I went to tompaine.com, which had originally published it, and found more articles by the same author. Back to Basics was a very thoughtful look at the outsourcing debate.
As for the oceans? They are getting warmer too: http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/observe/su rftemp/1996.html
It is incredible that we are still asking whether warming is actually real.
[freak-out]IT'S REAL DAMN IT, IT's REAL![/freak-out]
I can understand people questionning what causes warming, but for chriss' sakes people- it's getting warm down here, and weather patterns have become rather erratic:
Insurance companies have paid out $91.8 billion in losses from weather-related natural disasters in the 1990s so far, close to four times the weather-related claims handed out during the entire decade of the 1980s. (
worldwatch.org link
Even without the satelite data, we should know by now that things are changing, and likely not for the better.
Since I'm commenting... the next stage of uncertainty and doubt is what portion of climate change is caused by humans, with the implication that we shouldn't do anything about it. And the F of FUD, being we'll run the economy.
Well, none of this is true or relevant. Moving beyond fossil fuels can be good for the economy.
You claim 2 observations and you present 3, another sign that you simply can not count.
3. Ethanol generates a lot of money for my state. Use it and I get lower taxes.
Archer Daniels Midland, the main company involved in the ethanol racket, has got to be one of the biggest pigs at the trough. Don't take my word for it: read the Cato Institute's assessment.
You may be marginally better off as a farmer, but the rest of us pay through higher prices and taxes.
NO VALUE IS CREATED HERE.
1 calorie of petroleum energy producing 1 calorie of ethanol is not valuable. This is a politically created market, and you are benefiting from a large company's profiteering.
If you want a sustainable income, you'll have to figure out a cheaper way to harvest the sun's energy, without massive fossil fuel inputs. If you do that, you probably won't need subsidies.
This article is actually good news for you. Rather than corn ethanol, we are talking cellulose. Some cellulose sources that require little input include hemp.
One last thought: if you are not creating wealth, you are taking it from someone else. Asking us to buy ethanol to lower your taxes actually means we pay your taxes.
This has been one of the most controversial topics in that area. Gene Sharp makes a very strong case that sabotage should not be included in his list, and I certainly would also agree whenever sabotage risks harm to anyone.
There are however methods of sabotage I would agree with that need not be violent. Iraqis removing critical pieces of equipment from refineries would not run the risk of hurting anyone, assuming they knew how to do it which a lot of them do.
I can think of many more such examples that simply make the logistics for an invader much more difficult. Role playing might let us find out which are the most annoying and cost-effective against an invader.:)
Well, if the army uses these, I don't see why pacifists couldn't.
Peace protesters have long used role-playing to practice strategy, from hassle-lines to multi-actor games. In fact, one author has cataloged 198 forms of non-violent action. The oldest one on record is known as Lysistratic nonaction, where the women refused to sleep with their husbands until they agreed to stop fighting. The play Lysistrata depicts men with huge erections desperate to sign a deal:)
Some of the strategies that have been used historically include: -fraternization with the soldiers (including outright seduction, playing sports together, etc...) -non-cooperation (refusal to hand over information, "losing" municipal records for jews during WW2) -demonstrations from standing in front of tanks to vigils -strikes -sabotage
It would be quite interesting to use these same tools to figure out which methods are most effective and result in the fewest deaths for all parties, and MMORPG would be a very good tool.
If we can't get non-violent means to work better, I'll stop protesting paying for war preparations and our militaries. If they work better however, I ask you to consider what you can do to stop this:)
Take a look at my initial comment. The PTC for wind energy was put in place to level the playing field.
So if you got rid of subsidies to the polluting industries, it would have the same effect with regards to wind. As we have seen, with a PTC of just 1.5c/kwh, wind was growing at more than 30% a year.
Therefore I must disagree with your statement- wind would stand a very good chance if the market were fair. This does not match all the FUD of the anti-greens, but it's the honest truth: Wind is now competitive.
