No one is saying "build nukes instead of wind and solar". The thrust of TFA is "build as much wind and solar as you can, but that won't be enough so fill in the rest of the demand with nuclear".
You should be angry. The whole system is rigged, and by both major parties. The whole concept of limited liability protects guys like Neumann at your expense. The profits "pass through" but the liability does not. Limited liability corporations are the single largest direct government intervention in the free market, and not necessarily an intervention to your advantage. What started out as a great way to get high-risk infrastructure projects built with private dollars has morphed into an asset-protection scheme for the very rich.
We have an interest only when it affects us. We don't have any interest whatsoever in what goes on at WeWork unless there is a contract dispute that involves the courts. Then all of the sudden we have discovery and everything becomes an open book.
To be fair, you don't know what agreements are in place between the owners. This is not a public company, so our knowledge is quite limited. For instance, the CEO has special 10-to-1 voting shares of the company. He certainly cannot use his position to fleece the other owners, but there is nothing inherently unethical about using one entity to lease to another entity. The motivation could be to reduce taxes or it could be to achieve a goal without tying up capital in a way that makes the business more valuable. Who knows?
Exactly my thoughts. It could be an elaborate tax dodge - or he could be a crook. I have no idea without details, and there is no way to get that kind of detail about a private company. This is firmly in the realm of "somebody else's problem".
Fair enough - let me rephrase: it's not necessarily a conflict at all. It's not like the Wolf of Wall Street scenario where there is a client relationship. For example, sure - he could be buying the buildings with his other entities in order to siphon money away from the other owners of WeWork. Alternately, he could be using the capital in his other entities to protect WeWork from rent increases.
It's a private company. If this were a public company, this kind of thing would be highly unusual and probably inappropriate. In a private company? Meh. We have almost zero visibility into it except for what some people want us to see. I have no idea what is going on, and neither do you.
No, look, this is a private company. Thar be dragons. We have very little visibility into the goings-on. We don't know who the other stockholders are or what their agreements are with one another. The CEO has special 10-to-1 voting shares, so we already know hijinks is afoot.
Does he have a "fiduciary responsibility"? Sure. Is that a squishy, ambiguous term? Yeah. Short of a lawsuit by the other owners, though, we aren't going to have any idea what is going on aside from a partial picture painted by people with competing interests.
Don't spend to much of your outrage on this company, that's all. Save it for public companies, criminal behavior, and by extension politicians.
So my sympathy is somewhat blunted by this being a private company, but yes, he does still need to act in the interests of the other stockholders. If he's shirking that responsibility that is another thing, but it being private I have pretty much zero ability to make that call.
He's both the client and the manager, though. He owns both the building and controlling interest in WeWork. It's not a conflict at all - it's all his interest.
I'm not conflating anything. The cost of our digging fossil fuels out of the ground is AGW, and eventually an underwater Florida. This is not natural. One of the costs of building nukes is a risk of meltdown. Both scenarios are man-made problems, though there is of course crossover (e.g. AGW may increase the severity and frequency of storms, earthquakes can cause meltdowns, etc.).
Wind and solar are dandy, but TFA claims they cannot be scaled up fast enough. The alternative as such is not solar and wind, but rather AGW - which is why I made the comparison.
Due to a new fee imposed by Verizon, Remind can no longer continue providing free text notifications for devices on the Verizon Wireless network. As a result, Verizon Wireless customers who use the free Remind service will not be able to receive or send text messages as of January 28, 2019.
"For profit" is an implementation detail. We can and do regulate the holy hell out of nuclear power plants. It's not like Joe Billionaire builds nuke plants with his personal fortune - they are built and operated by corporations. Corporations who get their charter from government. Utilities as such are just an extension of government, funded with private capital. Yeah, the allowed profit goes to the shareholders. If it was run by a government commission, those same people would profit from the bonds used to fund construction instead.
No global warming solution will be economically viable, thus the need to intercede.
It will never be viable in time to matter.
The TFA mentions a 30-year timeframe, roughly in line with the time table climate scientists are calling for.
Renewables are exploding now via market forces without the massive investment. An investment would make that go faster, and it would be a small fraction of the cost.
No question, but TFA claims that solar and wind cannot scale in the time frame we are talking about.
We need a short term stopgap, that's the bottom line. Nuclear will not be safe while it is affordable, and it will be neither in time to stop emissions NOW like we need to make a serious effort to dent NOW, to have any chance.
That's exactly what TFA is arguing, where nuclear is the stopgap.
1. When you have a viable (politically and otherwise) solution to long term waste storage.
That's an unfair burden. We do not have a viable solution to global warming by this measure. His advocacy is an attempt to change the political situation such that it becomes viable.
#2 is an actuarial exercise.
#3 is also an unfair burden - we do not currently have an emergency fund pool for when Florida goes underwater. We use our national resources to deal with disasters.
Our rich, well-funded school district does pay for a service.
But you can't seriously be asking why a school district would take advantage of a free service? Education is very much a zero-sum thing when it comes to funding. Revenue is limited, so a shiny perfect notification service comes at the expense of something else.
Yes and in fact I'm not a huge fan of Remind. Our school district uses pretty much everything - SMS, email, twitter, automated phone calls, facebook - you can sign up for any/all of that. It looks like they use a service called School Messenger.
Good point. Though at some point I think a cell phone of some sort has become as important as a telephone or computer - sort of the bare minimum to participate in modern society. Everyone will have a different threshold for their own kids, but "before they leave home" is probably best, so that they can learn to use it while still within their support structure.
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No one is saying "build nukes instead of wind and solar". The thrust of TFA is "build as much wind and solar as you can, but that won't be enough so fill in the rest of the demand with nuclear".
