But my point still stands, going to eBay first is happening less and less. Remember, eBay started when the search engines weren't as good as they are now. With a limited number of auctions it was easier for eBay to provide a good search than yahoo could at the time. Now, google and others can provide searches that are about as good as eBay at fining what you want.
Since the eBay fees go directly to increasing the prices of the items purchased on eBay, unless they can provide a service that offsets the added cost people will shift to cheaper services. Ebay has name recognition now but that won't last long. Soon, probably already happened, eBay will start the downward trend and eventually become more on par with the other online re-sellers.
The last time eBay did a major change to their fee structure, I was a large power seller.
I sold jewelry $15-%50 range. Mainly silver with gemstones, almost no costume. I had a rating of about 9000 and % positive of 99.7. I was netting about 35K a year. My system worked on volume. I would make $0.50 to $1.00 per sale. At that size I ended up sending eBay about $70K a year.
The last time they cahnged their fees they essentially killed my profit margin. Now I could have adjusted at that point and probably survived but at the same time they started using some incredibly poorly written bots. These bots decided I was selling illegale stuff and even though I had exceptional records eBay refused to have a human even look at what the bots were reporting.
After over a year fighting with eBay and holding my last months worth of fees (about 2K) I finally got someone from their collections department to give me some information...I ended up settling the debt for $1600 plus a printout of what the bot was reporting.
To sum up, because eBay did not treat me fairly while at the same time demanding more money from me I have completly left them and they no longer get my $70,000 a year in fees.
While eBay is still huge, Google and other search engines provide independent sellers almost as much visibility so I predict that these sort of heavy handed tactics will only speed eBay's decline from the throne of online reselling services.
First there is math as is relates to physics principles. 1 + 1 must equal 2. In a classical wphysics world there is no getting around that. Arithmetic, Pi, e and a few others are discoverable math principles.
But, second is how we as human beings understand math, this is invented. There is no fundamental reason why calculus is as it was developed. Caculus represents our understanding of math and is an invention of convinience.
Remember, all math COULD be done with basic arithmetic....I just wouldn't want to do it by hand.
I understand where you are coming from but I have to disagree on several points...
#1 Malthusian perdictions for certain doom in 50-100 years have been around for almost 400 years in the current form and more religious forms before that but it hasn't happened yet because people invent new things or societies to compensate.
#2 There is no reason to expect the entier industrialized world to collapse all at once. While resource limits WILL cause major problems, why would you expect China to fal at the same time as the US or Europe etc. Historically this has not been the case. So while some areas will regress, other areas are likley to maintain modern level technology, by taking the resources from other areas.
#3 Your senario is predicated on the idea that oil will just "run out" which will not be the case. As we are seeing, as demand for oil goes up (because of increased use and or decreased supply) the price goes up which makes it profitable to extract it from less viable fields. But at the same time, the higher oil prices makes it more economically fesable to say purchase solar power for your house along with an electric car...and this increases the demand there which speeds development. Eventually the cost of extracting oil will be higher than a different energy source, say solar with 50% efficiency, cracking CO2 and water into fuel. When that happens you will see an extremly rapid shift to alternate power. The solar falling on the earth is enough to provide for our predicted energy growth for the next few hundred years WITHOUT miracle technolgy.
#4 With current nuclear technology we could support our energy consumption almost indeffinetly. Thorium reactors are extremly safe, create relativly little radioactivity and can even "burn up" highly radioactive waste with nutron bombardment. We can make bio-disel from essentially large ponds at very little cost (almost competitive with oil). There are many other examples we could use.
#4 if society trully collapsed from oil going away, it wouldn't go back to the middle ages, it would go back to about 1750 and quickly advance since many texts will remain. In order to go back farther you would need an active diruption (like nuclear winter type senarios) for more than 50 years (the likley span of 2 generations). Unless you prevent effective education of everyone, society won't fall much past 1750 levels and if you do we will end up in the stone age, hunter-gatherer level.
Now with all this said, you are right, finding a sustainable energy source is important. However we are not at an emergency really and I doubt we will every actually get there. Economics will garuntee that alternatives are developed before we crash.
#1 nitrogen isn't actually the limiting factor, iron actually is....they current plans for marine carbon sinking involves sprinkling the surface with rust. While nitrogen is a fertilizer and will cause an algae bloom, you don't have to have an extra source. Most algae have nitrogen fixing bacteria associated with them and will grow more aggressively simply with a higher CO2 level. If you want to help it along, go ahead and fertilize it, but strictly speaking it isn't necessary. Also I would look up you facts. Most growth comes from nutrients swept out to sea from continental sources. There is actually very little growth out in the middle of the ocean. But since the CO2 by itself will cause increase growth, sedimentation and sequestering, it will function very nicely as a regulation loop.
#2 You wax so eloquently about the "free market" but have you ever really described it? You suggest that a free market is internally self supporting. That no government is necessary. That only contracts will be enforced. That you can buy everything you might need. But I am wondering, who would enforce the contract? What would you use for money? The barter system with all it's inefficiencies? The free market as you know it would grind to a halt. Plus, why would I buy something when I could just kill you instead and take it. Without a government there are no repercussions. Plus tell me, where will you buy fresh water? Where will you buy food you know is good? Electricity? Sewers? Drugs? Books for education? The list goes on and on. To be blunt, unless you are a current millionaire you won't be able to afford all of this and your life will be relativly short, painfull and most of all, expensive.