There are two ways of making the market fair. The first, and most obvious, is to subsidize wind. The second is to cut subsidies to other energy types.
Both choices are OK, but getting rid of subsidies is a better alternative. Why? two reasons: -low energy costs inhibits conservation and related technological advances -billions of dollars of taxes will be saved
It is also more elegant, because it goes after the root of the problem.
To add a bit of nuance to what I said- I am not completely opposed to subsidizing new technologies. The best possible situation would be to shift the subsidy from smoke-stack to renewables over a period of say, 10 years (at the same time as keeping the PTC!)- this has to be done gradually to avoid backlash and market disruption. Utilities should also be given time to retire the oldest plants, and have enough warning ahead of time to know not to build new plants.
I'm not holding my breath that government will do this. Please don't let the title Natural Capitalism turn you off: the book has a lot of great ideas, and is downright critical of capitalism on several points. It also includes plenty of ways we could change things at the community level, and through technology.
So many comments here talk about how silly it is to resign over the military's use of Linux.
I was opposed to this war, and I too agree that such actions would be silly.
However, after RTFA, I think we're taking one peripheral comment from the article and making it his central argument.
My one regret is that more and more it (Linux Users Los Angeles [Lula]) has become an insular collection of geeks that can get along just fine without me.
... I once had high hopes for Linux. I felt sure it could make a real contribution to the success of humanity, now more and more I have my doubts. I have a real and growing fear that if the Mr. Smith's of Linux have their way, in the future they will look back and say: "Wasn't it nice that so many smart people worked to hard for free to forge their own chains."
I feel that Lula no longer reflects the vision I have had for it and has in fact belittled itself as an organization for change and progress. I cannot attend Tuesday night's meeting, in fact I would be ashamed to in view of what our country is doing in Iraq...
So let's be fair. He may be some egotistical maniac that doesn't like the fact that his leadership is no longer needed, or just a guy that is having second thoughts about Linux in general, and the Army's use of Linux is just one element of that.
Of course, we'd rather not admit we're a bunch of insular geeks, and would rather pounce on his silly pacifist beliefs which we use as a strawman argument. Come on people, we may disagree with what he says, but at least let's represent his argument fairly.
Some of this exists already, but the big car makers have to bring this to its logical conclusion.
If car makers have to pay for maintenance and disposal costs, they will be given an incentive to build the cars so they will be durable. Parts likely wouldn't break down as often, and would be easily replaced, just like you can change RAM on your box. And the whole thing will have to be recyclable.
Or we could simply go with a ten-year-old idea, the Hypercar. (more info)
If I were in that market, I'd LOVE it if people could sketch what they wanted to see. There are probably a lot of extremely lucrative niches out there waiting to be tapped!:)
As for the commercial possibilities for this project: you're not going to find them all.
The scenarios you come up are limited from your experience- getting lost in an unfamiliar city. I lived in Paris for over a year, and that scenario does resonnate. I know which metro I got out of, but which of the 12 possible sides/directions am I facing? (If you've been there too, you know this is not necessarily an exageration)
I would think it a great tool for people doing self-guided tours. Have a company rent the pda/phone with mp3 recordings, and let them wander around. If/when they get lost, they ask the PDA for help, take a picture and the map re-orients itself.
But let's assume they're not lost. They can just point at a building, and the system returns that building's history, and other close points of interest. How many times have you visited a city and went "ooh, that's nice architecture. How old is this building?" Well, maybe not, but I have, and countless others have too. And if we keep a photo-log, they'll be even happier.
Suppose again you're not lost or even a tourist but you want to know where the closest ATM is, preferably one from your bank/credit union so you won't be dinged with massive fees. Or what restaurants are open late within walking distance. All the location-aware services can benefit from this since as you mentionned neither GPS nor cell phone towers can be sufficiently precise. And taking a picture is easier than typing in your location.
