Oh, and before anybody points out that this SPECIFIC invention was under Leninist/Stalinist Russia, I don't consider their form of communism to be very different than a free market. In fact, thier version of communism might be considered to be even worse when it comes to this particular property of the free market- a free market with a single Venture Capitalist (the state party chairman) through whom ALL requests for money to develop an invention must go through. The exact opposite would be the form of communism The Oregon Project (see my JE, I don't want to bother to link to it here) envisions- where anybody can request resources from the central AI, and if The Project can afford it, the inventor will get those resources to develop their product and free publicity on The Project's intranet so that others can "buy" their product immediately from the central AI.
I'm as anti-corporation as anybody- but I don't think inventions are supressed on purpose. I actually think it's one of the more inefficient consequences of a free market- where money and brains are very rarely matched together enough to bring products to market fast enough. In fact, as time goes on and the standard of living becomes more expensive, brains and money will become MORE mismatched, not less, as many brilliant inventors are only brilliant for a 30 year window between the ages of 10 and 40 (peaking at 21) and then spend several decades struggling to get their brilliant ideas to market. With the cost of living going up, this will only get worse- as people at the begining of their career earn a lot less than people at the end of their career. The Venture Capital (or Vulture Capital) game can short circuit this somewhat, of course, but the problem is still matching up the old money people with the young inventors when they don't even move in the same social circles.
Depending on how little motion they require, line streets with them on both sides (or even under the pavement) and power street lights with them. The possiblities for hilarity to ensure are jut boundless.
Absolutely- this too is a variation on a power application I've heard about annecdotally here at my employment. Seems back in the 1960s, as they were pushing I-5 through Southern Oregon, they had a problem in the Rogue Valley. They laid down the road bed, came back the next morning, and found the local farmer had blown it up. Turns out it was a bureaucratic mistake- they hadn't actually bothered to file condemnation papers on his field. When they went to court to do so, he asked for no compensation other than to: a. Put a tractor tunnel under the freeway and b. be allowed to lay the roadbed himself. They were puzzeled by this second idea- until they saw him put down the roadbed- instead of just the normal layer of gravel, he put down a thin layer of gravel, a copper pipe zigzaged with the ends on one side, and then another layer of gravel. He then allowed them to pave over the top. To this day, the local school, his farmhouse, and the city hall are warmed from blowing air through that pipe; the combination of the traffic and solar heat on the roadway keeps a pretty constant 80F coming out of the pipe at all times.
Thus my suggestion above, which is an adaptation of an alternative idea from the 1970s using a field of pizeoelectric crystals. This is just a generation method, not the actual power input or output. It just occurs to me that these nanogenerators might be a bit easier to solder to than a bunch of quartz.....
.1 Richter microquakes, yes, of course. Sometimes going up to even 2 to 3 on the Richter scale- but just because pressure is building for a larger quake doesn't mean that all movement is stopped. The Mid Atlantic ridge, while useless for the above energy example, is a good example of perpetual quakes, it's litterally spreading (divergent) apart at 2.5cm/year. On second thought, that's a good example- more traditional methods of geothermal energy extraction from that specific ridge line allow Iceland to generate Geothermal energy, with one hot plant producing over 90MW of electricity, and geothermal energy being 13% of the energy production for the island.
Think about it- at 4 watts per square centimeter. 40,500,000 sq cm to the acre. Find yourself a baren 1 acre field in the desert in Northern California that gets minor earthquakes all the time (and there are a few). Bury 40,500,000 of them, and attach them to charging massive capacitors, and put in a computerized matching inverter, and you've got a 162MW generating plant that has virtually NO environmental impact.
That website will be taken down tonight. It was based on a mistaken reading of Regulation A. See my JE for more info IF YOU CARE- if you don't, I have no problem with you not replying.
All of this combines to be an extremely rich set of natural resources- some of which are hidden behind an artificial shortage of labor due to problems like the water supply in the Eastern desserts, cliffside coast errosion, southern earthquakes, or the historically wet climate of the western valleys.
It's my belief that automation and robotic labor will allow us to exploit some of those resources again, places like Ashwood, where the lack of water and smallness of the mineral deposits make manual extraction difficult, or Granite, which went downhill due to interference from federal regulations, or Greenhorn, which by virtue of the highest city in Oregon would be an excelent place for a windfarm.
We've got the solution to global warming right here in our own community- if we can just get it away from the feds.
The manager from the State Library wrote back with this explaination: Hello Ted,
Thank you for your email. No, you aren't obtuse in the slightest. We do not use any Eastern Oregon newspaper sources for our eClips product. We review 3 valley titles (Oregonian, Salem Statesman-Journal, Eugene Register-Guard), and one from Southern Oregon....the Medford Mail-Tribune.