#3 Your scenario...lets go back to your planetoid. The people living there are going to be EXTREMELY energy hungry to maintain the internal environment and do all the manufacturing. Plus they will have a relatively finite amount of materials, especially volatiles for propulsion and attitude control. Therefore it makes excellent sense to locate your planetoid closer in for the increased solar flux. Farther out and you have to expend fuel and other volatiles to get fusion fuel. So since you are closer in your flares DO become a significant problem. They can wipe out your solar cells, your space factories and for days make in impossible to go outside without committing suicide (no power, no resources and no escape). Or say an asteroid...the earth is bombarded by car sized meteors every day. One even half that size would cause huge damage and probably spring a leak. then of course there are all the "minor issues" like your internal "sun" going out and it taking even a week to fix. Much of your crop will be destroyed. How about insects...In a small closed environment it would be extremely difficult to control insects. You can't just evacuate the air, you can't poison them since the will just hide in the mechanics and you can't afford the air to maintain predators for them. One pair of grasshoppers can kill you...All of these are issues planets don't face because of the size and geometry. Again, I am not saying your planetoids are impossible...only that they are Much less stable than planets and will need correspondingly higher energy for maintaining them.
#4 I said you are a fool because you are acting like one. It is very obvious you have no clue how the body works let alone the medical industry. I am trying to educate you about my personal field of expertise if you are interested.
Why do drugs cost so much? Because they are hard to find. Most small molecules are actually poisonous to some extent and very few have medicinal benifits that outweigh the side effects (poison). To find your example, Claritin, the company had to screen about 10,000 chemicals. After this first screening, about 900 were selected for further testing and 10 were picked for animal testing which eliminated all but ethyl 4-(8-chloro-5,6-dihydro-11H-benzo[5,6]cyclohepta[1,2-b]pyridin-11-ylidene) -1-piperidinecarbo
By progressing I mean actual measurable advancement to break even...your parents may be scientists...but I AM one...biology, aids research and shifted into pharma regulatory affairs...I know the tricks scientists play to get funding and I am not counting those. I already stated that the tokamak is probably a dead end fusion wise but is has generated a wide variety of plasma research....the compact florescent light bulbs are a direct result of tokamak research. Fusion wise the Bussard polywell is already within spitting distance of break even. The basic research is done and now all that is left to test is scalability. I estimate a working reactor in 5 years and a full commercial reactor 5 years after that.
I bought a new construction house 18 months ago. New construction is great with the exception of the "debris" left in the ground. I break up reinforced concrete almost every weekend. The trick is you break it in the same direction as the re bar. It takes time but isn't that strenuous. Now true, I use an iron sledge hammer but I could make a wood and stone one with very little effort and accomplish the same thing, just having to replace the heads occasionaly. Also, you are aware that extracting metallic aluminum is THE most energetically intense smelting process? It would be easier to CHEW apart a concrete wall than smelt aluminum from clay.
You need to research geology a bit more. Radio dating the Appalachians indicates that they are about 3.5 Billion years old. The current theories suggest they were formed by the same impact that created the moon and the pacific ocean. It has taken that long for them to weather from Himalaya type mountains to barley mountains at all. The Rocky's won't take quite as long but they will still be here for at least 2 billion years. While some prestressed concrete is stronger than granite, most buildings don't need it so they are built with lower strength and cheaper stuff. But regardless, your argument is extremely flawed. What is easier, digging through several hundred feet of granite or through 6 inches of concrete that MIGHT be slightly stronger than granite.
You are correct, I miss spoke. Metal has been in demand since it was first smelted by accident 2 million years ago. HOWEVER metal was very uncommon until a few hundred years ago and all but the elite made do very successfully with stone age tools. It's only in the last 5-6 hundred years that smelting became common enough for everyone to be able to get metal tools. Even today most people in the world use stone age tools...only in the industrialized nations is this different.
Do remember that until VERY recently the entire worlds oil production was from skimming it off of ponds. Water will get into the wells on it's own even if we don't pump it in and when it does it forces the oil up...either concentrating it into pockets or sometime into it's original location or even all the way to the surface. If we stopped removing the easy oil, the natural redistribution would partially refill the exhausted sites. In fact I seem to remember a Texan oilman returning to a field 50 years after it was closed and getting some meaningful oil out of it. I certainly agree that it won't be as much as originally in the field BUT it will be as easy to get to for a while and then they will be in the same position we will be soon.
Bussard polywells are actually progressing very well. The tokamac is probably a dead end for fusion but has provided almost monthly advancment in plasma physics and the basic research is helpfull in developing everything from space trusters to florecent light bulbs. Hardly a standfull.
Why don't you take a rock to cement...it breaks farily easily. The rocky mountains are eroding even though they are much harder than most industrial concrete.
Resources beyond wood and stone weren't in much demand except for specialty items until about 500 years ago. Plus it is easy to go back a few hundred years but longer than that is harder to do and takes more of a disaster.
You mentioned the 12th century...that is why I referenced it.
Remember bouency...oil floats on water PLUS rock will actually wick it up given time.
I don't believe they are an absolute truth. I have an MBA and I know what balance sheets mean...it means the best guess by people who are paid the same regardless of the results.
You are absolutely right...we need carbon sequestering...how about this:
Increased CO2 encourages the growth of marine algae and it's entire food chain...then about 80% of the carbon is maintained at the surface...the rest sinks to the bottom of the ocean and is sequestered...all by itself! Plus as CO2 dropps the rate of sequestering will drop to achieve a balance...all without worrying about springing a leak.
The solar flare: I was expanding on the numbers you quoted earlier. I freely admit that I have not run the numbers....however my point is valid even if the specific solar flare scenario is flawed...a "major" disaster will kill off your planetoids unless EVERYTHING goes perfectly. The larger the system the more resilient to these disasters. I can run some numbers for other disasters if you like but my point still stands.
Dispersed government: People form large governments BECAUSE they provide services small ones can't. Your scenario is all well and good until two planetoids decide they want to kill off a third and take the resources...just because the earth hulk is too far away to bother with. You then have a large war and in the end you have a "Union of Planetoids." Over the next few centuries the UP consolidates power and you have a nice big central government...just as an example.