The lost tourist scenario is only going to limit your imagination as to the marketing possibilities. If you license the technology, and/or have web-services, you can let marketing geeks like me hack new things together.
Best of luck, and if you ever license or come to Canada, please contact me, eh?:)
If you don't think fines are the solution, then what do you suggest? Gaol sentances?
Revoke their corporate charter.
Corporations are not people. They are a legal fiction granted by the state for the purpose of shielding investors from liability. This is necessary and proper when a project is so big that investors can't be expected to be responsible for day-to-day operations.
A long time ago, probably when we still spelled jail "gaol", we would revoke a corporation's right to exist if it exceeded its rights as set out in their charter. Then after a bit of judicial activism, corporations became "people". They don't have the right to vote, but have the right to free expression. They can lobby the government that gave them the right to exist to change the laws. And most importantly, we no longer believe we have authority over these creatures.
Many corporations, if the "three strikes and you're out" principles were enforced would be abolished. Corporations routinely get away with murder, or at the very least criminal negligence causing death. I'm not making this stuff, or saying it to be inflammatory. Remember Bhopal? There are many more examples. And how about Thalidomide? Tobacco companies whose executives consistently lied? Often the corporation only gets fined or settles out of court.
Microsoft could probably be split into smaller units with little harm to investors and no layoffs. The only thing that would be sacrificed would be the legal fiction of Microsoft.
The question is, how long will we allow these serially criminal entities to operate unchecked? How long until we recognize that sovereignty means we can re-assert our rights and dissolve them?
Apparently rates in India are going up with demand, which is entirely logical from a market perspective.
If instead of reducing outsourcing we tried to send more work to India, is it conceivable that we could bring up their salaries to a point where they would no longer compete on price?
Also, can we expect some of those Indian programmers and companies to do more work on fulfilling their own software needs, and stop chasing outsourcing work?
I predict that in 2004 Google will announce a major move into instant messaging. As far as I know, Google isn't overtly doing anything with IM right now. Paradoxically, that means that they are probably doing something with IM while people are looking the other way.
They also have not announced that they were going to take over the UN and boot the US out of Iraq. Or that they're going to Mars, or the fact they're going to build a new internet backbone with solar powered UAVs. Or that they have found the cure for AIDS.
Not so paradoxically, that means that analyst is a moron.
That doesn't leave much money for tech, bandwidth and advertising costs.
I thought about opening an online music store, but such numbers are frightening.
The only way I can see this working, and since it is likely there will be very few players in this market, is to have a co-op. Mountain Equipment Co-op is a prime example of how to do things right- and a member-owned online store would not have advertising costs like Apple's since word of mouth would probably work well.
A socially responsible, internally democratic institution would be fairly novel in the music industry, and work will with the ethics of the open-source movement. Anyone want to take this on?:)
Seriously, almost any solution will cost more than conservation. Not only can you have a smaller generator, but you won't need as many batteries to store energy for peak periods.
Check out real goods and other suppliers. Good lighting, gas-powered hot water heaters, fridges and cooking... there are lots of nice appliances that can reduce your reliance on electricity.
As for generation- keep your options open. It may not be legal for you to install a micro-hydro generator, and solar or wind might be cheaper.
Aqueous Solutions (pdf) is a chapter from Natural Capital. It explores various options for using water efficiently.
Did you know that agriculture uses four fifths of the water in the US? That a short visit by a conservation specialist can cost-effectively save 10 to 20% of the farmer's water use? (i.e. they start saving money right away!).
In urban settings, much of the peak demand for water is used in landscaping. Education and better pricing structures can also dramatically reduce the need for water.
Conservation is so incredibly cost effective that desalination plants should really only be a very last resort. Please read the above linked chapter, and tell your elected officials to do the same thing before they go on wasting millions of dollars.
The production tax credit (PTC) for wind in the US was 1.5c per kilowatt-hour because that was needed to have a level playing field with the heavily subsidized fossil fuel industry.
