought to provide at least a *little* bit of evidence to support your arguments.
Nukes are base load.
Gas turbines, wind, solar etc fill the gaps instead of directly competing with nukes.
The nuke advocates that see solar and wind as a threat are just idiots charging at windmills who have forgotten that almost nothing has been spent on new nukes since long before wind and solar became viable on the grid.
But what if we make the world better for no reason?
7 million dollars per death ? come on really?
Solar and Wind are a crappy substitute for energy sources that are there when you need them. Now that they have admitted that they are not competitive, stop throwing money at alternative fuels and let the market do it's thing.
Saving Trotsky progressive lives is no benefit, it's a cost. Krank those coal-fires DemoRat bitch and breath deep.
Somewhere I recall a government designed around minimizing such things rather than maximizing them... But perhaps it was just a fantasy.
If you don't like the subsidies for renewables, please also fight the subsidies for fossil fuels, such as free waste disposal. We're losing hundreds of billions a year just to health problems caused by fossil fuel pollution. Problems caused by climate change will just add to that hidden fee. I don't know about you, but I'm tired of my wealth being transferred to clean up someone else's problem, especially since they got -- and still are -- rich from making the problem in the first place.
So why is there an intrinsic assumption preventing death saves money for the society?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Bunch of made up numbers to try to convince people solar/wind is more cost effective then coal. If it really is that good, end the subsidies.
If you believe in any form of government then you believe in re-distributive taxation. The question from there is not the morality of such a thing, anyone who has agreed that government is necessary has already agreed to that. The real question is what money should be spent on.
That's very easy. We only need enough government to maintain freedom and liberty for all individuals in a society.
Taxes and government are very necessary to maintain freedom. However, government should be limited as much as possible with the singular goal of ensuring freedom for every citizen of the country.
Liberals present a false choice between no government and giant government, like we have now. They seem to forget the country was founded and prospered well under limited government. This respect for freedom and the limited government that ensures it is what made America great and unique.
That would be a waste of reusable resources.
Ezekiel 23:20
Considering that health care and a focus on environmental regulations to reduce pollution have been helping environmental quality by itself, the idea that wind/solar energy is the reason for the improved health/reduced death rates is flawed. New filters and methods of using coal/oil to generate power could also do the same thing in theory.
With that said, we should not downplay the benefit of moving away from oil to generate power, since it would eliminate the power of the oil producers in the Middle East, and we could just leave that region alone fully. Also, it is a good thing to look for power generation that does not require additional materials to produce, such as radioactive materials in the case of nuclear power.
There is also the benefit of not producing as any greenhouse gasses via "burning" of materials to generate power.
The paper is there. Their methods open and the sources for their assumptions in that peper referenced.
Rather than do no fucking work and go "Really???" why not actually do a little bit of work and point out where they're wrong and why?
That's the EPA's standard figure based on the average total contribution a person makes to the economy over the course of an entire lifetime. It's not just how much you pay him to drive the bus - it's all the money every business loses if he doesn't show up to drive the bus because their workers can't get to the factory.
And if there's a problem with that figure, it's that it's way out of date and hasn't been inflation adjusted since the study that produced it was done in the 1990s - the real figure from the same study would be a LOT higher now. But it remains the best studied, and most comprehensively an accurately calculated average financial value of a human life that exists in all of science.
There's another problem with it though - it doesn't calculate the emotional loss to family members when you die, the lost productivity to the economy for your funeral and the reduced productivity as they deal with the many difficulties of grieving, the bad impacts when a primary breadwinner dies and a formerly self-sufficient family is forced to use welfare to make ends meet or any of those things.
If you were to put a number on those losses, then even without inflation adjustment the number is probably low-balling it by at least 30%.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
However, since the Oligarchy in the US is invested in and profiteers off fossil fuels, this report will be instantly dismissed as “fake news”
That's easy.
Does the thing you're doing right now affect other people ? If so, does it have the potential to harm them ?
Then this thing needs 100% and absolute goverment control to ensure that harm is kept to the minimum or, if possible, completely eradicated.
Does any of those conditions NOT hold ?
Then government involvement should be zero.
