They're talking about mining the uranium (using, no doubt, fossil fuels). Notice how they conveniently didn't consider the pollution generated from the construction of said wind and solar power-plants. Very clever.
Doesn't that imply some kind of index will be used to quantitatively compare these wildly different solutions? I don't see that here. It seems more that some have certain benefits and others have different benefits, and he has given preference the the benefits he thinks are most important.
For one thing, he hasn't considered cost at all. That seems . . . important.
Another thing he barely considered was reliability. His claim that studies have shown that variability in availability can be overcome by having a versatile energy distribution system is really a bunch of hand-waving. It is almost certainly not true.
Judgment is human nature. People who keep secrets for fear of judgment are trying to lie to themselves. There's nothing I can do about that.
However, people who keep secrets for fear of sanctions or penalties would not keep them if we held a more reasonable view on punishment.
In my opinion a punitive legal system does not make sense. If someone does not know they are doing wrong, you only have to tell them and they will stop. If someone does know, but does it anyway, punishing them is not likely to stop them. Please do not talk to me about children or animals, or the mentally infirm. I am talking about rational, thinking adults.
We should only put people in jail if we have judged that they are a credible threat to society and the costs of imprisoning them are worth the benefits of removing them from general society. This process should not be considered remedial to the offender. That means that there should be no set length for prison terms. Criminals should be held there until they are no longer a treat to society. Criminals should not be given warnings, or threats, those things only encourage people to hide their actions and embitter them against us.
You give people anonymity "rights" by criminalizing disclosure. That doesn't make sense. You shouldn't have to take away freedom from others to create your own "rights".
This nonsense is getting to the point where rights aren't even a good thing anymore. By that I mean claiming that people have the "right" to be given health care, or the "right" not to be discriminated against, or the "right" to be married. Any right that grants benefits entitlements is not good.
I currently use Time-Warner cable, before that I had COX and before that I had Verison. None of these providers required me to have a land-line/cable/anything else.
Freedom can still work in cases of digital works. People will take action to get things they need. If no one produced music because there was no money in it, people who want music will find someone to give money to who will produce the music.
People like to say this won't work, but many people buy music and video in iTunes which are freely available elsewhere on the internet. It has also been demonstrated that advertisers will pay artists (television and radio have survived on this fact alone for decades).
A music tax is completely out of the question, because not everyone wants or feels they need music. Only people who are willing to pay for music should pay for it. Then again, I feel that way about all so-called public goods.
I personally know people who work as engineers and programmers who did not complete college. I think it is likely there are actually developers on those projects who didn't either.
You don't learn much from others in your field while you are in college, because for the most part you will interact with students who are right out of high-school and haven't worked, and professors who work in academia. There are some students and professors who have industry experience, but most do not.
The best way to be successful in your field is hard work. That doesn't mean working 16 hours a day. That means being willing to take initiative and to ask for help when you need it.
How about Thomas Edison? Also, neither Steve Jobs nor Bill Gates actually graduated college.
I'm advising people to stay away from college because it's a waste of time. It's not bad advise. If no one went to college we'd all be better off. It's just a game we all play that does nothing to benefit any of us, but wastes a lot of time and money in the process. It's all about getting an advantage over your peers, and it has almost nothing to with learning and growing.
When I was in college the single girl in my gradating class (she graduated at the top too) said she would make no effort to learn the material, since you learn everything on the job anyway. I told her she was crazy, because that would mean we were all just pissing away time and spending money for nothing. She was right. It's a game. You can play it if you want to, but it won't ever get you what you really want, and playing it hurts everybody.
The government touches everything. You can't just say that anything that ever received any type of government funding (or anything created by someone who attended a university) at all was created by the government. The mere fact that the government ever spent a single dollar would mean that the government created everything in your world. That's not a reasonable approach.
None of the things I listed were the result of a government program intended to bring about their creation. So you can't reasonably say they were created by the government.
"You would not have any modern commercial airframes today without government subsidy, period. It takes an incredible amount of money and time and man hours to perfect jet engines and subsonic flight, money that no private company would dare spend without being a welfare client of a state."
You simply can not prove that. The government consumes an enormous amount of resources (nearly 1/3 today, even more during WW2) who knows how those would be expended if the government didn't spend them. Again, the particular airframes I mentioned were not developed for military purposes. That is what I meant.
"I did not attend college"
I did. So I do have some idea what I'm talking about when I say it's not that great.