So instead of cutting the subsidies to polluting tech, we increase it for the next generation. Fusion and fission are both heavily subsidized as well. Meanwhile the PTC for wind has expired, and it is competing against unfairly subsidized incumbents.
Besides the obvious tax burden, this has a nasty counter-productive effect: cheaper energy makes it harder for energy-efficiency to be taken as seriously as it should. Subsidizing production makes us all wasteful.
Better we stop subsidizing all this energy production and let the markets take care of it. We might find that under a truly capitalist system we waste less and produce what we need far more efficiently than we do under our current socialist system- something the Russians learned after the fall of the Berlin wall.
These are 1996 figures, though and much has changed since- natural gas being more expensive, and wind and solar having continued to go down in price.
As far as calculating TCO, all those costs would be considered, plus an important variable: interest rates. With high interest rates, capital intensive options like nuclear and wind become more expensive compared to plants that are cheaper to build but require expensive fuel later.
That is true, although it's not much of a problem.
Some ranchers are letting power companies install windmills on their property. They charge rent, but their animals can continue grazing below.
Offshore wind is also becoming popular as with many of the new projects in the UK.
Japan is subsidizing "solar shingles", thin film PV that can replace conventional shingles- and produce electricity too. Prices are dropping fast with new advances in materials science and increases in production allowed by these subsidies. Since prices go down an average of 20% with every doubling in production, the Japanese companies are getting a huge competitive head-start, but that's another topic entirely.
So it seems to me we can integrate these energy sources into our existing land use patterns.
I mean, is it too complicated to simply ask the sales person for the software, and have them burn it onto CD?
It's also quite likely they could print a manual if you wanted it, and the whole set up would be cheaper than normal distribution and more effective at selling than a stupid vending machine.
Slashdot Mirror
Excellent article on Wal-Mart!
I went to tompaine.com, which had originally published it, and found more articles by the same author. Back to Basics was a very thoughtful look at the outsourcing debate.
...Are cruise planes.
:)
/. reader with more physics knowledge tell me if this can/ cannot work?
There are lots of people that want to do New York- Paris in 1 hour, but most people I know aren't in that situation.
Maybe a blimp-like plane, that could transport transatlantic freight faster than a sea ship but at similar cost, or passengers on a leisurely voyage.
Fuel savings could make up for some of the extra costs. Better efficiency might appeal to the green crowd too.
Other advantages would include less jet-lag, and hopefully a more relaxing adventure.
And another one: terrorists aren't likely to send a blimp into a building at a stealthy 100kmh
Ok, can some
Simple- glaciers are retreating everywhere and polar ice is melting too. This of course changes albedo...
As for the oceans? They are getting warmer too:
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/observe/s
It is incredible that we are still asking whether warming is actually real.
[freak-out]IT'S REAL DAMN IT, IT's REAL![/freak-out]
I can understand people questionning what causes warming, but for chriss' sakes people- it's getting warm down here, and weather patterns have become rather erratic:
Even without the satelite data, we should know by now that things are changing, and likely not for the better.
Since I'm commenting... the next stage of uncertainty and doubt is what portion of climate change is caused by humans, with the implication that we shouldn't do anything about it. And the F of FUD, being we'll run the economy.
Well, none of this is true or relevant. Moving beyond fossil fuels can be good for the economy.
Archer Daniels Midland, the main company involved in the ethanol racket, has got to be one of the biggest pigs at the trough. Don't take my word for it: read the Cato Institute's assessment.
You may be marginally better off as a farmer, but the rest of us pay through higher prices and taxes.
NO VALUE IS CREATED HERE.
1 calorie of petroleum energy producing 1 calorie of ethanol is not valuable. This is a politically created market, and you are benefiting from a large company's profiteering.
If you want a sustainable income, you'll have to figure out a cheaper way to harvest the sun's energy, without massive fossil fuel inputs. If you do that, you probably won't need subsidies.
