Recycling is NOT always profitable.Yes, most anything can be recycled. The problem is the energy cost. Some recycling setups actually burn more energy than making the product new.
You're confusing cost profit with energy economy just like the original poster. Just because something is not profitable to recycle because it's easier to acquire new resources rather than re-using existing ones, doesn't mean that it takes less energy to make a product out of new rather than recycled resources.
If every product cost as much as it should to make the manufacture of said product sustainable, then the number of products that would actually be economical made from new resources than recycled resources would be so small that it's safe to say that recycling would always be cheaper. I admit that some products would cost more, like say recycling spent nuclear reactor fuel rods or something, but that's an incredibly small fraction of all products in use today.
Proper accounting should be done on a basis that makes every activity sustainable. If it's not sustainable, then it should not be profitable which is just the opposite for the majority of products today.
I'm confused.. I thought recycling was supposed to save energy and reduce costs
You're confused because you believe something which is not true, namely:
if you operate under the assumption, as I do, that cost is a reasonable proxy for resources consumed
In a perfect world where all costs are properly accounted, recycling would be profitable and end users would be turning in their goods to recoup the cost tied up in no longer useful items. However, one of the reasons we get our copper from Chile is so that we can avoid proper cost of mining it. We're essentially disintermediating the proper environmental, social and labor costs that copper mining in the US would incur. In this sense, we get the copper whithout the side effects of not paying those costs. The Chileans will, eventually. Some corporations and local governments stateside have actaully come to the conclusion that it's actually cheaper to do this stuff abroad than deal with these problems over the long term at home. The hard rock mining industry is a premier example of this and because computers require so many rare earth resources and energy to produce, they're essentially a huge black market of hidden costs that somebody somewhere is stuck with.
Item deposits are not a great way to deal with this problem, but they are one way of dealing with them. The great side effect is that you get the underprivilaged to tidy up the place as they scour your neighborhood for dumped deposit items.
Before you get all huffy at the last remark, please note that it was in the vein of The Onion's story about increasing the bottle deposit to aid the indigent.
There's a clear reason for this newfound collaboration: The bad guys are winning.
While law enforcement was busy playing with their high tech toys chasing small fry, the real criminals continue to get away. Does anybody even care about the whereabouts of Kenny Boy?
What good is my identity if I can't safely participate in capital ownership?
Please help encourage this company to stop wasting taxpayer's money and encourage innovation instead of preventing it.
Take a look at the patent office price list. Those aren't exactly bargain prices and the patent office has the habit of routinely rejecting first time applications so that they can charge more for extensions, re-submission, clause additions, etc. Basically, they're raking in the money for the public. Unfortunately, the patent office is seen as a cash cow and milked appropriately by the federal government. It is not exactly clear to me whether litigation over some patents costs more than the all the fees that the patent office collects from every patent issued. Has anyone seen any cost/benefit data with respect to frivolous patents and how much they end up costing the justice system? Never mind that lawyers benefit thrice as much every time they can get the law to create twice as much paperwork.
I don't object to improving the system, but this particular statement seems baseless.
The next Fleming could be working on phage therapy right now.
Also, on a personal note, I tested positive for the Mantoux TB skin test as part of my college health requirements in the US because I grew up in an Eastern European country where I had a TB vaccine administered as a child. As the referenced article states:
Today is the most fortuitous time ever realized to develop effective TB vaccines.
Think a car from the 70's got 30 miles to the gallon? I don't think so.
There are two that immediately come to mind, the Toyota Corolla and the VW Beetle. Both were getting that kind of mileage in the 60's. The model T Ford got in the mid 20's fuel economy at the turn of the twentieth century which is about the kind of mileage vehicles get today, almost a hundred years later.
Give a factory a chance to buy a piece of equipment that is 1% more electrically efficient when they are replacing old equipment and they will. As long as they will save more money in the efficiency than the equipment costs over the life of the equipment (20 years or more in many cases).
You obviously don't work in manufacturing. First of all, equipment acquisition cost is accounted for during the depreciation period. I have never heard of depreciation periods longer than 15 years for manufacturing equipment. It's usually in the 5-10 year range depending on industry. Second, energy costs for most manufacturing equipment are pretty low compared to cost of maintenance and consumables. Metal smelters are the only exception that immediately come to mind, but even for energy intensive applications like semiconductor furnaces, energy cost is not an issue. Finally, costs associated with product quality, production scheduling and safety are also much more significant than energy costs.
The kind of analysis you are talking about when acquiring new equipment or replacing old equipment is simply not being done by all but the very most energy intensive industries.
Genesis Principal Investigator and Lead Scientist Dr. Don Burnett examines material recovered from the Genesis impact site.