The AMA and FDA: How to put this...you are a fool. Both my parents are doctors and my sister started Med school last Fall. I know a dozen doctors that have LEFT the profession BECAUSE of the insurance companies but I have never met one that left because of the AMA. Med schools are actually STRUGGLING to fill the seats...we are running low on doctors because there aren't enough qualified people applying. This may sound elitist but not everyone can be a doctor. It takes high intelligence (about top 1/3 of the population) and a special mentality. It takes 8-12 YEARS of training, the first 4 costing $150K and the last 4-8 you get paid as much as a waiter. You get to do 60-70 hour weeks for years. You get to be on call a third of the year which WILL result in getting woken up at 3 AM. Finally as a direct result of HMO's the prestige and salaries of doctors are dropping fast while frivolous lawsuits are increasing.
My personal job is in Regulatory Affairs. I WRITE the drug applications to the FDA. They are the bane of my existence! They are frustrating to deal with and can be bureaucratically petty...but I would NEVER suggest getting rid of them. The FDA requires extensive studies to approve a drug. But they DON'T require EXCESSIVE studies. The math behind the requirements is actually very reasonable to PROVE what the company is claiming. The reason drugs cost so much is because they are HARD to find. A current NCE (new chemical entity) is estimated at costing 2 BILLION, all of which is payed for by the company upfront. After getting approval by proving that the drug actually does something and is unlikely to kill you, the company has only 7 YEARS to make back everything AND turn a profit. The current estimates that if a company were to provide the same assurances WITHOUT the FDA it would cost 1.85 billion.
Now lets go back to WHY the FDA was created. Look up patent medications. They were suggested for everything and all they were was Morphine. Since medicine is so complex is is realistically impossible to understand enough about drugs to take them safely without a medical degree. The FDA was created to keep companies honest and to provide assurance to patients that they can TRUST the people making the drugs. Both of these provide STRONG motivation to help make drugs NOT discourage them.
Tell me, if you KNEW that there was no way to make money off of it, would you try to invent anything? The FDA and patent office gives a company a CHANCE to make money.
Now as far as insurance, it IS a huge drain on the industry....Just take a look at Bill McGuier's compensation in 2005...$1,600,000,000...THATS 1.6 billion...all of which came out of the consumers p
Fusion, there is no "technological stagnation." The advancement has proceeded apace even though the next larger Tokamac is still under construction. However it looks like the Bussard Polywell system is far more likely and current projects are 200 billion to a functional 10 GW plant. (200 billion is nothing)
Remember what the vast amount of re bar is used for...lattice work in concrete. It is not going to rust until the concrete is weathered away. Not to mention modern steel doesn't rust that quickly and copper, aluminum and other metals don't rust at all. Current projects suggest that buildings will be useful sources of materials for well over 500 years...more than enough time to recover from a collapse.
As far as oil goes...how much petroleum was used in the 12th century? All the demand for oil was created over the last 150 years. Plus the easily accessible oil is "easily accessible" because it is close to the surface. Give it a few hundred years and it will redistribute itself and partially refill those easy areas.
Finally "proven" reserves mean they AREN'T guessing. Proven reserves are used on corporate balance sheets and are independently verified.
Actully whe have more proven reserves now than we did 50 years ago, they are just harder more expensive to tap. We are going to develop a reliable renewable energy source (probably fusion and solar) before we trully "run out."
Plus the mined resources aren't gone...they are in buildings. It would be so much easier to mine a decrepit skyscrapper than a mountain and one building will have more copper, iron and other elements than any pre-industrial society could ever want in one place.
(Sorry to pick on you but your statments are a bit too Malthusian for the facts.)
Actually, fixing global warming on earth is JUST as easy if not easier than any planitoid, it just takes longer. We could "fix" it today simply by cutting emmisions and allowing the system to compensate. In a planitoid you'd have to have active control back and forth forever and one tiny mistake and you blow a seal, lose all your air and die. Assuming the same level of tech necessary for your planitoids, global warming won't be an issue but if you tried to use current tech in a planetoid you would die all but immediatly...remember you must compare apples to apples.
Lets say there is a sudden solar flare which then heats your tube. Easy fix as you say flip the color...all done....but wait one side was damaged by the same flare and didn't switch! You now have a massize temperature differential which creates a small hurricane inside the tube. Even IF you manage to fix it your entier food crop is destroyed and you starve. The real downside of a small environment is no lee way for error.
Actually, people are working on the Sarhara but the equilibrium was push so far that it is now a self supporting system to maintain the desert. This is exactly what can happen to any system but it is MUCH easier for smaller systems to start self supporting in a way you don't want.
As far as land goes, remember my last point...the Civil war was fought with an almost empty Louisiana next door. It would have been very easy to pick up and move if they wanted to but instead they decided to fight for their homes and try and take their land with them...why do you think space people will be any less stupid? Remember compare apples to apples.
My point on the fudeal system is completly supported by your comments. The feudal system grew out of a pure capitalism left at thte fall of the Roman Empier. Capitalism left to itself creates feudal systems. It is only with a minimal level of government regulation and a garunteed subsistance living regardless of work environment that capitalism can flourish.
Also remember that the USSR was not actually socialism. It was a militarily enforced central planning system. It failed because people were afraid to report production and consumption number accuratly..NOT because it had socialist ideals.
True socialism means there is no government. I use only what I NEED and give the rest to anyone who lacks. True socialism actually works EXTREMLY well...for one generation. In fact I would be willing to bet that the first planetoid will actually be pure socialist just because it is easier to set up in extreme conditions. Once a new generation is in control, one that didn't buy into the system beforehand, socialism breaks down.