Why don't we use content from Eastern Oregon? Here's the reason. The content from the larger Eastern Oregon sources like the Bend Bulletin or the East Oregonian (Pendleton)) requires a subscription. That is, the content is not readily available by clicking a link contained in our eClips alerts. The East Oregonian allows access to their front page however, when you attempt to access a story in full you are prompted with subscription information to the paper. Along with your paper subscription, you are granted full web access. The Bend paper selectively allows access to *some* stories and requires viewers to subscribe to their "e-edition" for access to the remainder of their stories. The other Eastern Oregon news outlets are pretty sparse with respect to regularly containing stories of interest.
Hopefully, we do not ignore stories from east of the Cascades if they are picked up in the newspapers that we do review which allow more complete access. So, I do apologize that eClips is lacking in Eastern Oregon coverage. We would like to address this if we can identify an "open" news content source from that part of Oregon.
There is good news, however. We do have a database, America's Newspapers, where I can set-up a customized "current awareness news alert" on any topic (or source/sources) you would choose. These sources can include Eastern Oregon sources.
This database contains content from 800+ newspapers, including 11 Oregon titles. These alerts can be customized to include any individual paper, group of papers, or all papers.
You can also access this database at any time and simply browse the East Oregon sources. Please let me know if this is something you would be interested in.
Thank you for your e-mail and please let me know if I may be of additional service.
So you're saying if a society doesn't have a sufficiently large middle class, that they must accept totalitarianism instead? Could it be instead, that a large middle class arises out of freedom? That it is freedom that diminishes the power of the aristocracy while simultaneously reducing destitution?
Could be, but history shows almost exactly the opposite in the few societies that have actually achieved a large middle class and freedom: First come the merchants, who take power from the aristocracy, then come the trade unions, that oppose the merchants, the trade unions elect progressive politicians, and finally a middle class emerges whenever and whereever there is a strongly progressive income tax. This was most true during the 1950s in the United States, but the same economic consequence has happened elsewhere and elsewhen. The Merchant Class and the Middle Class are the strongest creators of freedom- because their very continued existance requires both progressive economic protection and political power for the greater population.
The democratic revolutions in the West (the United States, Britain, France) were driven by the interests of the commercial elite.
And these were largely false revolutions in the end- with every politician on the ballot pre-purchased by campaign contributions, none of them actually representing the people who elected them.
You are really only out your downpayment, and if interest rates and prices are low, while rent is high, buying saves you money. It's not an investment, it's just a way of not throwing 100% of your housing costs into a hole every month.
Depends on how your neighbors are doing. If you're still able to sell relatively quickly when you need to, no problem. But if the *entire* neighborhood has gone for subprime loans to live on, you'll lose downpayment + equity as your house gets foreclosed on instead of sold.
Thank you- this seems to have been upmodded since.
What is really interesting is how in Oregon, the very people most likely to deny global warming's effects (conservatives in Oregon are very much segregated to the rural areas) are also the ones most likely to be affected by global warming- which will make it hard to deny in a few years.
The middle class are employers. They get other people to work for them. That's what gives them the time.
That's the upper class to me- in that they have POWER to destroy or create OTHER PEOPLE'S LIVES.
The lower class have NO POWER AT ALL- their time is spent in quiet desparation, working 2-4 jobs just to keep food in their bellies and a roof over thier heads; with no time for anything else.
Neither the upper class (who profit from the status quo) or the lower class (who have no time) will change anything politically; the natural state of the world is to have only these two classes and no other.
When creative progressive taxation, such as we had in the 1950s in America, creates something different, then you get change. What is different is a unionized middle class- who only work 40 hours a week and have time to engage in politics on the side. They are not employers- but they're not drudge workers either. They do not profit from the status quo, but instead profit from increased political freedom to speak out. THAT is where change comes from.
I think you are about 40 years too late. Communism lost. Today's globalists are 110% monopolistic capitalists.
What do you think Lenin's and Mao's version of "communism" was, if not 100% monopolistic capitalism with a single owner? True communism only works in SMALL communities with good communication, the con job Lenin and Mao were running is the natural result of capitalism.
The more entertaining, the better. Slashdot, Technocrat, and The Register get visited daily. In addition to this, I also go for TV shows that are basically aggregators-for-entertainment: Lou Dobbs Tonight & This Week, The Daily Show with John Stewart, and The Colbert Report. I especially like commentators who disagree with me on economics- that way I get the "liberal free market" point of view as well.