The operative words there are "lead scientist" which means that this is a photo op with some crap on a petri dish. The real work is being done behind the scenes by NASA's umpa lumpa's.
If such a species had already evolved, and FTL was available to it, we would be a sitting duck (assuming that we had desirable resources).
FTL would no doubt take a lot of energy. Any species that developed such an energy source would have no use for our resources. Because humans routinely fight for resources we automatically assume that aliens are anthropomorphic.
As it stands, there is a great deal of time that must pass for such a species to reach us (hopefully).
There is quite a bit of evidence that this has already happened.
In a truly capitalist system producers need to adjust to the needs and wishes of consumers all the time in order to fulfill their own needs and wishes.
That's a nice way to frame the issue, by using, "In a truly capitalist system" because then any example I give to the contrary can simply be refuted with, well that's not a "truly capitalist system". It's kind of like Communists pushing how things should work on people when milions experienced differently. The problem is that the free market is quite elusive but apparently the more free it gets the less it tends to work the miracles it is supposed to work. So we are left to believe that there is some threshold at which point everything will reverse and start working well again. Kind of a "can't get there from here" situation.
Unfettered capitalism failed at the beginning of the 20th century spawning a world wide labor movement that eventually resulted in radical authoritarian states which called themselves communist. Nations that continued with capitalism did so with band-aids to make the system work, like the Bretton Woods agreement, Keynesianism and new financial legal frameworks. Austrian economists dream of fairy tales while at the same time making themselves useful to powerful people and institutions that stand to enrich themselves from the promotion of its policies.
Where did that come from? What gave you the idea that I think "the government" has the solution?
People who want to 'tailor the modes of production' usually do.
But earlier you said that capitalism sounds like tailoring to you but you don't think that's a government solution, so you either think differently now or you contradicted yourself because it can't be both a stand alone solution and one that requires government intervention at the same time.
You seem to be trapped in a pretty small box yourself.
You seem to think that about anyone who doesn't agree with you.
Are you making this judgement simply because i applied the statement to you or have you read all of my posts to arrive at that conclusion? The former has a statistical significance of being based on a single data point while the latter is simply an incorrect conclusion.
I invite you to email me with further discussion as this is getting off topic.
The Mises Institute goes out of its way to convince people that "modes of production can be tailored to our needs".
As long as they are capitalist. How is that tailoring?
The difference between them and you is that they think that the free market is the solution, while you apparantly think government is.
Where did that come from? What gave you the idea that I think "the government" has the solution? Which government would that be? There was no government on the freakin' island.
Or is that just a standard line because anyone holding views opposing the Mises Institute must be for greater authoritarianism. I could be an Anarchist for all you know.
You seem to be trapped in a pretty small box yourself.
Very good post and if i had any mod points, i'd keep my nose out of this discussion and shower you with them. As it is, i have this to add.
One of the problems in this article is stated in,
"The government paper in Howell's suitcases, on the other hand, is easy to transport, hard to counterfeit, lighter than gold, and whatever amount of it the millionaire managed to bring with him is the amount there's going to be for a while."
but not discussed. That is that the other castaways do not know just how much money Howell brought. Therefore, it might as well be an inexhaustible supply as far as they're concerned. So that's the catch. Howell's currency is only good if they trust that Howell has revealed all that he has brought. Otherwise, it is inflationary until Howell runs out but since nobody really knows when he's run out it might as well be inflationary indefinitely. The article is incorrectly assuming that all parties have complete information about the money supply which is not the case. Howell's not rich because he's a sucker.
The problem with the Mises Intstitute is that in their valorization of a capitalist economy they forego thinking outside the box. A system barely suitable for largely urbanized populations in complex industrialized societies with global economies may not necessarily apply to a small group stranded on an island. But the Mises Institute wouldn't want to hint at the fact that modes of production can be tailored to our needs because of the undesirable possibility of arriving at a system other than capitalism.
You have any other ways to get, say, to Europe and back in a reasonable amount of time..?
Yeah, that would be in an airplane and unlike flying cars, airplanes are already available to everyone who can afford a ticket.
Besides, the definition of "reasonable amount of time" seems to be constantly changing. If the average person had 6 weeks off every year, then it would be perfectly reasonable to get to Europe and back on a boat.
I hate to disagree, but that is not what Nobel organization says. They claim Marconi's radio patents were the first in the world.
What do you expect them to say? "Although Tesla invented the radio, we granted Marconi the prize" ???? How would presenting facts, which contradict the Nobel Foundation, benefit them? That's like Sarnoff coming out and detailing how they ripped off Farnsworth for all of his television technology. It's not going to happen. Therefore, these are biased sources of information on these topics.