So why the fuck is it that your rightwingers always get that shit backwards ? A gay couple or a woman having an abortion has literally ZERO impact on the rest of the population, none whatsofuckingever so government should stay the complete and absolute fuck out of those things. Zero government involvement allowed and anything that EVERYBODY deals with (permits and licenses and such) there is zero reason to treat them any differently.
How much fucking poison you put in the air DOES however affect everybody else, and harms people, so we have the fucking right through our government to regulate that shit as much as we want to. Because it affects other people - in harmful ways- government involvement should be absolute. Government should set an upper maximum level of toxins your car can spew and prosecute the living fuck out of anybody who goes above it.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
That's the point of AGW; it'll offset nuclear winter and things will be peachy.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
The $30 billion is the total economic benefit, and the 3,000 is number of deaths only.
Cal State Fullerton came up with a much more conservative estimate of a pollution cost of $1,600 per person per year in health costs, lost income and so on in the San Joaquin Valley.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Listen to Trump. Coal is the future, it will make America Great again. You are scheduled for re-education in room 101 at 12 noon. Do not be late.
While you refute his argument with a straw-man (he's arguing for unlimited government) you both come the the same conclusion, though stated differently.
What should the money be spent on and how much say should the government have?
These are what we must decide once we have decided that government is necessary. So the question remains:
Should government spend money to offset the externalities of fuel consumption?
And if they should, how much is needed? The cited paper purports to (I wont speak to its validity) address what the externalities are, and thus is addressing an important question we need answered before answering if the government money is "well spent." That is, does its benefit outweigh its cost.
If you believe in any form of government then you believe in re-distributive taxation. The question from there is not the morality of such a thing, anyone who has agreed that government is necessary has already agreed to that. The real question is what money should be spent on.
But it doesn't have to all or nothing. For me the real question is how much money must be taken from those who work.
Even if a totalitarian State could theoretically direct my life better than I can (and all adults know it can't), I still don't want one.
I had a mommy and daddy when I was a child. I don't want that now. Many people want a totalitarian State to direct their lives, I don't.
That's not the same thing as some Mad Max Sudan. I just happen to think that the best government is the the one that provides for the LEAST amount of structure that helps us to live and work together, not the one that strives to tax and re-distribute as much as possible without an armed insurrection.
Peace is easy to achieve, just surrender. Liberty is much harder get/keep.
Well you've definitely reduced the paper to where you can understand it, but now you've fallen below the level of intelligence required for this discussion. Reddit seems more your style.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Again and again I see the argument made that if you do not agree that unlimited government is necessary then you must be in favor of no government.
In a country that still pees itself a little whenever the word 'socialism' is uttered, the fuck you do.
What we do get, over and over again, is how the slightest touch of democratic government is 'immoral', which is the exact opposite.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Sure, electric cars save a lot of money...if gasoline costs $5 a gallon. This isn't that much different. The math only works because the cost of health care has gotten way out of control.
So which of the two questions you posted was the "real" one again?
Like most environmental nutcases, you are obviously ignorant of what opportunity costs are.
Libertarianism is just rationalized recalcitrance. "I don't want to be told what to do." Too bad. You grew up into an adult, not a royal sovereign. If you want to start an armed insurrection, please do so, and assuming you survive do let us know when your trial date is.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Consider the crappy solar lights that are so common. They're basically throwaway, replacing the rechargeable battery costs more then replacing the light, besides needing a screwdriver and in my experience, as often as not, the switch fails.
I doubt that many of these are recycled.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
If I do not have enough money to buy food how am I going to buy solar panels?
Are you paying for them?
Yes they do not cost anything if the GOVERNMENT pays for it.... with ALL of US taxpayers money!!!
Moron! Economics run the World NOT good intentions!
800 tons would be a cube of edge length of ~23 ft, or ~7 meters. Concrete is heavy; anything actually made of concrete will get into the hundreds-of-tons range pretty quickly. Concrete is one of the most widely used materials in the world, with over 2 billion tonnes produced annually. By the time you're complaining about the concrete usage of wind turbines you're pretty far into flimsy rationalizations.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
EVERYTHING you do affects other people and it has the potential to harm them. Is it likely to harm them? Maybe, maybe not. I will note that you cannot harm someone in a way any greater than by aborting them.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I just responded to a person who said that if you think the government is necessary then you have agreed to unlimited government and the only question is what regulations the government will implement.