This article is actually good news for you. Rather than corn ethanol, we are talking cellulose. Some cellulose sources that require little input include hemp.
One last thought: if you are not creating wealth, you are taking it from someone else. Asking us to buy ethanol to lower your taxes actually means we pay your taxes.
This has been one of the most controversial topics in that area. Gene Sharp makes a very strong case that sabotage should not be included in his list, and I certainly would also agree whenever sabotage risks harm to anyone.
:)
There are however methods of sabotage I would agree with that need not be violent. Iraqis removing critical pieces of equipment from refineries would not run the risk of hurting anyone, assuming they knew how to do it which a lot of them do.
I can think of many more such examples that simply make the logistics for an invader much more difficult. Role playing might let us find out which are the most annoying and cost-effective against an invader.
Well, if the army uses these, I don't see why pacifists couldn't.
:)
:)
Peace protesters have long used role-playing to practice strategy, from hassle-lines to multi-actor games. In fact, one author has cataloged 198 forms of non-violent action. The oldest one on record is known as Lysistratic nonaction, where the women refused to sleep with their husbands until they agreed to stop fighting. The play Lysistrata depicts men with huge erections desperate to sign a deal
Some of the strategies that have been used historically include:
-fraternization with the soldiers (including outright seduction, playing sports together, etc...)
-non-cooperation (refusal to hand over information, "losing" municipal records for jews during WW2)
-demonstrations from standing in front of tanks to vigils
-strikes
-sabotage
It would be quite interesting to use these same tools to figure out which methods are most effective and result in the fewest deaths for all parties, and MMORPG would be a very good tool.
If we can't get non-violent means to work better, I'll stop protesting paying for war preparations and our militaries. If they work better however, I ask you to consider what you can do to stop this
Take a look at my initial comment. The PTC for wind energy was put in place to level the playing field.
So if you got rid of subsidies to the polluting industries, it would have the same effect with regards to wind. As we have seen, with a PTC of just 1.5c/kwh, wind was growing at more than 30% a year.
Therefore I must disagree with your statement- wind would stand a very good chance if the market were fair. This does not match all the FUD of the anti-greens, but it's the honest truth: Wind is now competitive.
There are two ways of making the market fair. The first, and most obvious, is to subsidize wind. The second is to cut subsidies to other energy types.
Both choices are OK, but getting rid of subsidies is a better alternative. Why? two reasons:
-low energy costs inhibits conservation and related technological advances
-billions of dollars of taxes will be saved
It is also more elegant, because it goes after the root of the problem.
To add a bit of nuance to what I said- I am not completely opposed to subsidizing new technologies. The best possible situation would be to shift the subsidy from smoke-stack to renewables over a period of say, 10 years (at the same time as keeping the PTC!)- this has to be done gradually to avoid backlash and market disruption. Utilities should also be given time to retire the oldest plants, and have enough warning ahead of time to know not to build new plants.
I'm not holding my breath that government will do this. Please don't let the title Natural Capitalism turn you off: the book has a lot of great ideas, and is downright critical of capitalism on several points. It also includes plenty of ways we could change things at the community level, and through technology.
I recommend you check out Natural Capitalism (available for free at natcap.org). There certainly is more to this than capitalism vs. communism.
In the case of energy, it is clear the government is subsidizing the wrong thing.
I was opposed to this war, and I too agree that such actions would be silly.
However, after RTFA, I think we're taking one peripheral comment from the article and making it his central argument.
So let's be fair. He may be some egotistical maniac that doesn't like the fact that his leadership is no longer needed, or just a guy that is having second thoughts about Linux in general, and the Army's use of Linux is just one element of that.
Of course, we'd rather not admit we're a bunch of insular geeks, and would rather pounce on his silly pacifist beliefs which we use as a strawman argument. Come on people, we may disagree with what he says, but at least let's represent his argument fairly.
Are cars you lease rather than buy.
Some of this exists already, but the big car makers have to bring this to its logical conclusion.