The reason I believe Tesla was responsible for the radio is that there is a preponderence of evidence in his favor and records related to other technologies support this view. Like the fact that he showcased a remote control boat in 1898, when Marconi was just patenting his technology in England. Tesla's public radio demonstration in St. Louis was performed in 1893 about a year before Marconi is credited for inventing his spark gap transmitter. Besides, Marconi's invention would have been limited to signal communications rather than voice without the use of Tesla's technology.
The article teases about how the public can benefit:
James Snider at the New America Foundation, a think-tank in Washington, DC, estimates that America's airwaves would have been worth $771 billion in 2001 (when he last did the sums) if every licensee were to use his bandwidth for the service in most demand by the public.
but fails to show how any of this value could be captured? Is this because of who would actually benefit by the proposal?
Michael Powell, the FCC's chairman, has said that he would like to see himself more as a speed cop than as a real-estate agent, and makes clear his penchant for unlicensed bands.
Here it appears that a public resource would be given away for free much like the current road system, but the problem of course is that the public would still pay to regulate a scheme that generates no revenue. Would "speeding tickets" generate the revenue to cover regulation? Would the fed's general fund be used? Who and how would this system pay for it is the bigger question. It sounds like somebody's trying to get something for nothing. Not that that hasn't been tried before, it's just that the public is usually on the losing end of such bargains.
State AG's are quoted in the article on p2p.net as saying:
(P2P) software 'has too many times been hijacked by those who use it for illegal purposes to which the vast majority of our consumers do not wish to be exposed.'
Do the same AG's also have legistlation pending against firearm manufacturers because that right is thinly protected by the second amendment while p2p could claim the protection of both the first and fourth.
I was referring to people learning the difference between websites despite the similarity between their addresses. No suggestion that other whitehouse websites infringe was intended although had lasermonks trademarked their name, lazermonks would clearly be in violation.
If Fallwell.com was merely an attempt to capitalize on spelling errors, then this is not different than for me to register Mircosoft as a platform for me to promote non-Microsoft software.
So if I have a business at 12100 Main St. and have been in business for years so that people know the place very well, then does that give me the right to evict businesses from 12110 Main St. because they criticize my business? The web address is just that. Fallwell.com is next door to Falwell.com but that doesn't give some judge the right to assume that everyone typing Fallwell.com into their browser actually meant to type Falwell.com.
The deciding factor in this case was that the Fallwell.com website clearly identified that they had nothing to do with Falwell ministries. Even google's summary stated this and the disclaimer leads to Falwell.com in case you actually got lost and were searching around for your Reagan Tribute video. That's more than can be said for lazermonks which blatantly mooches business from the actual lasermonks
If this were merely a parody or disenting view website I'd think that it should fall under free-speech guidelines. But the guy had links to Amazon for a book he published.
So it's protected free speech if you publish it out of pocket but loses its protection if you find a way to finance it? That upholds the notion that freedom of the press is only for those who own one. In a society so dominated by capital, if you are unable to raise money for your opinion then you're effectively censured.
You lost me with the "less profit --> fewer jobs" link.
The unemployment rate is not tied to capital efficiency. As a matter of fact, highly efficient capital often requires little labor since low labor costs make it more efficient than a similar investment with high labor costs. Think of investments in art or realestate.
High profits, unless consciously distributed across all classes, tend to aggregate wealth at the top where disposable income is high. This means that this capital will be invested rather than spent which will tend to lower the employment rate in an economy. Hence, capital aggregated through high profits will actually drive the unemployment rate up!
Slashdot Mirror
If every product cost as much as it should to make the manufacture of said product sustainable, then the number of products that would actually be economical made from new resources than recycled resources would be so small that it's safe to say that recycling would always be cheaper. I admit that some products would cost more, like say recycling spent nuclear reactor fuel rods or something, but that's an incredibly small fraction of all products in use today.
Proper accounting should be done on a basis that makes every activity sustainable. If it's not sustainable, then it should not be profitable which is just the opposite for the majority of products today.
You're confused because you believe something which is not true, namely:
In a perfect world where all costs are properly accounted, recycling would be profitable and end users would be turning in their goods to recoup the cost tied up in no longer useful items. However, one of the reasons we get our copper from Chile is so that we can avoid proper cost of mining it. We're essentially disintermediating the proper environmental, social and labor costs that copper mining in the US would incur. In this sense, we get the copper whithout the side effects of not paying those costs. The Chileans will, eventually. Some corporations and local governments stateside have actaully come to the conclusion that it's actually cheaper to do this stuff abroad than deal with these problems over the long term at home. The hard rock mining industry is a premier example of this and because computers require so many rare earth resources and energy to produce, they're essentially a huge black market of hidden costs that somebody somewhere is stuck with.
Item deposits are not a great way to deal with this problem, but they are one way of dealing with them. The great side effect is that you get the underprivilaged to tidy up the place as they scour your neighborhood for dumped deposit items.