"I believe a good education in the basics of your field are essential in addition to apprenticeship."
I believe a good education is important too. But I don't see what that has to do with college. . .
So people are compelled to pay for schools that may or may not work? I don't want to throw my money away, much less use it to send children to schools which are actually damaging to them.
"You honestly think that every single person who went through the public school system is no better off than if they had received no education at all?"
Yes.
"The public university was by far the most useful of the three."
That has nothing to do with it being public, and everything to do with it being a university. Do you think it was worth all the time and money you spent? I spend 5 1/2 years earning my degree, and came out with $14,000 in student loans. Now I am earning $70,000/year doing a job that I was fully capable of (but not fully qualified? how does that work?) before I went to school. I'd rather have skipped the school step.
I'm sorry. I also attended private school (through the 6th grade), and I had a similar experience. The reason I single out public school is because of it's compulsory and publicity funded nature.
Private schools do teach you more effectively, but they generally do so by trying to crush your will. Assholes.
It would be wrong to assume that in the absence of public schools, you would fail to interact with adults. Of course, most of my positive role-models came from the BSA, and I am thankful for that. Only a couple of my teachers helped me (and they were a big help) but those people would be working with kids anyway.
And the public school system burns these well-meaning people out very quickly, because they are there to help people and make a difference, but the school bureaucracy and teachers unions and administration and parent groups get in the way and make it (mostly) impossible.
What I should have said is the institution of public school never helped anybody. You can still have a positive experience in public school, as long as the school doesn't get in the way.
There are lots of important techs that were developed without government funds. The steam engine, the internal combustion engine, iron, steel, powered flight, guns, electric power transmission, the light bulb, most modern materials, most modern advances in computer hardware and software. . . That's just off the top of my head, I'm sure there's a lot more.
And furthermore, just because technologies were developed with government money doesn't mean they couldn't have been developed with different funding. Also, I can't think of a single major commercial airframe in use today that was originally designed for military use (not so say there isn't one, but certainly none of the Boeing 7X7 lines or the airbus A3X0 lines were).
Meeting people and getting your foot in the door does not require an education. You can meet people in the field. Degrees serve primarily as a barrier to entry, since employers use them to weed out potential candidates. You will not be prepared for your job by your degree, and you will likely use less than 10% of what you learn (much less what you crammed before the test and promptly forgot afterward). There are much better ways to spend four years of your life.
If he just want's to throw it all away, I would suggest buying each American a sports car, at least then we could have fun while we're pissing away everything we have.
Public school never helped anybody. Am I the only one who noticed that? I guess Obama wouldn't know, since he never attended public school.
"Mr. CEO of company doesn't particularly like people? Well, then restrict selling of one's products to them."
Sounds reasonable. If I make guns, and my reseller is selling them to terrorists, and I don't like terrorists, I should not sell to that reseller anymore.
Why should I be compelled by law to sell to anyone if I don't want to?
"Sorry, commerce is supposed to be blind."
Blind commerce is as stupid as blind justice. People aren't blind, so nothing we do is either. And since I don't think we "should" be blind, I don't think it makes sense to say that these things should be blind.
Don't pass a bunch or oppressive laws to try to fix it.
Manufacturers should be able to chose who they are going to sell their product to wholesale. If they want to fix their prices by refusing to sell to people who advertise below they price they've outlined, that's their business and the government should stay out of it.
The only alternative is writing laws to determine who I can sell goods to, and under what circumstances. That's a huge blow to freedom, and yet another step to building a large oppressive government.
I don't own a gun, but I probably will someday. I enjoy shooting firearms (especially skeet-shooting). I don't think there's anything psychosexual about it. Saying that a "normal person" has no business owning a gun is the same as saying a "normal person" has no business owning a guitar. Just because it isn't how you make your living doesn't mean you have no business doing it.
I also wouldn't say that hunting is the same as murder, and I'd certainly hope that you are a vegetarian if you are making that claim, since eating meat would be just the same as killing the animal. I've never actually murdered anyone, so I can't say for sure that the experience is different, but I think it probably is.
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That's not what the author said. . .
They're talking about mining the uranium (using, no doubt, fossil fuels). Notice how they conveniently didn't consider the pollution generated from the construction of said wind and solar power-plants. Very clever.
Doesn't that imply some kind of index will be used to quantitatively compare these wildly different solutions? I don't see that here. It seems more that some have certain benefits and others have different benefits, and he has given preference the the benefits he thinks are most important.