Here on slashdot, EVERY time someone suggests that government regulations are excessive, someone responds with, "Well, if you don't like government why don't you try living in Somalia?"
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
"Berkeley environmental engineer Dev Millstein" due to his presumed bias!
and I lost interest.
I would like to see their error bars and their research. Saying you think some people would not have died is just stupid.
Traditionally a person dies for every couple of million spent in construction, on that construction, it is the same in maintenance, did they factor that in? No, they did not.
basically, Berkelyites prove whatever they want to prove without regard to 'truth' or honesty, if it is in accord with their political agenda.
That's not what he said. what he said was basically a variation on this:
Beaverbrook asked the lady: Would you live with a stranger if he paid you one million pounds? She said she would. And if be paid you five pounds? The irate lady fumed: Five pounds. What do you think I am? Beaverbrook replied: Weâ(TM)ve already established that. Now we are trying to determine the degree.
The point being, we've heard, over and over again about the "evils" of government from conservatives for decades now. But the thing is, apart from some real fringey types, everybody agrees there needs to be some sort of central authority that reflects the will of the people. The only difference then between a liberal and a conservative, is how much. So, when you start using black and white language (like 'evil') to describe the difference between you and those who believe in a more proactive government, you're either being disingenuous or stupid.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
And of course the economic impact of runaway global warming should taken into consideration.
It should not. Runaway warming situations are generally not possible on Earth, at least not until the Sun expands and the oceans boil off. The stratosphere is too cold for H2O to accumulate; you may have even noticed its tendency to precipitate out of solution. Carbon sensitivity is at the wild extremes 5-6 degrees per doubling. Burning all the coal reserves would make the poles tropical and the tropics uninhabitable, but we can't actually go full-on Venus. And of course, given that the Earth has been much warmer in the past, if runaway warming were possible we wouldn't be here to discuss it. We can make things seriously unpleasant for the next 10k-100k years, but some part of that was probably projected to be an Ice Age anyway. In the long run, the planet will be fine, and humanity is quite likely to survive.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Sustainable birth rates are actually very important to society for many reasons, economics being a major one.
Funny thing about "affecting other people," if you think abstractly enough, everything you do affects someone else.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
I believe that government is both necessary and evil. That means it needs to be severely restricted. Those who believe in a proactive government are either naive, or evil.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
The people you call "liberals" are about 99% of America's voters. At what point does a political label lose all meaning?
It doesn't suit extremists to admit there's a middle ground, that government can exist without excessive regulations that infringe on personal rights and freedoms and have negative impacts on society.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Sadly that sort of government depends on politicians with scruples and integrity (and also possibly unicorns).
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Nope: wind and solar.
This is just another example of that crazy Ayn Rand being right... stupid Colorado oil fields and natural gas revolution destroying peak oil.
Oh, and the comment on he original post about changes in energy prices... could this refer to natural gas that is also clean burning with less carbon output? If so, how would this same study look if it compared impact of coal vs natural gas and showed that fracking has an enormous benefit?
But what about the narrative!
Agreed, and want to also suggest that the majority of governance should be coming from the local levels because that gives the individual a lot more say in how the government affects their lives. Some things belong at the federal level, but most things should be pushed down, not up the chain.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
The $30 billion is the total economic benefit, and the 3,000 is number of deaths only.
No. RTFA. The $30B is only the benefit of avoiding the 3000 deaths.
I agree 100%. If those fossil fuel producers need to charge more for proper disposal (for one thing), then so be it - then the people that are using it more are paying the costs. That's "fair." Your example pretty much describes just about how EVERY subsidy is unfair to tax payers AND other players/competitors in the field.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Thanks for illustrating my point. You're a pal.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
How can a small government keep giant corporations from monopolizing and fucking up my freedom (or my health)?
This is not a rhetorical question. I want all forms of power to be limited and scrutinized so it cannot be abused, without creating a power vacuum which is unstable.
Fact: Windmills can potentially have impacts on birds through collisions and habitat disruption. However, the impact is very small, and dramatically less than that of urban sprawl, buildings, house cats or climate change. For example, one study notes that for every 10,000 birds killed by human activities including fatalities by collisions with man made structures, less than one death is caused by a wind turbine. For every 1 bird death caused by a wind turbine, 1,000 to 2,000 bird deaths are caused by cats. Even the National Audubon Society strongly supports wind power as a clean alternative energy source that reduces the threat of global warming.
http://www.torontoenvironment.org/windmills/myths#birds
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
They forgot to factor in something...