As far as protecting the lazy, I both agree and disagree. You are absolutly right that the lazy are protected under limited socialism. But at the same time I am protected as well. I just filed my taxes for last year. I grossed in excess of $120,000. My wife is a civilian aueronautical engineer for the air force and I work for the pharmaceutical industry developing drugs. We are mid 20's and our future is extremly bright...however I also know that one serious injury to either of us and it could derail everything...especially if it is in the next few years before we can develop real savings. Social security is deffinetly worth the investment to protect against catastrope. So long as it is very painfull to live off of it, I have no problem with it.
I am in the healthcare industry and I can tell you for an absolute fact that private health insurance is WHY health costs are so much. Private, capitalist, health insurance takes anywhere from 20-30% for profits and advertising and uses 5% for administrative. Medicare uses 6% for administrative and 0% for profits and advertising...plus I view basic universal healthcare as a national security issue...the best defence against modern terrorist warefare is a health population. Canada certainly has isues but the general health of the population is equal and you pay half as much...t
Compared to a even mouse, an octopus is rather dim. Compared to all other non-mammalian marine life and many reptiles, yes Octopi are rather bright, but it is still a low bar.
As far as bouancy goes, with brains it isn't really size that matters, it's energy. We are significantly smarter than a Sperm Whale but a Sperm whales brain weighs more than our entier body. It is more about energy usage than size. Again that mouse is smarter because it can use the free energy it has to think much more effectivly than you octopus.
As far as tool use, I am personally less concerned. This is mainly due to the fact that once you acheive reasonable intelligence you can figure out / discover how to make better tools. But if you are non-sentient you can't "figure out" how to be sentient.
In the end we must remember that intelligence is actually almost always an evolutionary dead-end. It takes a huge amount of energy and time to develop and most species can do fine with significantly less.
#1 Never said it was impossible...only very difficult to maintain.
#2 A cycle DOES care how large it is. The larger, more complex the cycle the more places there are for slack in the system, the more complex it is the more control points you have and the larger the volume the more time you have to fix it before it starts reinforcing itself.
#3 In a larger system the materials and energy reuierments wouldn't be nearly as stringent and the system could have compensated before it crashed.
#4 Please site a reference for you comment on chaos theory. Everything I read suggests a very strong predictaive value (everything from projecting battery life to environmental effects)
#5 Exactly, I mean exactly like earth. Humans have had a reckless abandon for the care of the planet for well over 10,000 years. For example, before humans got there, the Saraha was about the size of New Hampshire...but with our greed and goats we over the last few thousand years finally got beyond the lands ability to recouperate and thus the current dessert formed quickly. If it wasn't for the self supporting and very large system of the earth, we would have made the planet unihabitable eons ago.
If it weren't for the size of the planet there would be no possible way we could see the change and fix it before the planet turned into an oven. As an example of how fast things can change read up on the precambrian explosion. The current geological evidence suggests that the earth's surface competly froze which locked away the biosphere to undersea volcanoes etc then drove the global temperature below -50 C. After a few 10's of thousands of years enough CO2 from volcanoes and dust and others caused a massive greenhouse effect which melted the ice and increased the global temperature by over 100 deg C in as little as 50 (thats fifty) years. After the biosphere was releaseed it was able to accomidate to the changes and tamp down the extremes.
#6 I was referencing the size quoted in the original comment. But as I already proved, smaller will be less stable, harder to maintain and more prone to accidents.
#7 Countries are actually VERY easy to leave. I can leave this country today if I want. The issue is taking the land with you. Once all the planets have been made into the cylinders, don't you think someone will object to one group trying to split one up? Remeber the Civil war was fought with a huge unexplored and availible bit of land nextdoor but they decided to fight over their current homes instead.
#8 Do you really beleive socialism is the route of all evil? Take a look at the Gilded age in the US... Take a look at the feudal system... All of one system NEVER works. We need a balanced system of capitalism to create the energy and vitality, socialism to protect the weak and the occasional dictatorship to keep things dynamic. If biology and evolution has taught us anything it is that thoes who fail to adapt will perish.
The break even problem hasen't generally been true for almost 20 years.
All consumer grade solar cells easily produce more power than they use.
Only the super high efficiency 40+% cells used by NASA and the like are even close to using as much energy to create as they will generate. This is do not just to the manufacturing techniques but to the harsh, highly radioactive environment they are in which decreases the life expectancy of the cell.
On first blush your theory is sound however you forgot one major things...
STABILITY
Chaos theory (as proven by the biodome) dictates that the larger the system the more stable. A small world will be subject to remarkable swings which would rapidly lead to every single one being unihabitable without constant educated human intervention.
Next the real estate you are describing per cylinder is larger than most countries. The US is remarkably stable but even we had a civil war within 100 years of formation not to mention wars with other countries. Any disruption in the societies ability to maintain the system will result in the cylinder dying very quickly.
Personally I think they are a great idea for asteroids etc but not for the planets. Planets are remarkably stable (even mars and venus once teraformed would be fairly stable) since they are point masses (spheres) with an external energy source. They are much more likely to survive humanity than any man made tube.
Remember, monoculture anything is bad...we want planets and your tubes and maybe ocupied deep space comets and other solar systems etc. The more variety the better.
Slashdot Mirror
'Some people might say it doesn't look a day over 6000 years. They're wrong.'"
You NEVER tell a woman she looks older!!!
But my point still stands, going to eBay first is happening less and less. Remember, eBay started when the search engines weren't as good as they are now. With a limited number of auctions it was easier for eBay to provide a good search than yahoo could at the time. Now, google and others can provide searches that are about as good as eBay at fining what you want.
Since the eBay fees go directly to increasing the prices of the items purchased on eBay, unless they can provide a service that offsets the added cost people will shift to cheaper services. Ebay has name recognition now but that won't last long. Soon, probably already happened, eBay will start the downward trend and eventually become more on par with the other online re-sellers.
