I'm sure you have a point there. Basically all thats needed to solve this "problem" is that the employers start to do some serious surveillance on the job performance of their employees, get the unions tied down and start ditching the losers (if they aren't already doing it).
Doesn't "the land of the free" start to have a shrill ring to it? And on a more practical note: At some point (soon) you'll have disqualified so big a percentage of the potential workforce that there's not enough solvent buyers for your high-tech mass market products and the economic growth will stall and then plunge...
In this context it is evident that the rising of stress problems among the white collar workforce and we cannot satisfy the demand for qualified employees is a telltale sign that we are stretching the productivity to the limit.
I've got to admit that as far as documentation goes, you really got this thing down, GlenRaphael. I think I might be convinced if you can answer just a few more questions:
Q1: How does the cost of long-term storage of the non-reusable endproduct of nuclear waste affect the economy of nuclear produced power?
I mean one thing is that your breeding reactors can use nuclear fuel more efficiently and your reprocessing plants can even recycle some of it. You still have the problem of contamination of non-fuel elements of the plant that continually produces radioactive waste and eventually leads to the closing of the plant. Safe disposal of the involved mass of low-rad material is far from unproblematic.
Here in Denmark we've never had nuclear power, but we did get a small experimental nuclear plant for research (10 MW). After 40 years (and a few minor leakage accidents..) the plant needs to be shut down. Price estimate: 100 million $! Without doing any number-crunching, that seems pretty steep to me. And that's just the shutdown price. Add to that construction and maintenance costs and it start to be really hard to see how this could have been economically sound, even if the reactor had been bigger and a commercial powerplant. And then there is the problem of finding sufficiently large and stable underground depositories. I mean, we don't have a suitable bedrock underground. Perhaps you americans would care to take it off our hands? We'll pay you - say 40$ a pound?
Q2: If nuclear power is really that unproblematic how come the political winds currently goes against it?
Please, don't tell me that it is just due to ignorance. I'm pretty sure that if the politicians had their eyes on the solution of a apparently really nasty waste problem with conventional fuels and a practically undepletable (is that a word?) source of energy, they would not be discouraged by even half the populations "misinformed" protest. I mean, raising taxes isn't exactly popular, but that doesn't seem to hold them back, now does it?
Allright, not surprisingly you are a freedom fundamentalist and rhetorically very well founded at that. However your argumentation is flawed and IMO you and your peers' position poses a threat to us all, because your go-get-it-at-any-price attitude tend to place you in positions of power:
About freedom in general: I agree that having your freedom limited is a pain and should be kept at a minimum, but as you will know it's a everyday experience that just can't be eliminated if we are to function as a society. Urban speed limits, tax payment and social conventions at your workplace - to name a few - are limitations on your freedom that you just have to accept to function properly among your fellow man. So absolutism regarding freedom just isn't a coherent position, unless you advocate predatorial jungle law.
Regarding the distinction between renewable and limited resources: The distinction doesn't hold in practice on larger scales. Take oil, commonly considered a limited ressource. There is a hell of a lot of oil on Earth, but most of it isn't accessible because it isn't economically feasible to extract. As prices go up and technology advances, more will become available and when all crude oil depots have been depleted, we turn to shale extraction. We can have oil for as long as we want as long as we're prepared to pay the price.
Same goes for solar or wind energy. These forms aren't nearly as effective, so the extraction facilities are quite spacedemanding. If India and Russia is to attain a western standard of living, we would run out of energy sources before the next turn of a century. The point is no energy source is available to us in unlimited quantities. No surprise here.
However, this is the crucial question: When will the price be too high? When are we are "crapping other things up"? Some might say sometime in the future and leave it at that. They tend to demand bulletproof evidence before they reluctantly act. Others will say we have already reached that point long time ago and we need to brake as hard as possible to avoid "a Malthusian disasters". Ozone holes and radical global warming, to name a few. They tend to advocate radical limitations that would destabilize economies, causing serious negative impact on (western) societies.
My suggestion is just that we adopt a cautious approach to how we interact with our environment (in the broadest sense of the world). That's what I mean by better safe than sorry. I have as much faith in the inventive capabilities of man as you do, and almost as little faith as you in our ability to judge long term effects. So when a plausible scientific scenario make the alarm bells go, I think the right attitude is "proceed with caution" rather than "we'll cross that bridge once we get to it", cause energy and environmental habits are not quickly or easily changed.
The world does not play like Doom, where the best strategy is full speed ahead, guns ablazing, cause there's no save or replay options. ***
What I meant was that you seem to personalize any limitation on your freedom:
Keep me from things to suit you?