Death is the best thing for the economy. It creates new jobs, opens up positions - especially high-paying positions - to young people. It lowers the population, putting less stress on the finite food and - especially - water supply. It opens the market and lowers housing costs for lower-income buyers.
If you don't like the subsidies for renewables, how about the tens of billions spent every year to have the Navy's Fifth Fleet protect oil interests in the Persian Gulf?
And nuclear power has been estimated to have saved 1.8 million lives, but it doesn't stop the anti-nuclear folks from complaining about the horrible subsidy of government-underwritten insurance (which hasn't actually cost us anything).
By the way, you want to take renewables-enthusiasts with a grain of salt.
Non sequitur. I do accept the need to maintain military and police — none of this re-distributive.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
How can a small government keep giant corporations from monopolizing and fucking up my freedom (or my health)?
Corporations have become giant through the laws and regulations enacted by big government. The barrier to entry is so expensive and difficult to overcome, in many industries, that only the well-established, big businesses have the resources to stay in business or to start a new one. Not to mention regulatory capture and other manipulations of government to further the goals of a particular business or industry. With a limited government focused on individual freedom, businesses only concern themselves with competing with each other, rather than lobbying government for more power and special favors.
This is not a rhetorical question. I want all forms of power to be limited and scrutinized so it cannot be abused, without creating a power vacuum which is unstable.
Since no one is forced to purchase a product or service, only government has the ability to create a monopoly, as only they have the power to coerce. Some businesses will become naturally large because people enjoy their products very much. Many times that's a good thing. When it's not, competitors can arise to challenge the incumbent. That's only possible through limited government, who keeps the barrier to entry low.
No system of government is perfect, but I would put my money on laws and polices that ensure individual freedom over a heavy-handed state every time. Big, centralized, government power corrupts every time -- this is simply the nature of man. This country was created to escape this very thing. Yet, here we are again, having learned absolutely nothing. Maybe that's the, unfortunate, nature of man as well . . .
Agreed, and want to also suggest that the majority of governance should be coming from the local levels because that gives the individual a lot more say in how the government affects their lives. Some things belong at the federal level, but most things should be pushed down, not up the chain.
I very much agree. The further one gets away from the people and places they are governing, the less they understand or care about the challenges and issues faced in a particular area. Since they aren't living there, it's also difficult to hold officials accountable.
Local control also has the nice side-effect of providing a truly diverse set of places to choose to live. If you don't prefer one area, another will likely be a better fit. With a big, central government, things tend to be uniform because everyone is living under the same policies and there's little room for anything not controlled by government.
The people you call "liberals" are about 99% of America's voters. At what point does a political label lose all meaning?
I only encounter liberals who present the false choice between no government and giant government. Most reasonable people, which I think most Americans are, understand there is a 3rd choice in limited government. Unfortunately, Americans in this day and age are never given this choice.
You cannot harm a somebody through abortion because abortion is not done to people. A fetus is not a person.
Even if it was though there is another principle at stake: that of body ownership.
This is such a fundamental right we even respect it after you are dead. It's literally the only right so important that we let dead people have it. We will not use your organs to save a life if you didn't consent before you died. You can never be expected to give up body ownership for the sake of somebody else's life. Not even when you are dead.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
There is difference between affecting people who consented to the activity and affecting everybody without asking for consent.
We never allow the latter. It would make you personally a king. Consent is needed and when given it comes with conditions. Those conditions are known as regulations. Sometimes it's withheld. That happens when we the people, through our government, makes the activity illegal.
We live in the free world. Government is not some malicious force you need to fear. Government is our employee. Government works FOR us. The president is not a king. We are His bosses not him ours.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
a win win study, hmmm. alternative energy...."Berkeley environmental engineer..".
Dammit! Nevermind.
Right! Get the government out of my bedroom! Get the government out of women's wombs! Get the government out of my health care! MY BODY, MY CHOICE! I should be able to choose what physician I see, when, and where. I should be able to shop for the best care at a price I can afford. I should be able to buy health insurance from any state. Also, I shouldn't have to petition the government for use of an experimental drug. MY BODY, MY CHOICE!