The last time eBay did a major change to their fee structure, I was a large power seller.
I sold jewelry $15-%50 range. Mainly silver with gemstones, almost no costume. I had a rating of about 9000 and % positive of 99.7. I was netting about 35K a year. My system worked on volume. I would make $0.50 to $1.00 per sale. At that size I ended up sending eBay about $70K a year.
The last time they cahnged their fees they essentially killed my profit margin. Now I could have adjusted at that point and probably survived but at the same time they started using some incredibly poorly written bots. These bots decided I was selling illegale stuff and even though I had exceptional records eBay refused to have a human even look at what the bots were reporting.
After over a year fighting with eBay and holding my last months worth of fees (about 2K) I finally got someone from their collections department to give me some information...I ended up settling the debt for $1600 plus a printout of what the bot was reporting.
To sum up, because eBay did not treat me fairly while at the same time demanding more money from me I have completly left them and they no longer get my $70,000 a year in fees.
While eBay is still huge, Google and other search engines provide independent sellers almost as much visibility so I predict that these sort of heavy handed tactics will only speed eBay's decline from the throne of online reselling services.
Math has two distinct aspects.
First there is math as is relates to physics principles. 1 + 1 must equal 2. In a classical wphysics world there is no getting around that. Arithmetic, Pi, e and a few others are discoverable math principles.
But, second is how we as human beings understand math, this is invented. There is no fundamental reason why calculus is as it was developed. Caculus represents our understanding of math and is an invention of convinience.
Remember, all math COULD be done with basic arithmetic....I just wouldn't want to do it by hand.
Unless of course you created a bank of super capacitors...This picture in the article suggested they were only maybe 1 cm across.
Lets take your 400 miles of charge (100 kw/h) and break it into 1000+ watch battery sized devices.
Sure if one gets pierced it is bad, but a well grounded system will prevent the others from melting while the one goes Ka BOOOOOOM.
Not only that, but I bet it will be cheaper to manufacture them in mass when they are small.
This is ALIENS messing with us as a cosmic joke....
I understand where you are coming from but I have to disagree on several points...
#1 Malthusian perdictions for certain doom in 50-100 years have been around for almost 400 years in the current form and more religious forms before that but it hasn't happened yet because people invent new things or societies to compensate.
#2 There is no reason to expect the entier industrialized world to collapse all at once. While resource limits WILL cause major problems, why would you expect China to fal at the same time as the US or Europe etc. Historically this has not been the case. So while some areas will regress, other areas are likley to maintain modern level technology, by taking the resources from other areas.
#3 Your senario is predicated on the idea that oil will just "run out" which will not be the case. As we are seeing, as demand for oil goes up (because of increased use and or decreased supply) the price goes up which makes it profitable to extract it from less viable fields. But at the same time, the higher oil prices makes it more economically fesable to say purchase solar power for your house along with an electric car...and this increases the demand there which speeds development. Eventually the cost of extracting oil will be higher than a different energy source, say solar with 50% efficiency, cracking CO2 and water into fuel. When that happens you will see an extremly rapid shift to alternate power. The solar falling on the earth is enough to provide for our predicted energy growth for the next few hundred years WITHOUT miracle technolgy.
#4 With current nuclear technology we could support our energy consumption almost indeffinetly. Thorium reactors are extremly safe, create relativly little radioactivity and can even "burn up" highly radioactive waste with nutron bombardment. We can make bio-disel from essentially large ponds at very little cost (almost competitive with oil). There are many other examples we could use.
#4 if society trully collapsed from oil going away, it wouldn't go back to the middle ages, it would go back to about 1750 and quickly advance since many texts will remain. In order to go back farther you would need an active diruption (like nuclear winter type senarios) for more than 50 years (the likley span of 2 generations). Unless you prevent effective education of everyone, society won't fall much past 1750 levels and if you do we will end up in the stone age, hunter-gatherer level.
Now with all this said, you are right, finding a sustainable energy source is important. However we are not at an emergency really and I doubt we will every actually get there. Economics will garuntee that alternatives are developed before we crash.
Wow!!!! Making Helium from water.
Lets hear it for Nano!
By that deffinition please explain how "intelligence" is any different...it is bigger, more complex but still the same general idea.
BTW they never said that fish were "intelligent" only that they could descern 4 from 3.
They are in School!!!
(Yes I know, I know! It is a stupid joke)
Yes as was I until I did a typo ;)
Or in this case TECHNO-color
And I thought we were beyond Technocolor !!!
you will have to start flipping your desktop over every few minutes ;-)
#1 nitrogen isn't actually the limiting factor, iron actually is....they current plans for marine carbon sinking involves sprinkling the surface with rust. While nitrogen is a fertilizer and will cause an algae bloom, you don't have to have an extra source. Most algae have nitrogen fixing bacteria associated with them and will grow more aggressively simply with a higher CO2 level. If you want to help it along, go ahead and fertilize it, but strictly speaking it isn't necessary. Also I would look up you facts. Most growth comes from nutrients swept out to sea from continental sources. There is actually very little growth out in the middle of the ocean. But since the CO2 by itself will cause increase growth, sedimentation and sequestering, it will function very nicely as a regulation loop.
#2 You wax so eloquently about the "free market" but have you ever really described it? You suggest that a free market is internally self supporting. That no government is necessary. That only contracts will be enforced. That you can buy everything you might need. But I am wondering, who would enforce the contract? What would you use for money? The barter system with all it's inefficiencies? The free market as you know it would grind to a halt. Plus, why would I buy something when I could just kill you instead and take it. Without a government there are no repercussions. Plus tell me, where will you buy fresh water? Where will you buy food you know is good? Electricity? Sewers? Drugs? Books for education? The list goes on and on. To be blunt, unless you are a current millionaire you won't be able to afford all of this and your life will be relativly short, painfull and most of all, expensive.