You should be angry. The whole system is rigged, and by both major parties. The whole concept of limited liability protects guys like Neumann at your expense. The profits "pass through" but the liability does not. Limited liability corporations are the single largest direct government intervention in the free market, and not necessarily an intervention to your advantage. What started out as a great way to get high-risk infrastructure projects built with private dollars has morphed into an asset-protection scheme for the very rich.
We have an interest only when it affects us. We don't have any interest whatsoever in what goes on at WeWork unless there is a contract dispute that involves the courts. Then all of the sudden we have discovery and everything becomes an open book.
Uh, yeah I did. You seem to have invented something that I can't find in there. Please cite.
Do you know he's fleecing them, or because it's a private company are you just guessing like the rest of us?
Uh, you seem to be responding to the wrong person. I'm not the anti-nuke guy.
To be fair, you don't know what agreements are in place between the owners. This is not a public company, so our knowledge is quite limited. For instance, the CEO has special 10-to-1 voting shares of the company. He certainly cannot use his position to fleece the other owners, but there is nothing inherently unethical about using one entity to lease to another entity. The motivation could be to reduce taxes or it could be to achieve a goal without tying up capital in a way that makes the business more valuable. Who knows?
Does the tech guy own the company?
Exactly my thoughts. It could be an elaborate tax dodge - or he could be a crook. I have no idea without details, and there is no way to get that kind of detail about a private company. This is firmly in the realm of "somebody else's problem".
Fair enough - let me rephrase: it's not necessarily a conflict at all. It's not like the Wolf of Wall Street scenario where there is a client relationship. For example, sure - he could be buying the buildings with his other entities in order to siphon money away from the other owners of WeWork. Alternately, he could be using the capital in his other entities to protect WeWork from rent increases.
It's a private company. If this were a public company, this kind of thing would be highly unusual and probably inappropriate. In a private company? Meh. We have almost zero visibility into it except for what some people want us to see. I have no idea what is going on, and neither do you.
No, look, this is a private company. Thar be dragons. We have very little visibility into the goings-on. We don't know who the other stockholders are or what their agreements are with one another. The CEO has special 10-to-1 voting shares, so we already know hijinks is afoot.
Does he have a "fiduciary responsibility"? Sure. Is that a squishy, ambiguous term? Yeah. Short of a lawsuit by the other owners, though, we aren't going to have any idea what is going on aside from a partial picture painted by people with competing interests.
Don't spend to much of your outrage on this company, that's all. Save it for public companies, criminal behavior, and by extension politicians.
So my sympathy is somewhat blunted by this being a private company, but yes, he does still need to act in the interests of the other stockholders. If he's shirking that responsibility that is another thing, but it being private I have pretty much zero ability to make that call.
He's both the client and the manager, though. He owns both the building and controlling interest in WeWork. It's not a conflict at all - it's all his interest.
"Siphon". He owns the building, he owns controlling interest in WeWork. He's allowed to take as much profit out as he wants.
I'm not conflating anything. The cost of our digging fossil fuels out of the ground is AGW, and eventually an underwater Florida. This is not natural. One of the costs of building nukes is a risk of meltdown. Both scenarios are man-made problems, though there is of course crossover (e.g. AGW may increase the severity and frequency of storms, earthquakes can cause meltdowns, etc.).
Wind and solar are dandy, but TFA claims they cannot be scaled up fast enough. The alternative as such is not solar and wind, but rather AGW - which is why I made the comparison.
This doesn't jibe with their announcement:
Florida, by the way, consists almost entirely of private entities.
"For profit" is an implementation detail. We can and do regulate the holy hell out of nuclear power plants. It's not like Joe Billionaire builds nuke plants with his personal fortune - they are built and operated by corporations. Corporations who get their charter from government. Utilities as such are just an extension of government, funded with private capital. Yeah, the allowed profit goes to the shareholders. If it was run by a government commission, those same people would profit from the bonds used to fund construction instead.
It will never be viable, that's just economics.
No global warming solution will be economically viable, thus the need to intercede.
It will never be viable in time to matter.
The TFA mentions a 30-year timeframe, roughly in line with the time table climate scientists are calling for.
Renewables are exploding now via market forces without the massive investment. An investment would make that go faster, and it would be a small fraction of the cost.
No question, but TFA claims that solar and wind cannot scale in the time frame we are talking about.
We need a short term stopgap, that's the bottom line. Nuclear will not be safe while it is affordable, and it will be neither in time to stop emissions NOW like we need to make a serious effort to dent NOW, to have any chance.
That's exactly what TFA is arguing, where nuclear is the stopgap.
1. When you have a viable (politically and otherwise) solution to long term waste storage.
That's an unfair burden. We do not have a viable solution to global warming by this measure. His advocacy is an attempt to change the political situation such that it becomes viable.
#2 is an actuarial exercise.
#3 is also an unfair burden - we do not currently have an emergency fund pool for when Florida goes underwater. We use our national resources to deal with disasters.
Our rich, well-funded school district does pay for a service.
But you can't seriously be asking why a school district would take advantage of a free service? Education is very much a zero-sum thing when it comes to funding. Revenue is limited, so a shiny perfect notification service comes at the expense of something else.
Yes and in fact I'm not a huge fan of Remind. Our school district uses pretty much everything - SMS, email, twitter, automated phone calls, facebook - you can sign up for any/all of that. It looks like they use a service called School Messenger.
Good point. Though at some point I think a cell phone of some sort has become as important as a telephone or computer - sort of the bare minimum to participate in modern society. Everyone will have a different threshold for their own kids, but "before they leave home" is probably best, so that they can learn to use it while still within their support structure.
Ah, good ol' miscommunication... Rereading your comments I can see where I went wrong.