Newspapers are best only for local news. For that, I mainly depend on The Oregonian, Washington County Weekly, and due to being a public employee, I find The Oregon State Library EClips News Aggregator Inbox Service to be invaluable (there's some duplication there since The Oregonian is one of the newspapers covered by my 9am EClips e-mail, but it gives me access to the web sites of newspapers elsewhere in the state- though I've noticed it's mainly Willamette Valley voices. In response to making me think about this I think I'll fire off an e-mail to the EClips manager about covering Eastern Oregon newspapers more).
Locally, it means more people moving out of the increasingly thirsty eastern Oregon counties, and to the water-flush Willamette Valley. Either that or a damn good opportunity for rain catch basins as snow pak decreases in the Cascades and annual rainfall increases only to wash away into the ocean before we can use it for our hot and thirsty summers.
These things will all come with a middle class who demand them. You have to build that middle class up first. This is what a lot of people don't get. It's the middle class, who are financially independent, not the working class who demand change. Funnily enough, it's money which allows freedom to flourish.
This must be some strange meaning of the words "middle class" of which I have not previously been aware. Last I saw, "Middle Class" in the United States was defined as having incomes in the $36,000-$120,000 range; which while certainly comfortable and able to afford a few luxuries and assets, is certainly NOT what I'd call "financially independant" or "not working class".
Other than that I agree with you- as did George Orwell. The working poor can't afford to revolt- 100% of their time is spent just trying to survive. The rich are profiting from the status quo, they aren't going to change anything. Only with a middle class, who suffer due to worker conditions and prosper with a robust economy, can these changes be made.
This is just a shot fired across the bow of globalization. But since the globalists are all worshipers of Mao, this resurgence of national identity for China will go unnoticed.
Henry Ford was considered an evil communist by his fellow indusrialists- after all, he paid $5 a day (5x the going wage!) for his factory workers in 1921.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, and before anybody points out that this SPECIFIC invention was under Leninist/Stalinist Russia, I don't consider their form of communism to be very different than a free market. In fact, thier version of communism might be considered to be even worse when it comes to this particular property of the free market- a free market with a single Venture Capitalist (the state party chairman) through whom ALL requests for money to develop an invention must go through. The exact opposite would be the form of communism The Oregon Project (see my JE, I don't want to bother to link to it here) envisions- where anybody can request resources from the central AI, and if The Project can afford it, the inventor will get those resources to develop their product and free publicity on The Project's intranet so that others can "buy" their product immediately from the central AI.
I'm as anti-corporation as anybody- but I don't think inventions are supressed on purpose. I actually think it's one of the more inefficient consequences of a free market- where money and brains are very rarely matched together enough to bring products to market fast enough. In fact, as time goes on and the standard of living becomes more expensive, brains and money will become MORE mismatched, not less, as many brilliant inventors are only brilliant for a 30 year window between the ages of 10 and 40 (peaking at 21) and then spend several decades struggling to get their brilliant ideas to market. With the cost of living going up, this will only get worse- as people at the begining of their career earn a lot less than people at the end of their career. The Venture Capital (or Vulture Capital) game can short circuit this somewhat, of course, but the problem is still matching up the old money people with the young inventors when they don't even move in the same social circles.
Depending on how little motion they require, line streets with them on both sides (or even under the pavement) and power street lights with them. The possiblities for hilarity to ensure are jut boundless.
Absolutely- this too is a variation on a power application I've heard about annecdotally here at my employment. Seems back in the 1960s, as they were pushing I-5 through Southern Oregon, they had a problem in the Rogue Valley. They laid down the road bed, came back the next morning, and found the local farmer had blown it up. Turns out it was a bureaucratic mistake- they hadn't actually bothered to file condemnation papers on his field. When they went to court to do so, he asked for no compensation other than to: a. Put a tractor tunnel under the freeway and b. be allowed to lay the roadbed himself. They were puzzeled by this second idea- until they saw him put down the roadbed- instead of just the normal layer of gravel, he put down a thin layer of gravel, a copper pipe zigzaged with the ends on one side, and then another layer of gravel. He then allowed them to pave over the top. To this day, the local school, his farmhouse, and the city hall are warmed from blowing air through that pipe; the combination of the traffic and solar heat on the roadway keeps a pretty constant 80F coming out of the pipe at all times.
Thus my suggestion above, which is an adaptation of an alternative idea from the 1970s using a field of pizeoelectric crystals. This is just a generation method, not the actual power input or output. It just occurs to me that these nanogenerators might be a bit easier to solder to than a bunch of quartz.....