I should be able to choose who I get to serve in my shop. If I don't want Nazis buying my cakes then I shouldn't be forced by the government to sell to them, right? If a gay couple wants my cakes then I should be able to refuse them as well, right? CHOICE!
Left wingers don't want people to be free to choose, because then they might choose to not think like the left wingers.
Just last semester I saw an opinion article about how a "right winger" was denied the ability to speak on campus and the guy thought this was a "win" for free speech. I read it and the guy had to go through some real mental gymnastics to "prove" his point but I just had to roll my eyes. "We can't have this 'hate speech' on campus!" Isn't telling these people they aren't welcome to speak freely also "hate speech"?
No wonder the left is eating it's own right now. Their "logic" is contradictory and when the logic of one "left" group meets that of another "left" group then things get ugly real quick.
You keep shouting "CHOICE!" all you like, I've become numb to it now. It's people like you that want people to have the freedom to choose only so long as they choose to think as you do.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Still, we both agree that we need some form of taxation and government. We also agree that the government shouldn't control everything. We've now eliminated both all and nothing. Everything in between is a matter of degree.
How much the taxes should be can't be answered as it stands. We need to decide what the government should be doing and how valuable it is before that, and lots of us have widely varying opinions at that level.
I haven't met anybody who wants more government than necessary, or wants government to tax as much as possible. There's a large amount of variation in what people expect out of government and what they think necessary. You might call me a big-government advocate, but it's not because I want more government per se. It's because I want government to do more things than you want government to do. We probably differ a lot on exactly what is the least amount of structure that helps us to live and work together.
The amount of trust to place in government frequently comes up in this conversation. I'm very comfortable financially, but as far as power goes, I'm one of the little guys. I don't particularly trust any power center, and prefer to have several of them around to kind of balance each other out. Some people seem to distrust government and trust business, and I think that misguided.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Subsidies serve two purposes. They can help useful industries get going, and they can balance out market externalities. It's really not possible to eliminate externalities, and trying to directly internalize them, and the administrative cost of allotting them can be excessive, not to mention some people will always accuse the allotments of being wrong and biased. TFA is saying that renewable energy subsidies aren't high enough to quite balance out the externalities of fossil fuel. I don't know whether it's accurate or not, but if so the subsidies go some way to make the market work better.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Kind of a win-win. Plus over population will cease to be a thing.
I was interested until you fomented the concept that regulation is the will of the people.
Regularly, it is not, and has rarely ever been. Consider the not-so-famous words of Fiorello La Guardia, in reference to the federal government criminalizing marijuana in the 1930's:
"A law that the people do not want enforced, cannot be enforced."
Yet, that's exactly what anti-drug legislation has been doing for almost 100 years now - holding Americans to a legal standard that we never agreed to.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
That is a feature of consumer electronics in general, not of solar power in particular, especially at larger scale.
Ezekiel 23:20
There aren't parts of our society that benefit far more from our military policies then others? Likewise with police? I would suggest that the taxes we all pay for these things disproportionately benefit the affluent.
Just because it doesnt follow left wing patterns of redistribution doesn't mean it isn't doing as such.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
So basically, like I said "The real question is what money should be spent on."
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
So exactly like I said, "The real question is what money should be spent on"
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
You statement offends me in it's idiocy, and thus harms me. The government, obviously, should not allow you to communicate, for the good of the population.
You keep coming up with these half cocked ideas. I'm sure you believe them, even apply some sort of logic to them.
That's the frightening part.
I'd argue anyone advocating total government, or total absence of government, is pretty damn evil.
So, which are you? Naive? or Evil?
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
So, when does an child become a person? Biologically, it is a separate individual at the moment of conception. So, what is your definition based on?
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Once more, I will disagree. The question is who gets to decide how the money is spent?
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
True, but how many crappy consumer products end up in the landfill. Solar lights with an AA battery made from nickel cadmium or better, phones etc. It is still a bleeding of valuable resources.
Not arguing with the idea that moving to renewables is wrong, just not as perfect as you assume. Of course to expect perfect means not doing anything which is worse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Well there's a constitution that literally spells that out in this country....
