It's funny how you claim to be "speaking a [sic] terms of practicality and realism," yet so far you have completely failed to prove the need for storage.
Considering that 99% of human history was without electricity, you need to explain why all of a sudden we "need" something that we never needed before. What changed, and why can't it change back?
Your very existence appears to disprove your theory that storage is necessary, so unless you can come up with even the smallest piece of evidence to support your claim that humans can no longer survive without energy that is both abundant and cheap, I think we're done here.
That would only be true if demand for energy were perfectly inelastic. Which, of course, is false, unless you can prove that demand for anything is perfectly inelastic? If you can do that, you would deserve the Nobel prize in economics. Good luck!
Did you know that before refrigerators, people used to have fresh milk delivered every day to their front door? True story. So making refrigerators too expensive to run overnight will create jobs, and that's a good thing, isn't it?
And before residential A/C, people used to put up wet sheets in their windows to stay cool. Today, swamp coolers, ground source heat pumps, and earth sheltered construction are a few modern, low power alternatives. So we'll be fine.
If you are saying charge so much that people can't use energy when they want to unless they are wealthy, you are just creating a different set of problems.
The only way to prevent that is to make electricity free, but that will only create a different set of problems.
You're only thinking about the problem from the supply side. To equalize supply and demand when demand>supply, yes, one way is to increase supply. What's the other?
In other words, how does eBay prevent too many people from winning the same auction? (They can't force the seller to sell more.)
That's true, but you're overstating the problem. You only really need a tiny bit of storage to maintain a voltage on the wire. Then use demand-response pricing to fulfill demand while preventing blackouts and brownouts. Then increase storage using whatever technology is available until it no longer makes financial sense to add more (when MC=MR).
Not every (unit of currency) paid to a government is a tax. Some are fees, some are fines, and so on. California's official definition of a tax starts with:
any levy, charge, or exaction of any kind imposed by a local government, except...A charge imposed for a specific benefit conferred or privilege granted directly to the payor that is not provided to those not charged, and which does not exceed the reasonable costs to the local government of conferring the benefit or granting the privilege.
Making a distinction between a tax and a user fee is not "weaselly," it's a definition encoded in law.
That's a street. It benefits the people who live on the street, not people passing through on the way to somewhere else. It both benefits you and also costs the city in proportion to the length of your property's street frontage. Therefore, a street frontage fee tacked onto your property taxes would be appropriate, and it would be a user fee and not a tax.
If you believe that polluters should pay for the damage they cause, and if you believe that CO2 emissions impose a nonzero cost on the environment, then ending the fossil fuel subsidies is just not sufficient reparation.
And if the carbon tax were revenue-neutral as many advocate, then if the tax were $50 per ton of CO2 and the average person creates 20 tons per year, then everyone would receive back $1,000 no matter how much CO2 they created. The average person who makes no change to their lifestyle would be no better or worse off, the poor who use less energy would get a windfall, and the wealthy who do more flying and have bigger homes to heat and cool would pay more in taxes than they receive back. So a revenue-neutral carbon tax would transfer wealth from the rich to the poor, not the other way around.
start with the actual hard cases, like suburban road networks
You mean the roads that aren't very good at moving traffic from A to B because there are so many intersections to slow that traffic down, and that aren't very good at being destinations (the A or the B) because of their high speeds? Those stroads really need to go no matter what. Once we do that, the task of figuring out how to make the infrastructure that remains will be much simpler.
I haven't read that book, but it will be impressive when these battlefield robots will be able to rush out to the site of an explosion, gather up all the people parts, sort them by DNA, sew them back together and restart the heart before the brain runs out of oxygen.
They should also put a couple of these on each airline flight, and build them out of the same stuff as the black boxes.
Where is the bright line between a user fee for an essential service, combined with a fine or imprisonment for not purchasing that service, and a tax?
A fee is something paid for a benefit you receive, that you don't pay if you don't receive the benefit, and that only covers the actual cost of the benefit.
There are plenty of "conservatives" who...think that, yes, a restaurant owner is a pretty good judge of how much parking she can afford to provide
Please name some, because most of the conservatives I know prefer parking to be both abundant and "free" (i.e., buried in the prices of things they buy so they don't see it).
And your false dichotomy where public roads paid for with taxes are either expected or not provided
Why can't they be financed with user fees instead of taxes?
No, it's only Libertarians who want smaller government, or find me a conservative who thinks our roads should be financed with user fees instead of taxes? Who thinks restaurant owners should be allowed to decide not just how many tables and chairs to provide for their customers but also how many parking spaces to provide? Yeah, didn't think so.
Slashdot Mirror
Then let's call them "patients." This should help change prisons from places of incarceration to places of healing.
"If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought." --George Orwell
Why shouldn't prisons be paid by how well they rehabilitate their clients?