#3 Your scenario...lets go back to your planetoid. The people living there are going to be EXTREMELY energy hungry to maintain the internal environment and do all the manufacturing. Plus they will have a relatively finite amount of materials, especially volatiles for propulsion and attitude control. Therefore it makes excellent sense to locate your planetoid closer in for the increased solar flux. Farther out and you have to expend fuel and other volatiles to get fusion fuel. So since you are closer in your flares DO become a significant problem. They can wipe out your solar cells, your space factories and for days make in impossible to go outside without committing suicide (no power, no resources and no escape). Or say an asteroid...the earth is bombarded by car sized meteors every day. One even half that size would cause huge damage and probably spring a leak. then of course there are all the "minor issues" like your internal "sun" going out and it taking even a week to fix. Much of your crop will be destroyed. How about insects...In a small closed environment it would be extremely difficult to control insects. You can't just evacuate the air, you can't poison them since the will just hide in the mechanics and you can't afford the air to maintain predators for them. One pair of grasshoppers can kill you...All of these are issues planets don't face because of the size and geometry. Again, I am not saying your planetoids are impossible...only that they are Much less stable than planets and will need correspondingly higher energy for maintaining them.
#4 I said you are a fool because you are acting like one. It is very obvious you have no clue how the body works let alone the medical industry. I am trying to educate you about my personal field of expertise if you are interested.
Why do drugs cost so much? Because they are hard to find. Most small molecules are actually poisonous to some extent and very few have medicinal benifits that outweigh the side effects (poison). To find your example, Claritin, the company had to screen about 10,000 chemicals. After this first screening, about 900 were selected for further testing and 10 were picked for animal testing which eliminated all but ethyl 4-(8-chloro-5,6-dihydro-11H-benzo[5,6]cyclohepta[1,2-b]pyridin-11-ylidene) -1-piperidinecarbo
By progressing I mean actual measurable advancement to break even...your parents may be scientists...but I AM one...biology, aids research and shifted into pharma regulatory affairs...I know the tricks scientists play to get funding and I am not counting those. I already stated that the tokamak is probably a dead end fusion wise but is has generated a wide variety of plasma research....the compact florescent light bulbs are a direct result of tokamak research. Fusion wise the Bussard polywell is already within spitting distance of break even. The basic research is done and now all that is left to test is scalability. I estimate a working reactor in 5 years and a full commercial reactor 5 years after that.
I bought a new construction house 18 months ago. New construction is great with the exception of the "debris" left in the ground. I break up reinforced concrete almost every weekend. The trick is you break it in the same direction as the re bar. It takes time but isn't that strenuous. Now true, I use an iron sledge hammer but I could make a wood and stone one with very little effort and accomplish the same thing, just having to replace the heads occasionaly. Also, you are aware that extracting metallic aluminum is THE most energetically intense smelting process? It would be easier to CHEW apart a concrete wall than smelt aluminum from clay.
You need to research geology a bit more. Radio dating the Appalachians indicates that they are about 3.5 Billion years old. The current theories suggest they were formed by the same impact that created the moon and the pacific ocean. It has taken that long for them to weather from Himalaya type mountains to barley mountains at all. The Rocky's won't take quite as long but they will still be here for at least 2 billion years. While some prestressed concrete is stronger than granite, most buildings don't need it so they are built with lower strength and cheaper stuff. But regardless, your argument is extremely flawed. What is easier, digging through several hundred feet of granite or through 6 inches of concrete that MIGHT be slightly stronger than granite.
You are correct, I miss spoke. Metal has been in demand since it was first smelted by accident 2 million years ago. HOWEVER metal was very uncommon until a few hundred years ago and all but the elite made do very successfully with stone age tools. It's only in the last 5-6 hundred years that smelting became common enough for everyone to be able to get metal tools. Even today most people in the world use stone age tools...only in the industrialized nations is this different.
Do remember that until VERY recently the entire worlds oil production was from skimming it off of ponds. Water will get into the wells on it's own even if we don't pump it in and when it does it forces the oil up...either concentrating it into pockets or sometime into it's original location or even all the way to the surface. If we stopped removing the easy oil, the natural redistribution would partially refill the exhausted sites. In fact I seem to remember a Texan oilman returning to a field 50 years after it was closed and getting some meaningful oil out of it. I certainly agree that it won't be as much as originally in the field BUT it will be as easy to get to for a while and then they will be in the same position we will be soon.
Lets see......
:-)
Bussard polywells are actually progressing very well. The tokamac is probably a dead end for fusion but has provided almost monthly advancment in plasma physics and the basic research is helpfull in developing everything from space trusters to florecent light bulbs. Hardly a standfull.
Why don't you take a rock to cement...it breaks farily easily. The rocky mountains are eroding even though they are much harder than most industrial concrete.
Resources beyond wood and stone weren't in much demand except for specialty items until about 500 years ago. Plus it is easy to go back a few hundred years but longer than that is harder to do and takes more of a disaster.
You mentioned the 12th century...that is why I referenced it.
Remember bouency...oil floats on water PLUS rock will actually wick it up given time.
I don't believe they are an absolute truth. I have an MBA and I know what balance sheets mean...it means the best guess by people who are paid the same regardless of the results.
Been fun
You are absolutely right...we need carbon sequestering...how about this:
Increased CO2 encourages the growth of marine algae and it's entire food chain...then about 80% of the carbon is maintained at the surface...the rest sinks to the bottom of the ocean and is sequestered...all by itself! Plus as CO2 dropps the rate of sequestering will drop to achieve a balance...all without worrying about springing a leak.