.1 Richter microquakes, yes, of course. Sometimes going up to even 2 to 3 on the Richter scale- but just because pressure is building for a larger quake doesn't mean that all movement is stopped. The Mid Atlantic ridge, while useless for the above energy example, is a good example of perpetual quakes, it's litterally spreading (divergent) apart at 2.5cm/year. On second thought, that's a good example- more traditional methods of geothermal energy extraction from that specific ridge line allow Iceland to generate Geothermal energy, with one hot plant producing over 90MW of electricity, and geothermal energy being 13% of the energy production for the island.
Think about it- at 4 watts per square centimeter. 40,500,000 sq cm to the acre. Find yourself a baren 1 acre field in the desert in Northern California that gets minor earthquakes all the time (and there are a few). Bury 40,500,000 of them, and attach them to charging massive capacitors, and put in a computerized matching inverter, and you've got a 162MW generating plant that has virtually NO environmental impact.
And with a 720p maximum resolution, it's not going to sell in the HDTV market.
That website will be taken down tonight. It was based on a mistaken reading of Regulation A. See my JE for more info IF YOU CARE- if you don't, I have no problem with you not replying.
Now that this article is somewhat in the past, I can say more flamebaity things, but things that are true to me.
It's my fervent belief that in the long run, Cascadia (see map in our logo at The Oregon Project) has a very different set of economical interests than the rest of the country. For one thing, our economy is much more tied to the Asian Pacific trading circle than it is to say, the New York Stock Exchange. For another, we've got a history of ambient energy projects such as Bonieville Dam or the Condon Wind Farm. And of course, our timber and agricultural history is second to none.
All of this combines to be an extremely rich set of natural resources- some of which are hidden behind an artificial shortage of labor due to problems like the water supply in the Eastern desserts, cliffside coast errosion, southern earthquakes, or the historically wet climate of the western valleys.
It's my belief that automation and robotic labor will allow us to exploit some of those resources again, places like Ashwood, where the lack of water and smallness of the mineral deposits make manual extraction difficult, or Granite, which went downhill due to interference from federal regulations, or Greenhorn, which by virtue of the highest city in Oregon would be an excelent place for a windfarm.
We've got the solution to global warming right here in our own community- if we can just get it away from the feds.
The manager from the State Library wrote back with this explaination:
j ect.php?SID=28
Hello Ted,
Thank you for your email. No, you aren't obtuse in the slightest. We do not use any Eastern Oregon newspaper sources for our eClips product. We review 3 valley titles (Oregonian, Salem Statesman-Journal, Eugene Register-Guard), and one from Southern Oregon....the Medford Mail-Tribune.
Why don't we use content from Eastern Oregon? Here's the reason. The content from the larger Eastern Oregon sources like the Bend Bulletin or the East Oregonian (Pendleton)) requires a subscription. That is, the content is not readily available by clicking a link contained in our eClips alerts. The East Oregonian allows access to their front page however, when you attempt to access a story in full you are prompted with subscription information to the paper. Along with your paper subscription, you are granted full web access. The Bend paper selectively allows access to *some* stories and requires viewers to subscribe to their "e-edition" for access to the remainder of their stories. The other Eastern Oregon news outlets are pretty sparse with respect to regularly containing stories of interest.
Hopefully, we do not ignore stories from east of the Cascades if they are picked up in the newspapers that we do review which allow more complete access. So, I do apologize that eClips is lacking in Eastern Oregon coverage. We would like to address this if we can identify an "open" news content source from that part of Oregon.
There is good news, however. We do have a database, America's Newspapers, where I can set-up a customized "current awareness news alert" on any topic (or source/sources) you would choose. These sources can include Eastern Oregon sources.
This database contains content from 800+ newspapers, including 11 Oregon titles. These alerts can be customized to include any individual paper, group of papers, or all papers.
Below I'll list the 11 Oregon titles.
America's Newspapers:
http://library.state.or.us/databases/subjects/sub
You can also access this database at any time and simply browse the East Oregon sources. Please let me know if this is something you would be interested in.
Thank you for your e-mail and please let me know if I may be of additional service.
Regards,
Jerry Curry
So you're saying if a society doesn't have a sufficiently large middle class, that they must accept totalitarianism instead? Could it be instead, that a large middle class arises out of freedom? That it is freedom that diminishes the power of the aristocracy while simultaneously reducing destitution?
Could be, but history shows almost exactly the opposite in the few societies that have actually achieved a large middle class and freedom: First come the merchants, who take power from the aristocracy, then come the trade unions, that oppose the merchants, the trade unions elect progressive politicians, and finally a middle class emerges whenever and whereever there is a strongly progressive income tax. This was most true during the 1950s in the United States, but the same economic consequence has happened elsewhere and elsewhen. The Merchant Class and the Middle Class are the strongest creators of freedom- because their very continued existance requires both progressive economic protection and political power for the greater population.