For one thing, he hasn't considered cost at all. That seems . . . important.
Another thing he barely considered was reliability. His claim that studies have shown that variability in availability can be overcome by having a versatile energy distribution system is really a bunch of hand-waving. It is almost certainly not true.
Judgment is human nature. People who keep secrets for fear of judgment are trying to lie to themselves. There's nothing I can do about that.
However, people who keep secrets for fear of sanctions or penalties would not keep them if we held a more reasonable view on punishment.
In my opinion a punitive legal system does not make sense. If someone does not know they are doing wrong, you only have to tell them and they will stop. If someone does know, but does it anyway, punishing them is not likely to stop them. Please do not talk to me about children or animals, or the mentally infirm. I am talking about rational, thinking adults.
We should only put people in jail if we have judged that they are a credible threat to society and the costs of imprisoning them are worth the benefits of removing them from general society. This process should not be considered remedial to the offender. That means that there should be no set length for prison terms. Criminals should be held there until they are no longer a treat to society. Criminals should not be given warnings, or threats, those things only encourage people to hide their actions and embitter them against us.
You give people anonymity "rights" by criminalizing disclosure. That doesn't make sense. You shouldn't have to take away freedom from others to create your own "rights".
This nonsense is getting to the point where rights aren't even a good thing anymore. By that I mean claiming that people have the "right" to be given health care, or the "right" not to be discriminated against, or the "right" to be married. Any right that grants benefits entitlements is not good.
I spelled Verizon wrong.
I currently use Time-Warner cable, before that I had COX and before that I had Verison. None of these providers required me to have a land-line/cable/anything else.
Freedom can still work in cases of digital works. People will take action to get things they need. If no one produced music because there was no money in it, people who want music will find someone to give money to who will produce the music.
People like to say this won't work, but many people buy music and video in iTunes which are freely available elsewhere on the internet. It has also been demonstrated that advertisers will pay artists (television and radio have survived on this fact alone for decades).
A music tax is completely out of the question, because not everyone wants or feels they need music. Only people who are willing to pay for music should pay for it. Then again, I feel that way about all so-called public goods.
I personally know people who work as engineers and programmers who did not complete college. I think it is likely there are actually developers on those projects who didn't either.
You don't learn much from others in your field while you are in college, because for the most part you will interact with students who are right out of high-school and haven't worked, and professors who work in academia. There are some students and professors who have industry experience, but most do not.
The best way to be successful in your field is hard work. That doesn't mean working 16 hours a day. That means being willing to take initiative and to ask for help when you need it.
How about Thomas Edison? Also, neither Steve Jobs nor Bill Gates actually graduated college.
I'm advising people to stay away from college because it's a waste of time. It's not bad advise. If no one went to college we'd all be better off. It's just a game we all play that does nothing to benefit any of us, but wastes a lot of time and money in the process. It's all about getting an advantage over your peers, and it has almost nothing to with learning and growing.
When I was in college the single girl in my gradating class (she graduated at the top too) said she would make no effort to learn the material, since you learn everything on the job anyway. I told her she was crazy, because that would mean we were all just pissing away time and spending money for nothing. She was right. It's a game. You can play it if you want to, but it won't ever get you what you really want, and playing it hurts everybody.
I was talking about K-12, but a lot of the same problems apply to universities.
The government touches everything. You can't just say that anything that ever received any type of government funding (or anything created by someone who attended a university) at all was created by the government. The mere fact that the government ever spent a single dollar would mean that the government created everything in your world. That's not a reasonable approach.
None of the things I listed were the result of a government program intended to bring about their creation. So you can't reasonably say they were created by the government.
"You would not have any modern commercial airframes today without government subsidy, period. It takes an incredible amount of money and time and man hours to perfect jet engines and subsonic flight, money that no private company would dare spend without being a welfare client of a state."
You simply can not prove that. The government consumes an enormous amount of resources (nearly 1/3 today, even more during WW2) who knows how those would be expended if the government didn't spend them. Again, the particular airframes I mentioned were not developed for military purposes. That is what I meant.
"I did not attend college"
I did. So I do have some idea what I'm talking about when I say it's not that great.
"I believe a good education in the basics of your field are essential in addition to apprenticeship."
I believe a good education is important too. But I don't see what that has to do with college. . .