It's funny how you claim to be "speaking a [sic] terms of practicality and realism," yet so far you have completely failed to prove the need for storage.
Considering that 99% of human history was without electricity, you need to explain why all of a sudden we "need" something that we never needed before. What changed, and why can't it change back?
Your very existence appears to disprove your theory that storage is necessary, so unless you can come up with even the smallest piece of evidence to support your claim that humans can no longer survive without energy that is both abundant and cheap, I think we're done here.
That would only be true if demand for energy were perfectly inelastic. Which, of course, is false, unless you can prove that demand for anything is perfectly inelastic? If you can do that, you would deserve the Nobel prize in economics. Good luck!
TIL setting prices at market equilibrium is "idealistic but impractical."
Did you know that before refrigerators, people used to have fresh milk delivered every day to their front door? True story. So making refrigerators too expensive to run overnight will create jobs, and that's a good thing, isn't it?
And before residential A/C, people used to put up wet sheets in their windows to stay cool. Today, swamp coolers, ground source heat pumps, and earth sheltered construction are a few modern, low power alternatives. So we'll be fine.
The only way to prevent that is to make electricity free, but that will only create a different set of problems.
You're only thinking about the problem from the supply side. To equalize supply and demand when demand>supply, yes, one way is to increase supply. What's the other?
In other words, how does eBay prevent too many people from winning the same auction? (They can't force the seller to sell more.)
That's true, but you're overstating the problem. You only really need a tiny bit of storage to maintain a voltage on the wire. Then use demand-response pricing to fulfill demand while preventing blackouts and brownouts. Then increase storage using whatever technology is available until it no longer makes financial sense to add more (when MC=MR).
Or next to a mountain, and launch the aircraft with a giant railgun catapult anchored to the base and the top of the mountain.
Not every (unit of currency) paid to a government is a tax. Some are fees, some are fines, and so on. California's official definition of a tax starts with:
Making a distinction between a tax and a user fee is not "weaselly," it's a definition encoded in law.
That's a street. It benefits the people who live on the street, not people passing through on the way to somewhere else. It both benefits you and also costs the city in proportion to the length of your property's street frontage. Therefore, a street frontage fee tacked onto your property taxes would be appropriate, and it would be a user fee and not a tax.
That's wise of you because your claim is false. Coal powers only 33% of the national grid.
If you believe that polluters should pay for the damage they cause, and if you believe that CO2 emissions impose a nonzero cost on the environment, then ending the fossil fuel subsidies is just not sufficient reparation.
And if the carbon tax were revenue-neutral as many advocate, then if the tax were $50 per ton of CO2 and the average person creates 20 tons per year, then everyone would receive back $1,000 no matter how much CO2 they created. The average person who makes no change to their lifestyle would be no better or worse off, the poor who use less energy would get a windfall, and the wealthy who do more flying and have bigger homes to heat and cool would pay more in taxes than they receive back. So a revenue-neutral carbon tax would transfer wealth from the rich to the poor, not the other way around.
You mean the roads that aren't very good at moving traffic from A to B because there are so many intersections to slow that traffic down, and that aren't very good at being destinations (the A or the B) because of their high speeds? Those stroads really need to go no matter what. Once we do that, the task of figuring out how to make the infrastructure that remains will be much simpler.
Do those have modern electronic tolling, or the antiquated stop-at-a-toll-booth-every-five-minutes kind?
In the USA, we have electronic tolling on some freeways, and Oregon is experimenting with mileage fees. Neither of these require stopping to pay.
Should software be allowed to crash and turn the screen black when it can't open a file? Because that's what happened:
I haven't read that book, but it will be impressive when these battlefield robots will be able to rush out to the site of an explosion, gather up all the people parts, sort them by DNA, sew them back together and restart the heart before the brain runs out of oxygen.
They should also put a couple of these on each airline flight, and build them out of the same stuff as the black boxes.
Just because it's old doesn't make it bad.
Yes, countries around the world finance some of their roads with user fees known as "tolls". It's hardly a "new model".
A fee is something paid for a benefit you receive, that you don't pay if you don't receive the benefit, and that only covers the actual cost of the benefit.
Please name some, because most of the conservatives I know prefer parking to be both abundant and "free" (i.e., buried in the prices of things they buy so they don't see it).
Why can't they be financed with user fees instead of taxes?
No, it's only Libertarians who want smaller government, or find me a conservative who thinks our roads should be financed with user fees instead of taxes? Who thinks restaurant owners should be allowed to decide not just how many tables and chairs to provide for their customers but also how many parking spaces to provide? Yeah, didn't think so.
When you don't make a distinction between taxes and user fees, it's easy to reach that conclusion.
(Fines can also be used to pay for public services, but we won't go there.)