The solar flare: I was expanding on the numbers you quoted earlier.
I freely admit that I have not run the numbers....however my point is valid even if the specific solar flare scenario is flawed...a "major" disaster will kill off your planetoids unless EVERYTHING goes perfectly. The larger the system the more resilient to these disasters. I can run some numbers for other disasters if you like but my point still stands.
Dispersed government:
People form large governments BECAUSE they provide services small ones can't. Your scenario is all well and good until two planetoids decide they want to kill off a third and take the resources...just because the earth hulk is too far away to bother with. You then have a large war and in the end you have a "Union of Planetoids." Over the next few centuries the UP consolidates power and you have a nice big central government...just as an example.
The AMA and FDA:
How to put this...you are a fool. Both my parents are doctors and my sister started Med school last Fall. I know a dozen doctors that have LEFT the profession BECAUSE of the insurance companies but I have never met one that left because of the AMA. Med schools are actually STRUGGLING to fill the seats...we are running low on doctors because there aren't enough qualified people applying. This may sound elitist but not everyone can be a doctor. It takes high intelligence (about top 1/3 of the population) and a special mentality. It takes 8-12 YEARS of training, the first 4 costing $150K and the last 4-8 you get paid as much as a waiter. You get to do 60-70 hour weeks for years. You get to be on call a third of the year which WILL result in getting woken up at 3 AM. Finally as a direct result of HMO's the prestige and salaries of doctors are dropping fast while frivolous lawsuits are increasing.
My personal job is in Regulatory Affairs. I WRITE the drug applications to the FDA. They are the bane of my existence! They are frustrating to deal with and can be bureaucratically petty...but I would NEVER suggest getting rid of them. The FDA requires extensive studies to approve a drug. But they DON'T require EXCESSIVE studies. The math behind the requirements is actually very reasonable to PROVE what the company is claiming. The reason drugs cost so much is because they are HARD to find. A current NCE (new chemical entity) is estimated at costing 2 BILLION, all of which is payed for by the company upfront. After getting approval by proving that the drug actually does something and is unlikely to kill you, the company has only 7 YEARS to make back everything AND turn a profit. The current estimates that if a company were to provide the same assurances WITHOUT the FDA it would cost 1.85 billion.
Now lets go back to WHY the FDA was created. Look up patent medications. They were suggested for everything and all they were was Morphine. Since medicine is so complex is is realistically impossible to understand enough about drugs to take them safely without a medical degree. The FDA was created to keep companies honest and to provide assurance to patients that they can TRUST the people making the drugs. Both of these provide STRONG motivation to help make drugs NOT discourage them.
Tell me, if you KNEW that there was no way to make money off of it, would you try to invent anything? The FDA and patent office gives a company a CHANCE to make money.
Now as far as insurance, it IS a huge drain on the industry....Just take a look at Bill McGuier's compensation in 2005...$1,600,000,000...THATS 1.6 billion...all of which came out of the consumers p
Still missing a few things....
Fusion, there is no "technological stagnation." The advancement has proceeded apace even though the next larger Tokamac is still under construction. However it looks like the Bussard Polywell system is far more likely and current projects are 200 billion to a functional 10 GW plant. (200 billion is nothing)
Remember what the vast amount of re bar is used for...lattice work in concrete. It is not going to rust until the concrete is weathered away. Not to mention modern steel doesn't rust that quickly and copper, aluminum and other metals don't rust at all. Current projects suggest that buildings will be useful sources of materials for well over 500 years...more than enough time to recover from a collapse.
As far as oil goes...how much petroleum was used in the 12th century? All the demand for oil was created over the last 150 years. Plus the easily accessible oil is "easily accessible" because it is close to the surface. Give it a few hundred years and it will redistribute itself and partially refill those easy areas.
Finally "proven" reserves mean they AREN'T guessing. Proven reserves are used on corporate balance sheets and are independently verified.
Actully whe have more proven reserves now than we did 50 years ago, they are just harder more expensive to tap. We are going to develop a reliable renewable energy source (probably fusion and solar) before we trully "run out."
Plus the mined resources aren't gone...they are in buildings. It would be so much easier to mine a decrepit skyscrapper than a mountain and one building will have more copper, iron and other elements than any pre-industrial society could ever want in one place.
(Sorry to pick on you but your statments are a bit too Malthusian for the facts.)
Actually, fixing global warming on earth is JUST as easy if not easier than any planitoid, it just takes longer. We could "fix" it today simply by cutting emmisions and allowing the system to compensate. In a planitoid you'd have to have active control back and forth forever and one tiny mistake and you blow a seal, lose all your air and die. Assuming the same level of tech necessary for your planitoids, global warming won't be an issue but if you tried to use current tech in a planetoid you would die all but immediatly...remember you must compare apples to apples.
Lets say there is a sudden solar flare which then heats your tube. Easy fix as you say flip the color...all done....but wait one side was damaged by the same flare and didn't switch! You now have a massize temperature differential which creates a small hurricane inside the tube. Even IF you manage to fix it your entier food crop is destroyed and you starve. The real downside of a small environment is no lee way for error.
Actually, people are working on the Sarhara but the equilibrium was push so far that it is now a self supporting system to maintain the desert. This is exactly what can happen to any system but it is MUCH easier for smaller systems to start self supporting in a way you don't want.
As far as land goes, remember my last point...the Civil war was fought with an almost empty Louisiana next door. It would have been very easy to pick up and move if they wanted to but instead they decided to fight for their homes and try and take their land with them...why do you think space people will be any less stupid? Remember compare apples to apples.
My point on the fudeal system is completly supported by your comments. The feudal system grew out of a pure capitalism left at thte fall of the Roman Empier. Capitalism left to itself creates feudal systems. It is only with a minimal level of government regulation and a garunteed subsistance living regardless of work environment that capitalism can flourish.