If car makers have to pay for maintenance and disposal costs, they will be given an incentive to build the cars so they will be durable. Parts likely wouldn't break down as often, and would be easily replaced, just like you can change RAM on your box. And the whole thing will have to be recyclable.
Or we could simply go with a ten-year-old idea, the Hypercar. (more info)
You are 100% correct.
:)
If I were in that market, I'd LOVE it if people could sketch what they wanted to see. There are probably a lot of extremely lucrative niches out there waiting to be tapped!
OK, first of all I want to say this is brilliant.
:)
As for the commercial possibilities for this project: you're not going to find them all.
The scenarios you come up are limited from your experience- getting lost in an unfamiliar city. I lived in Paris for over a year, and that scenario does resonnate. I know which metro I got out of, but which of the 12 possible sides/directions am I facing? (If you've been there too, you know this is not necessarily an exageration)
I would think it a great tool for people doing self-guided tours. Have a company rent the pda/phone with mp3 recordings, and let them wander around. If/when they get lost, they ask the PDA for help, take a picture and the map re-orients itself.
But let's assume they're not lost. They can just point at a building, and the system returns that building's history, and other close points of interest. How many times have you visited a city and went "ooh, that's nice architecture. How old is this building?" Well, maybe not, but I have, and countless others have too. And if we keep a photo-log, they'll be even happier.
Suppose again you're not lost or even a tourist but you want to know where the closest ATM is, preferably one from your bank/credit union so you won't be dinged with massive fees. Or what restaurants are open late within walking distance. All the location-aware services can benefit from this since as you mentionned neither GPS nor cell phone towers can be sufficiently precise. And taking a picture is easier than typing in your location.
The lost tourist scenario is only going to limit your imagination as to the marketing possibilities. If you license the technology, and/or have web-services, you can let marketing geeks like me hack new things together.
Best of luck, and if you ever license or come to Canada, please contact me, eh?
Bhopal was only one example. There are many more.
Locally, a man my age died after a fall in a lumber yard. The company was found guilty of negligence for not following safety rules.
Those events are much more common. If we used a three strikes and you're out system with such corporations, we'd rapidly see a clean up.
Revoke their corporate charter.
Corporations are not people. They are a legal fiction granted by the state for the purpose of shielding investors from liability. This is necessary and proper when a project is so big that investors can't be expected to be responsible for day-to-day operations.
A long time ago, probably when we still spelled jail "gaol", we would revoke a corporation's right to exist if it exceeded its rights as set out in their charter. Then after a bit of judicial activism, corporations became "people". They don't have the right to vote, but have the right to free expression. They can lobby the government that gave them the right to exist to change the laws. And most importantly, we no longer believe we have authority over these creatures.
Many corporations, if the "three strikes and you're out" principles were enforced would be abolished. Corporations routinely get away with murder, or at the very least criminal negligence causing death. I'm not making this stuff, or saying it to be inflammatory. Remember Bhopal? There are many more examples. And how about Thalidomide? Tobacco companies whose executives consistently lied? Often the corporation only gets fined or settles out of court.
Microsoft could probably be split into smaller units with little harm to investors and no layoffs. The only thing that would be sacrificed would be the legal fiction of Microsoft.
The question is, how long will we allow these serially criminal entities to operate unchecked? How long until we recognize that sovereignty means we can re-assert our rights and dissolve them?
I'm unemployed too, and I'd love it if there was an _ethical_ way to make money from idle CPU time.
:)
:(
PS: need some Java coding?
HMMM... thinking about it... if you wanted to buy CPU time, you'd just rent a server. $100/month for a nice machine on a fat connection...
Apparently rates in India are going up with demand, which is entirely logical from a market perspective.
If instead of reducing outsourcing we tried to send more work to India, is it conceivable that we could bring up their salaries to a point where they would no longer compete on price?
Also, can we expect some of those Indian programmers and companies to do more work on fulfilling their own software needs, and stop chasing outsourcing work?