People telling me [what to do] pisses me off.
All I really want is that you acknowledge that environmental issues are NOT by default a question of busybodies who wants to control your life for their own personal pleasure, because that is how your stance come out.
It's really a question of graduation. You and I are probably never going to share worldviews, but I'm not anymore of a worlddistant, tree-hugging maniac hellbent on you as a slave in a plan economy than you are a machinegun-toting NRA-fanatic with wet dreams about a 100% unregulated marketeconomy and a differently colored Ferrari for every day of the week.
I agree with you that there are fanatics who use braindead methods in their struggle for the environment, but I'm sure that you'll agree that on your wing this kind of people exist too, and neither of us would like to be mistaken for these fanatics.
So please, moderate your statements and I'll moderate mine and then let's have a constructive debate instead. I'll grant you that there have been ecological initiatives that have proven to be inconsequential or downright damaging to the environment and as such a unneccesary strain on peoples freedom. Perhaps you'll grant me that sometimes it's better to be safe than sorry when it comes to the world that we pass on to our kids?
As for kids, I was a bit out of line there, sorry. Believe me, when you get your own, your view on what's acceptable and what's not as far as your personal freedom goes will change a lot! I have 2 and they are timestealers on 2 legs. I barely manage to find time to post here, but God I love them like I've never loved something before. ***
Keep me from things to suit you? Tell me how to run my life, Get Lost!
Do you really believe that whatever restrictions are imposed on you is nothing but somebody having the better of you?
The fact that what you state is a winning personal philosophy in todays modern world - on par with that of a virus - send shivers down my spine.
I can only hope that you find family life to restricting as well. Then at least you won't pass your views on to the next generation.
I heard about that argument before and it's absolutely brilliant....at showing that people can be lured into believing any argument that comes from a authority and is delivered with a certain amount of technical mumbo-jumbo.
It's really nothing but a variation over the argument that for each consecutive time a coinflip comes out heads up, the probability that the next flip will produce a tail rises. Seems reasonable, but as any pro gambler will tell you, not valid.
And the man doesn't take into account anything about the present situation and condition of the Earth, making it all abstract matematics.
Are we to conclude that no matter what we do mankind is safe for at least 50 centuries more? I think not!
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sure you have a point there. Basically all thats needed to solve this "problem" is that the employers start to do some serious surveillance on the job performance of their employees, get the unions tied down and start ditching the losers (if they aren't already doing it).
Doesn't "the land of the free" start to have a shrill ring to it? And on a more practical note: At some point (soon) you'll have disqualified so big a percentage of the potential workforce that there's not enough solvent buyers for your high-tech mass market products and the economic growth will stall and then plunge...
In this context it is evident that the rising of stress problems among the white collar workforce and we cannot satisfy the demand for qualified employees is a telltale sign that we are stretching the productivity to the limit.
Marx was basically right and the fact that we have used the collapse of the Soviet Union to justify thinking otherwise will be coming round to bite our asses, if we don't start to do some radically different economic thinking real soon.
Brace for impact!
***
I've got to admit that as far as documentation goes, you really got this thing down, GlenRaphael. I think I might be convinced if you can answer just a few more questions:
Q1: How does the cost of long-term storage of the non-reusable endproduct of nuclear waste affect the economy of nuclear produced power?
I mean one thing is that your breeding reactors can use nuclear fuel more efficiently and your reprocessing plants can even recycle some of it. You still have the problem of contamination of non-fuel elements of the plant that continually produces radioactive waste and eventually leads to the closing of the plant. Safe disposal of the involved mass of low-rad material is far from unproblematic.
Here in Denmark we've never had nuclear power, but we did get a small experimental nuclear plant for research (10 MW). After 40 years (and a few minor leakage accidents..) the plant needs to be shut down. Price estimate: 100 million $! Without doing any number-crunching, that seems pretty steep to me. And that's just the shutdown price. Add to that construction and maintenance costs and it start to be really hard to see how this could have been economically sound, even if the reactor had been bigger and a commercial powerplant. And then there is the problem of finding sufficiently large and stable underground depositories. I mean, we don't have a suitable bedrock underground. Perhaps you americans would care to take it off our hands? We'll pay you - say 40$ a pound?
Q2: If nuclear power is really that unproblematic how come the political winds currently goes against it?