Also remember that the USSR was not actually socialism. It was a militarily enforced central planning system. It failed because people were afraid to report production and consumption number accuratly..NOT because it had socialist ideals.
True socialism means there is no government. I use only what I NEED and give the rest to anyone who lacks. True socialism actually works EXTREMLY well...for one generation. In fact I would be willing to bet that the first planetoid will actually be pure socialist just because it is easier to set up in extreme conditions. Once a new generation is in control, one that didn't buy into the system beforehand, socialism breaks down.
As far as protecting the lazy, I both agree and disagree. You are absolutly right that the lazy are protected under limited socialism. But at the same time I am protected as well. I just filed my taxes for last year. I grossed in excess of $120,000. My wife is a civilian aueronautical engineer for the air force and I work for the pharmaceutical industry developing drugs. We are mid 20's and our future is extremly bright...however I also know that one serious injury to either of us and it could derail everything...especially if it is in the next few years before we can develop real savings. Social security is deffinetly worth the investment to protect against catastrope. So long as it is very painfull to live off of it, I have no problem with it.
I am in the healthcare industry and I can tell you for an absolute fact that private health insurance is WHY health costs are so much. Private, capitalist, health insurance takes anywhere from 20-30% for profits and advertising and uses 5% for administrative. Medicare uses 6% for administrative and 0% for profits and advertising...plus I view basic universal healthcare as a national security issue...the best defence against modern terrorist warefare is a health population. Canada certainly has isues but the general health of the population is equal and you pay half as much...t
Compared to a even mouse, an octopus is rather dim. Compared to all other non-mammalian marine life and many reptiles, yes Octopi are rather bright, but it is still a low bar.
As far as bouancy goes, with brains it isn't really size that matters, it's energy. We are significantly smarter than a Sperm Whale but a Sperm whales brain weighs more than our entier body. It is more about energy usage than size. Again that mouse is smarter because it can use the free energy it has to think much more effectivly than you octopus.
As far as tool use, I am personally less concerned. This is mainly due to the fact that once you acheive reasonable intelligence you can figure out / discover how to make better tools. But if you are non-sentient you can't "figure out" how to be sentient.
In the end we must remember that intelligence is actually almost always an evolutionary dead-end. It takes a huge amount of energy and time to develop and most species can do fine with significantly less.
#1 Never said it was impossible...only very difficult to maintain.
#2 A cycle DOES care how large it is. The larger, more complex the cycle the more places there are for slack in the system, the more complex it is the more control points you have and the larger the volume the more time you have to fix it before it starts reinforcing itself.
#3 In a larger system the materials and energy reuierments wouldn't be nearly as stringent and the system could have compensated before it crashed.
#4 Please site a reference for you comment on chaos theory. Everything I read suggests a very strong predictaive value (everything from projecting battery life to environmental effects)
#5 Exactly, I mean exactly like earth. Humans have had a reckless abandon for the care of the planet for well over 10,000 years. For example, before humans got there, the Saraha was about the size of New Hampshire...but with our greed and goats we over the last few thousand years finally got beyond the lands ability to recouperate and thus the current dessert formed quickly. If it wasn't for the self supporting and very large system of the earth, we would have made the planet unihabitable eons ago.
If it weren't for the size of the planet there would be no possible way we could see the change and fix it before the planet turned into an oven. As an example of how fast things can change read up on the precambrian explosion. The current geological evidence suggests that the earth's surface competly froze which locked away the biosphere to undersea volcanoes etc then drove the global temperature below -50 C. After a few 10's of thousands of years enough CO2 from volcanoes and dust and others caused a massive greenhouse effect which melted the ice and increased the global temperature by over 100 deg C in as little as 50 (thats fifty) years. After the biosphere was releaseed it was able to accomidate to the changes and tamp down the extremes.
#6 I was referencing the size quoted in the original comment. But as I already proved, smaller will be less stable, harder to maintain and more prone to accidents.
#7 Countries are actually VERY easy to leave. I can leave this country today if I want. The issue is taking the land with you. Once all the planets have been made into the cylinders, don't you think someone will object to one group trying to split one up? Remeber the Civil war was fought with a huge unexplored and availible bit of land nextdoor but they decided to fight over their current homes instead.
#8 Do you really beleive socialism is the route of all evil? Take a look at the Gilded age in the US... Take a look at the feudal system... All of one system NEVER works. We need a balanced system of capitalism to create the energy and vitality, socialism to protect the weak and the occasional dictatorship to keep things dynamic. If biology and evolution has taught us anything it is that thoes who fail to adapt will perish.
The break even problem hasen't generally been true for almost 20 years.
All consumer grade solar cells easily produce more power than they use.
Only the super high efficiency 40+% cells used by NASA and the like are even close to using as much energy to create as they will generate. This is do not just to the manufacturing techniques but to the harsh, highly radioactive environment they are in which decreases the life expectancy of the cell.
On first blush your theory is sound however you forgot one major things...
STABILITY
Chaos theory (as proven by the biodome) dictates that the larger the system the more stable. A small world will be subject to remarkable swings which would rapidly lead to every single one being unihabitable without constant educated human intervention.
Next the real estate you are describing per cylinder is larger than most countries. The US is remarkably stable but even we had a civil war within 100 years of formation not to mention wars with other countries. Any disruption in the societies ability to maintain the system will result in the cylinder dying very quickly.
Personally I think they are a great idea for asteroids etc but not for the planets. Planets are remarkably stable (even mars and venus once teraformed would be fairly stable) since they are point masses (spheres) with an external energy source. They are much more likely to survive humanity than any man made tube.
Remember, monoculture anything is bad...we want planets and your tubes and maybe ocupied deep space comets and other solar systems etc. The more variety the better.