They also have not announced that they were going to take over the UN and boot the US out of Iraq. Or that they're going to Mars, or the fact they're going to build a new internet backbone with solar powered UAVs. Or that they have found the cure for AIDS.
Not so paradoxically, that means that analyst is a moron.
The RIAA's cartel mambers takes some 65 cents per song, and the credit card companies likely take another 10 cents.
:)
That doesn't leave much money for tech, bandwidth and advertising costs.
I thought about opening an online music store, but such numbers are frightening.
The only way I can see this working, and since it is likely there will be very few players in this market, is to have a co-op. Mountain Equipment Co-op is a prime example of how to do things right- and a member-owned online store would not have advertising costs like Apple's since word of mouth would probably work well.
A socially responsible, internally democratic institution would be fairly novel in the music industry, and work will with the ethics of the open-source movement. Anyone want to take this on?
Seriously, almost any solution will cost more than conservation. Not only can you have a smaller generator, but you won't need as many batteries to store energy for peak periods.
Check out real goods and other suppliers. Good lighting, gas-powered hot water heaters, fridges and cooking... there are lots of nice appliances that can reduce your reliance on electricity.
As for generation- keep your options open. It may not be legal for you to install a micro-hydro generator, and solar or wind might be cheaper.
Aqueous Solutions (pdf) is a chapter from Natural Capital. It explores various options for using water efficiently.
Did you know that agriculture uses four fifths of the water in the US? That a short visit by a conservation specialist can cost-effectively save 10 to 20% of the farmer's water use? (i.e. they start saving money right away!).
In urban settings, much of the peak demand for water is used in landscaping. Education and better pricing structures can also dramatically reduce the need for water.
Conservation is so incredibly cost effective that desalination plants should really only be a very last resort. Please read the above linked chapter, and tell your elected officials to do the same thing before they go on wasting millions of dollars.
I wholeheartedly agree.
The production tax credit (PTC) for wind in the US was 1.5c per kilowatt-hour because that was needed to have a level playing field with the heavily subsidized fossil fuel industry.
So instead of cutting the subsidies to polluting tech, we increase it for the next generation. Fusion and fission are both heavily subsidized as well. Meanwhile the PTC for wind has expired, and it is competing against unfairly subsidized incumbents.
Besides the obvious tax burden, this has a nasty counter-productive effect: cheaper energy makes it harder for energy-efficiency to be taken as seriously as it should. Subsidizing production makes us all wasteful.
Better we stop subsidizing all this energy production and let the markets take care of it. We might find that under a truly capitalist system we waste less and produce what we need far more efficiently than we do under our current socialist system- something the Russians learned after the fall of the Berlin wall.
This is the closest I could get to a comparative table: http://www.awea.org/pubs/factsheets/Cost2001.PDF
These are 1996 figures, though and much has changed since- natural gas being more expensive, and wind and solar having continued to go down in price.
As far as calculating TCO, all those costs would be considered, plus an important variable: interest rates. With high interest rates, capital intensive options like nuclear and wind become more expensive compared to plants that are cheaper to build but require expensive fuel later.
That is true, although it's not much of a problem.
Some ranchers are letting power companies install windmills on their property. They charge rent, but their animals can continue grazing below.
Offshore wind is also becoming popular as with many of the new projects in the UK.
Japan is subsidizing "solar shingles", thin film PV that can replace conventional shingles- and produce electricity too. Prices are dropping fast with new advances in materials science and increases in production allowed by these subsidies. Since prices go down an average of 20% with every doubling in production, the Japanese companies are getting a huge competitive head-start, but that's another topic entirely.
So it seems to me we can integrate these energy sources into our existing land use patterns.
I mean, is it too complicated to simply ask the sales person for the software, and have them burn it onto CD?
It's also quite likely they could print a manual if you wanted it, and the whole set up would be cheaper than normal distribution and more effective at selling than a stupid vending machine.