Please, don't tell me that it is just due to ignorance. I'm pretty sure that if the politicians had their eyes on the solution of a apparently really nasty waste problem with conventional fuels and a practically undepletable (is that a word?) source of energy, they would not be discouraged by even half the populations "misinformed" protest. I mean, raising taxes isn't exactly popular, but that doesn't seem to hold them back, now does it?
***
Allright, not surprisingly you are a freedom fundamentalist and rhetorically very well founded at that. However your argumentation is flawed and IMO you and your peers' position poses a threat to us all, because your go-get-it-at-any-price attitude tend to place you in positions of power:
About freedom in general: I agree that having your freedom limited is a pain and should be kept at a minimum, but as you will know it's a everyday experience that just can't be eliminated if we are to function as a society. Urban speed limits, tax payment and social conventions at your workplace - to name a few - are limitations on your freedom that you just have to accept to function properly among your fellow man. So absolutism regarding freedom just isn't a coherent position, unless you advocate predatorial jungle law.
Regarding the distinction between renewable and limited resources: The distinction doesn't hold in practice on larger scales. Take oil, commonly considered a limited ressource. There is a hell of a lot of oil on Earth, but most of it isn't accessible because it isn't economically feasible to extract. As prices go up and technology advances, more will become available and when all crude oil depots have been depleted, we turn to shale extraction. We can have oil for as long as we want as long as we're prepared to pay the price.
Same goes for solar or wind energy. These forms aren't nearly as effective, so the extraction facilities are quite spacedemanding. If India and Russia is to attain a western standard of living, we would run out of energy sources before the next turn of a century. The point is no energy source is available to us in unlimited quantities. No surprise here.
However, this is the crucial question: When will the price be too high? When are we are "crapping other things up"? Some might say sometime in the future and leave it at that. They tend to demand bulletproof evidence before they reluctantly act. Others will say we have already reached that point long time ago and we need to brake as hard as possible to avoid "a Malthusian disasters". Ozone holes and radical global warming, to name a few. They tend to advocate radical limitations that would destabilize economies, causing serious negative impact on (western) societies.
My suggestion is just that we adopt a cautious approach to how we interact with our environment (in the broadest sense of the world). That's what I mean by better safe than sorry. I have as much faith in the inventive capabilities of man as you do, and almost as little faith as you in our ability to judge long term effects. So when a plausible scientific scenario make the alarm bells go, I think the right attitude is "proceed with caution" rather than "we'll cross that bridge once we get to it", cause energy and environmental habits are not quickly or easily changed.
The world does not play like Doom, where the best strategy is full speed ahead, guns ablazing, cause there's no save or replay options.
***
All I really want is that you acknowledge that environmental issues are NOT by default a question of busybodies who wants to control your life for their own personal pleasure, because that is how your stance come out.
It's really a question of graduation. You and I are probably never going to share worldviews, but I'm not anymore of a worlddistant, tree-hugging maniac hellbent on you as a slave in a plan economy than you are a machinegun-toting NRA-fanatic with wet dreams about a 100% unregulated marketeconomy and a differently colored Ferrari for every day of the week.
I agree with you that there are fanatics who use braindead methods in their struggle for the environment, but I'm sure that you'll agree that on your wing this kind of people exist too, and neither of us would like to be mistaken for these fanatics.
So please, moderate your statements and I'll moderate mine and then let's have a constructive debate instead. I'll grant you that there have been ecological initiatives that have proven to be inconsequential or downright damaging to the environment and as such a unneccesary strain on peoples freedom. Perhaps you'll grant me that sometimes it's better to be safe than sorry when it comes to the world that we pass on to our kids?
As for kids, I was a bit out of line there, sorry. Believe me, when you get your own, your view on what's acceptable and what's not as far as your personal freedom goes will change a lot! I have 2 and they are timestealers on 2 legs. I barely manage to find time to post here, but God I love them like I've never loved something before.
***
The fact that what you state is a winning personal philosophy in todays modern world - on par with that of a virus - send shivers down my spine.
I can only hope that you find family life to restricting as well. Then at least you won't pass your views on to the next generation.
***
I heard about that argument before and it's absolutely brilliant....at showing that people can be lured into believing any argument that comes from a authority and is delivered with a certain amount of technical mumbo-jumbo.
It's really nothing but a variation over the argument that for each consecutive time a coinflip comes out heads up, the probability that the next flip will produce a tail rises. Seems reasonable, but as any pro gambler will tell you, not valid.
And the man doesn't take into account anything about the present situation and condition of the Earth, making it all abstract matematics.
Are we to conclude that no matter what we do mankind is safe for at least 50 centuries more? I think not!
***