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
Except that our government long ago stopped being limited by that.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I should be able to choose what physician I see, when, and where.
So we require the physician to be available to you at your discretion then? That's going to be coercive.
I should be able to shop for the best care at a price I can afford.
Oh, so you want us to require affordability then? That will take a lot of coercion too.
I should be able to buy health insurance from any state.
Now you want us to require states to sell you health insurance? Thanks for being willing to pay for it though.
Also, I shouldn't have to petition the government for use of an experimental drug. MY BODY, MY CHOICE!
Then you come back and demand the state compel the other side to compensate you because it didn't work, and you claim they were irresponsible. Strange how that works.
I should be able to choose who I get to serve in my shop. If I don't want Nazis buying my cakes then I shouldn't be forced by the government to sell to them, right?
Depends on your reasons.
If a gay couple wants my cakes then I should be able to refuse them as well, right? CHOICE!
You mean your reason is because they are gay? Sorry, the state can't sanction that, you will have to sell cakes to gay Nazis, as long as they can pay up, for example of a reason the state can sanction. But asking the state to support your bias against homosexuals forces the state to go along with your discrimination, and that is unacceptable since it requires us to support your prejudices.
Left wingers don't want people to be free to choose, because then they might choose to not think like the left wingers.
It isn't your thinking that matters, so much as your actions. Y
You keep wanting to demand things from the rest of us, as your litany indicates. And you aren't even honest about it.
Isn't telling these people they aren't welcome to speak freely also "hate speech"?
No, hate speech is not defined that way. It has an entirely different definition.
No wonder the left is eating it's own right now. Their "logic" is contradictory and when the logic of one "left" group meets that of another "left" group then things get ugly real quick.
So let's see, you are complaining that the "left" has a diversity of opinion, is that it? You find debate and disagreement to be ugly?
What, do you think that a monolithic opinion is more beautiful then? Scary.
You keep shouting "CHOICE!" all you like, I've become numb to it now. It's people like you that want people to have the freedom to choose only so long as they choose to think as you do.
Actually, it seems to be you who doesn't want anybody to think differently than you, what with you complaining so shrilly.
You just keep shouting, but it is a hysterical rant without aby legitimacy, which reveals the truth, that you just want to coerce everybody else to what you want, without even admitting what you want to do. You rely on deceit and falsehood.
Well, I hate to break it to you, but the entire free world has come up with that same idea.
In fact the only exception is France which, just last year, decided that dead people don't have rights - not even body ownership rights, and everybody's organs can be used to save lives.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
And as you may have noticed - that law has to this day never been successfully enforced.
More critically - that one falls squarely in the "things that can't harm anybody else" category - where the people had no right to intrude in the first place.
But when we 'burden small business' by telling them they *must* have enough fire escapes and fire extinguishers we're not just being callous. Sure they don't expect to burn down - but if a fire happens, wishful thinking won't save the lives of their employees - but following those regulations will. We make those rules because when they aren't there (or aren't enforced) you get the great garmet factory fire of New York - and hundreds of people die for no good reason.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Being more than a clump of cells - something sentient.
But it's interesting that the 'moment of conception' thing is much more a religious position than scientific one - specifically it's a Christian position. Jews on the other hand read in Genesis that God "breathed the breath of life into Adam" - to them the soul enters the body with the first breath and a baby isn't a person until that first breath - so Jews have never had a problem with abortion.
Ironically though - it doesn't much matter to me which end of the scale you choose or if, like most scientists, you believe this is a process happening gradually over time with no specific, recognizable point where X switches to Y - yet clearly one side is X and the other side is Y. Because it doesn't change the ultimate conclusion. This is because of that second problem.
The state cannot violate one person's body ownership to save the life of another person - no such legal obligation is remotely tenable. If we can't use a dead guy's heart to save a life without the dead guy's consent, why do you think we can forcibly use a live woman's womb to save a life without HER consent ?
Especially when you will subsequently demand that, still without her consent, she must feed, clothe, school and shelter that life.
You're not just taking away her right to own her own body - you're also subsequently enslaving her.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
I get it, you don't like the modern scope of government. That still doesnt mean that congress doesnt control the purse strings.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
I wasn't exactly complaining. As I said, everything has its downsides. Making concrete releases carbon dioxide, so finding a replacement eventually is important. It also clutters up old sites and once a company goes bankrupt there's no one to clean them up. I'm in no particular hurry, though.