So people are compelled to pay for schools that may or may not work? I don't want to throw my money away, much less use it to send children to schools which are actually damaging to them.
"You honestly think that every single person who went through the public school system is no better off than if they had received no education at all?"
Yes.
"The public university was by far the most useful of the three."
That has nothing to do with it being public, and everything to do with it being a university. Do you think it was worth all the time and money you spent? I spend 5 1/2 years earning my degree, and came out with $14,000 in student loans. Now I am earning $70,000/year doing a job that I was fully capable of (but not fully qualified? how does that work?) before I went to school. I'd rather have skipped the school step.
I'm sorry. I also attended private school (through the 6th grade), and I had a similar experience. The reason I single out public school is because of it's compulsory and publicity funded nature.
Private schools do teach you more effectively, but they generally do so by trying to crush your will. Assholes.
It would be wrong to assume that in the absence of public schools, you would fail to interact with adults. Of course, most of my positive role-models came from the BSA, and I am thankful for that. Only a couple of my teachers helped me (and they were a big help) but those people would be working with kids anyway.
And the public school system burns these well-meaning people out very quickly, because they are there to help people and make a difference, but the school bureaucracy and teachers unions and administration and parent groups get in the way and make it (mostly) impossible.
What I should have said is the institution of public school never helped anybody. You can still have a positive experience in public school, as long as the school doesn't get in the way.
There are lots of important techs that were developed without government funds. The steam engine, the internal combustion engine, iron, steel, powered flight, guns, electric power transmission, the light bulb, most modern materials, most modern advances in computer hardware and software. . . That's just off the top of my head, I'm sure there's a lot more.
And furthermore, just because technologies were developed with government money doesn't mean they couldn't have been developed with different funding. Also, I can't think of a single major commercial airframe in use today that was originally designed for military use (not so say there isn't one, but certainly none of the Boeing 7X7 lines or the airbus A3X0 lines were).
Meeting people and getting your foot in the door does not require an education. You can meet people in the field. Degrees serve primarily as a barrier to entry, since employers use them to weed out potential candidates. You will not be prepared for your job by your degree, and you will likely use less than 10% of what you learn (much less what you crammed before the test and promptly forgot afterward). There are much better ways to spend four years of your life.
If he just want's to throw it all away, I would suggest buying each American a sports car, at least then we could have fun while we're pissing away everything we have.
Public school never helped anybody. Am I the only one who noticed that? I guess Obama wouldn't know, since he never attended public school.
"mostly due to the fact that I don't recognize the court system as valid"
Do you also not recognize the utilities and banking services they were providing to you as valid? If so, why did you agree to pay for them?
Don't get me wrong, I'm as anarchistic as they come, but I still think you should pay your bills.
"Mr. CEO of company doesn't particularly like people? Well, then restrict selling of one's products to them."
Sounds reasonable. If I make guns, and my reseller is selling them to terrorists, and I don't like terrorists, I should not sell to that reseller anymore.
Why should I be compelled by law to sell to anyone if I don't want to?
"Sorry, commerce is supposed to be blind."
Blind commerce is as stupid as blind justice. People aren't blind, so nothing we do is either. And since I don't think we "should" be blind, I don't think it makes sense to say that these things should be blind.
Don't pass a bunch or oppressive laws to try to fix it.
Manufacturers should be able to chose who they are going to sell their product to wholesale. If they want to fix their prices by refusing to sell to people who advertise below they price they've outlined, that's their business and the government should stay out of it.
The only alternative is writing laws to determine who I can sell goods to, and under what circumstances. That's a huge blow to freedom, and yet another step to building a large oppressive government.
I don't own a gun, but I probably will someday. I enjoy shooting firearms (especially skeet-shooting). I don't think there's anything psychosexual about it. Saying that a "normal person" has no business owning a gun is the same as saying a "normal person" has no business owning a guitar. Just because it isn't how you make your living doesn't mean you have no business doing it.
I also wouldn't say that hunting is the same as murder, and I'd certainly hope that you are a vegetarian if you are making that claim, since eating meat would be just the same as killing the animal. I've never actually murdered anyone, so I can't say for sure that the experience is different, but I think it probably is.
It does not indicate cowardice and hypocrisy more than any of the other secrets that so many people keep. Why single out this one secret?
"This is being done right now. It's not experimental, it is a ready to go technology."
No, they have not yet built the first plant capable of 24-hr power production, so it is still experimental.
What do you think supplemental means?