The Oregon Project is about making sure such a computer serves everybody in the community- not just the rich.
The democratic revolutions in the West (the United States, Britain, France) were driven by the interests of the commercial elite.
And these were largely false revolutions in the end- with every politician on the ballot pre-purchased by campaign contributions, none of them actually representing the people who elected them.
You are really only out your downpayment, and if interest rates and prices are low, while rent is high, buying saves you money. It's not an investment, it's just a way of not throwing 100% of your housing costs into a hole every month.
Depends on how your neighbors are doing. If you're still able to sell relatively quickly when you need to, no problem. But if the *entire* neighborhood has gone for subprime loans to live on, you'll lose downpayment + equity as your house gets foreclosed on instead of sold.
Thank you- this seems to have been upmodded since.
What is really interesting is how in Oregon, the very people most likely to deny global warming's effects (conservatives in Oregon are very much segregated to the rural areas) are also the ones most likely to be affected by global warming- which will make it hard to deny in a few years.
The middle class are employers. They get other people to work for them. That's what gives them the time.
That's the upper class to me- in that they have POWER to destroy or create OTHER PEOPLE'S LIVES.
The lower class have NO POWER AT ALL- their time is spent in quiet desparation, working 2-4 jobs just to keep food in their bellies and a roof over thier heads; with no time for anything else.
Neither the upper class (who profit from the status quo) or the lower class (who have no time) will change anything politically; the natural state of the world is to have only these two classes and no other.
When creative progressive taxation, such as we had in the 1950s in America, creates something different, then you get change. What is different is a unionized middle class- who only work 40 hours a week and have time to engage in politics on the side. They are not employers- but they're not drudge workers either. They do not profit from the status quo, but instead profit from increased political freedom to speak out. THAT is where change comes from.
I think you are about 40 years too late. Communism lost. Today's globalists are 110% monopolistic capitalists.
What do you think Lenin's and Mao's version of "communism" was, if not 100% monopolistic capitalism with a single owner? True communism only works in SMALL communities with good communication, the con job Lenin and Mao were running is the natural result of capitalism.
The more entertaining, the better. Slashdot, Technocrat, and The Register get visited daily. In addition to this, I also go for TV shows that are basically aggregators-for-entertainment: Lou Dobbs Tonight & This Week, The Daily Show with John Stewart, and The Colbert Report. I especially like commentators who disagree with me on economics- that way I get the "liberal free market" point of view as well.
Newspapers are best only for local news. For that, I mainly depend on The Oregonian, Washington County Weekly, and due to being a public employee, I find The Oregon State Library EClips News Aggregator Inbox Service to be invaluable (there's some duplication there since The Oregonian is one of the newspapers covered by my 9am EClips e-mail, but it gives me access to the web sites of newspapers elsewhere in the state- though I've noticed it's mainly Willamette Valley voices. In response to making me think about this I think I'll fire off an e-mail to the EClips manager about covering Eastern Oregon newspapers more).
Locally, it means more people moving out of the increasingly thirsty eastern Oregon counties, and to the water-flush Willamette Valley. Either that or a damn good opportunity for rain catch basins as snow pak decreases in the Cascades and annual rainfall increases only to wash away into the ocean before we can use it for our hot and thirsty summers.
These things will all come with a middle class who demand them. You have to build that middle class up first. This is what a lot of people don't get. It's the middle class, who are financially independent, not the working class who demand change. Funnily enough, it's money which allows freedom to flourish.
This must be some strange meaning of the words "middle class" of which I have not previously been aware. Last I saw, "Middle Class" in the United States was defined as having incomes in the $36,000-$120,000 range; which while certainly comfortable and able to afford a few luxuries and assets, is certainly NOT what I'd call "financially independant" or "not working class".
Other than that I agree with you- as did George Orwell. The working poor can't afford to revolt- 100% of their time is spent just trying to survive. The rich are profiting from the status quo, they aren't going to change anything. Only with a middle class, who suffer due to worker conditions and prosper with a robust economy, can these changes be made.
Ecconomic Warfare of course.
This is just a shot fired across the bow of globalization. But since the globalists are all worshipers of Mao, this resurgence of national identity for China will go unnoticed.
Exactly what all of the modern industrialists seem to have forgotten.
That's not news. That's what we've been doing, slowly, for 40 years now.
Funny, could have sworn that the reason they took him off the cross was because it was the eve of the Sabbath (Saturday).
Henry Ford was considered an evil communist by his fellow indusrialists- after all, he paid $5 a day (5x the going wage!) for his factory workers in 1921.