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
Nope, not at all.
You'd be wrong to suggest it. Law and order benefits us all — indeed, the poor benefit most. The rich can (and do) afford private security, doormen, body guards, and armored cars...
No, not because of that.
Taxing Paul to defend Peter is Ok. Taxing Paul to support — feed, cloth, shelter, educate — Peter is wrong.
But the absolute worst is taxing Acme, Inc. to subsidize Widgets, Inc. — it is Crony Capitalism and, dare I refer to our earlier discussion, Fascism.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Being more than a clump of cells - something sentient.
So, basically it is a subjective thing. A child is not a person until you say it is.
The fact is that if you do not consider conception to be the point at which someone becomes an individual with human rights, there is NO scientific basis for setting the dividing line. There can be no objective judgment of when someone becomes an individual with human rights. The problem with that is that once you decide there is no objective definition of what makes someone human there is no longer a convincing argument against those who define "human" as "those who look like me", because that is what you have done. You, at best, are just using a broader definition of "look like me".
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Under the "risk corridor" provision of the ACA insurance companies which lose money following parts of the law are to have their losses covered by money from a particular fund. Insurance companies which make greater than a certain profit are to pay into that fund. Congress, in another law, wrote that the risk corridor payments must be revenue neutral (that is, the payments for losses must come only out of revenue received from companies which made profits). Unfortunately, there is not enough revenue from profitable insurance companies to cover the loses of those insurance companies which lost money, but courts have ruled the government must cover those losses anyway. That does not sound like Congress controls the purse strings to me.
This is not the only time in which courts have ruled that the government must spend money which Congress refused to appropriate.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
There is no dividing line. Dividing lines are human abstractions - they don't exist in reality. The real world is one of processes where things gradually become other things - at one end of the process it's clearly thing A and at the other end of the process it's clearly thing B. But there is no specific point in between where it switches from one to the other at every point it is just slightly less A and slightly more B.
A baby is definitely a human being with rights. A freshly conceived ovum is clearly not. If you seriously want to argue it is - then you have a problem because every sexually active woman (not on the pill -which prevents this), on average, has about 3 fertilised eggs every month that get flushed out naturally. All natural abortions 3 times a month. If you seriously want to argue that fertilized eggs are people then you are morally compelled to demand the government provides every woman between puberty and menopause with the pill to ensure they all get it and stop those natural abortions which outnumber medically induced ones by about a million times over, clearly that's the bigger priority and conveniently if you try to fix it no liberal would try to stop you - we've been trying to get that done (for different reasons) for years !
Simply put - there is no dividing line whatsoever. But there is also definitely a difference between one end of the process and the other. So the smart thing is to set the limit in law fairly early in the process - where you're still very, very much "thing A" and no semblence of thing B is discernible yet. Which, by the way, is exactly where the law has been set.
And you still haven't addressed the issue of body ownership which frankly makes all this academic because it means whether a fetus is a person or not you CANNOT force a mother to carry one to term because nobody can be obligated to sacrifice control of their own bodies to save the life of another. You cannot argue that abortion should be illegal without ALSO arguing that organ donation must be mandatory ! Unless you seriously think living women should have less rights than even DEAD men!
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Hey, it's you again. Sorry but reality means there are people that that benefit more from our military spending than others. Don't think so? Then why do we spend billions on the Middle east but spend almost nothing on the violence in Africa?
Or how about military spending out of line with what voters want or even what the military wants?
http://time.com/4253842/defens...
http://www.military.com/daily-...
Then you suggest as a counter argument that policing isn't re-distributive to the wealthy. You are correct in some ways and I even realized that prior to hitting submit but didn't change my own text because I wanted to get your response. You're response literally stated that policing funds are sometimes re distributive to the poor thus confirming more core point. Thanks for that.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
So the courts are holding those who control the purse strings accountable for their actions. Sounds like the system is working fine to me.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
So, since no one can be obligated to sacrifice control over their own bodies to save the life of another, it should be perfectly legal for a mother to abandon her baby in the open somewhere. I am sorry, your logic does not hold up. By your logic, parents have no obligation to care for their children.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
It also means that the COURTS control the purse strings, not Congress.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Irrelevant.