Before you get all huffy at the last remark, please note that it was in the vein of The Onion's story about increasing the bottle deposit to aid the indigent.
While law enforcement was busy playing with their high tech toys chasing small fry, the real criminals continue to get away. Does anybody even care about the whereabouts of Kenny Boy?
What good is my identity if I can't safely participate in capital ownership?
Could this be the start of a national subsidy to the Software and IT industries ala aerospace and agribusiness?
Also, on a personal note, I tested positive for the Mantoux TB skin test as part of my college health requirements in the US because I grew up in an Eastern European country where I had a TB vaccine administered as a child. As the referenced article states:
The kind of analysis you are talking about when acquiring new equipment or replacing old equipment is simply not being done by all but the very most energy intensive industries.
This is hilarious. Where are the points?
Unfettered capitalism failed at the beginning of the 20th century spawning a world wide labor movement that eventually resulted in radical authoritarian states which called themselves communist. Nations that continued with capitalism did so with band-aids to make the system work, like the Bretton Woods agreement, Keynesianism and new financial legal frameworks. Austrian economists dream of fairy tales while at the same time making themselves useful to powerful people and institutions that stand to enrich themselves from the promotion of its policies.
But earlier you said that capitalism sounds like tailoring to you but you don't think that's a government solution, so you either think differently now or you contradicted yourself because it can't be both a stand alone solution and one that requires government intervention at the same time. Are you making this judgement simply because i applied the statement to you or have you read all of my posts to arrive at that conclusion? The former has a statistical significance of being based on a single data point while the latter is simply an incorrect conclusion.I invite you to email me with further discussion as this is getting off topic.
Or is that just a standard line because anyone holding views opposing the Mises Institute must be for greater authoritarianism. I could be an Anarchist for all you know.
You seem to be trapped in a pretty small box yourself.
One of the problems in this article is stated in,
but not discussed. That is that the other castaways do not know just how much money Howell brought. Therefore, it might as well be an inexhaustible supply as far as they're concerned. So that's the catch. Howell's currency is only good if they trust that Howell has revealed all that he has brought. Otherwise, it is inflationary until Howell runs out but since nobody really knows when he's run out it might as well be inflationary indefinitely. The article is incorrectly assuming that all parties have complete information about the money supply which is not the case. Howell's not rich because he's a sucker.The problem with the Mises Intstitute is that in their valorization of a capitalist economy they forego thinking outside the box. A system barely suitable for largely urbanized populations in complex industrialized societies with global economies may not necessarily apply to a small group stranded on an island. But the Mises Institute wouldn't want to hint at the fact that modes of production can be tailored to our needs because of the undesirable possibility of arriving at a system other than capitalism.
Besides, the definition of "reasonable amount of time" seems to be constantly changing. If the average person had 6 weeks off every year, then it would be perfectly reasonable to get to Europe and back on a boat.
The reason I believe Tesla was responsible for the radio is that there is a preponderence of evidence in his favor and records related to other technologies support this view. Like the fact that he showcased a remote control boat in 1898, when Marconi was just patenting his technology in England. Tesla's public radio demonstration in St. Louis was performed in 1893 about a year before Marconi is credited for inventing his spark gap transmitter. Besides, Marconi's invention would have been limited to signal communications rather than voice without the use of Tesla's technology.
Yeah, that's old school. Nextel and Verizon already do the same here in the US, but what is proposed is a spectrum commons. How do you auction that?
The part where Tesla invents it in 1893 and Marconi builds it in 1897.
http://www.mercury.gr/tesla/marcen.html
http://www.tfcbooks.com/articles/tws8a.htm
I was referring to people learning the difference between websites despite the similarity between their addresses. No suggestion that other whitehouse websites infringe was intended although had lasermonks trademarked their name, lazermonks would clearly be in violation.
The deciding factor in this case was that the Fallwell.com website clearly identified that they had nothing to do with Falwell ministries. Even google's summary stated this and the disclaimer leads to Falwell.com in case you actually got lost and were searching around for your Reagan Tribute video. That's more than can be said for lazermonks which blatantly mooches business from the actual lasermonks
I thought people learned this lesson years ago with whitehouse.com, whitehouse.org, and whitehouse.gov.
The unemployment rate is not tied to capital efficiency. As a matter of fact, highly efficient capital often requires little labor since low labor costs make it more efficient than a similar investment with high labor costs. Think of investments in art or realestate.
High profits, unless consciously distributed across all classes, tend to aggregate wealth at the top where disposable income is high. This means that this capital will be invested rather than spent which will tend to lower the employment rate in an economy. Hence, capital aggregated through high profits will actually drive the unemployment rate up!