False. You use different semantics for "redistributive". I object to government subsidizing people and corporations — at the expense of other people and corporations.
You claim, law and order and military are the same "redistribution", because some people get more protection than others. Whether that's even true or not, it is irrelevant — police protection is not a subsidy. Indeed, if it were, government protecting demonstrations of assholes with Hitler or Che Guevara on their T-shirts from the rest of us would be subsidizing them.
So your point is entirely invalid and mine stands. Have a nice day.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
You might as well say the president does because they veto a spending bill. The system is all intertwined and is currently working just fine. Congress does indeed control the bulk of our country's spending however
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
Sadly for you things just arent irrellevant because you say they are. Also, changing your wording from prior posts from redistribution to subsidation wont fly with me.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
No, you're being an idiot. Feeding and clothing a baby does not involve sacrificing control over your body. Hell in this day and age you don't even need to let it near your boobs to fullfill your responsibilities. You don't even have to feed and clothe a baby to avoid abandoning it - we do have adoption services.
It takes seriously unimaginable levels of stupid to think that "caring for children" involves sacrificing bodily autonomy. There is NOTHING that can EVER justify sacrificing bodily autonomy without consent - but bodily autonomy doesn't go nearly as far as you imagine. It involves who can use your body and for what. And the limits it sets are very simple: nobody for anything without your consent - anybody for anything WITH your consent.
Nothing else.
Caring for a child does not involve the child "using your body". The only part that could come close (breastfeeding) is optional.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Have you ever cared for a baby? I am going to guess not. What exactly is being used in the care for that child if not your body? Are you trying to say that you do not have to sacrifice sleep to care for a baby? You set arbitrary distinctions and then call me stupid for not seeing them as absolutes.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Yes, I have actually, I have a three year old and I'm one of those wishy-washy liberals who think 50% of ALL parenting must be done by the dad.
And sorry, but legally - nothing you do in caring for a baby counts as "sacrificing your bodily autonomy".
By your bizarre definition we should outlaw all employment because you seem to think doing something with your body counts as 'sacrificing bodily autonomy' - no it doesn't, it requires SOMEBODY ELSE to use your body WITHOUT YOUR CONSENT.
If either is missing - then the right in question does not apply.
In caring for a baby - BOTH are missing.
You chose not to have an abortion before it was a baby - that means your consented to the responsibility of caring for it.
The baby isn't using your body - YOU are using it for the baby,.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
NO, you are the one who thinks there is a problem with sacrificing your bodily autonomy.
However, how does caring for a child not require you to sacrifice your body without your consent, when you do not, legally, have the option to just walk away?
Even putting the child up for adoption requires you to take some actions. BTW, even if there is a categorical difference relative to sacrificing bodily autonomy before and after a child is born, the time to make that decision is BEFORE the child is conceived.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
You don't get to make up new definitions for things and then insist I am arguing for whatever your definition has added.
That is a strawman fallacy and a particularly stupid one at that.
I argued for bodily autonomy as the well defined concept it is. Not whatever bullshit you decide it should be.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
You are complaining about crappy, cheap toy lights, made to absorb the consumer's wallet, not the best that the real technology produces. Of course, a capitalist is free to produce whatever cheap crap that they think they can sell quickly, and the American consumer is always ready to buy the latest in this throw-away garbage if it comes with enough manufactured hype from a frivolous social media marketing campaign: It's what the marketers have been training the consumer to do for decades: acceptance of the flashy and cheap with the full understanding that none of it will last out the year.
People revel in their self-administered stupidity and willingly waste their shrinking paychecks on whatever the next flashy TV ad is pushing. It is what drives the consumer's dollars towards filling the bank accounts of the international global corporations and ultimately what is causing the huge gap in wealth inequality.
Why do you suppose the GNP keeps rising? It's because people have been convinced to keep buying flashy trinkets that become trash before the year is out. The producers of this crap have no care for the mountains of garbage this creates in our landfills: they do not have to pay for the trash collection and waste disposal. They are already laughing at them all the way to the bank while coming up with the next campaign for removing fools from their money.Consumers are the most ignorant of all sheep.
Except for Trump supporters, who are just as undereducated and willfully misinformed as their sociopathic orange-man leader.
PlaynBass