There's no fallacy in there. Even if it was under warranty when my cable modem failed I could have had it replaced as quickly as I did, nor would I have gotten a faster one as a replacement.
If you buy a new modem off the shelf, based on your own research and subject to your own maintenance, it's unlikely it would just flame out after a year.
And you don't think a cable company modem wouldn't last a year?
you can really tune the performance and get measurable speed increases 24/7.
You can tune performance using company owned modems as well. At the tyme the modem I had failed, when the tech replaced it he offered to do a tuneup but I said I'd do it myself. Speedguide.net can help as can others.
Yeah, if you go to the anti clean coal websites, that seems to be their only legitimate complaint.
Some who oppose may only do so because of CO2 but others do for other reasons as well. Others, like Appalachian Voices and Mountain Justice oppose Mountaintop Removal. And others have other reasons to oppose coal.
If India tried to invade Russia because Global Warming decimated Indian agriculture they wouldn't have the problems Napoleon and Hitler had. Neither army could handle the cold that well. India'd have another problem though. Currently India and Russia are friendly, and Pakistan and China are friendly, to each other. India does not get along with either China or Pakistan though. The Sino-Indian War was a war between China and India in 1962 and they still have bad feelings between them. Then India and Pakistan were partitioned from British India. And India would have to go through one or the other to invade Russia.
we are pretty efficient at digging up and combusting coal. Why not work harder to scrub it better and deliver more electricity for the plug in hybrids?
I guess we (rich countries) could also try to suck CO2 out of the air, but I haven't yet seen a proven method.
Trees?
There are two problems I know of to use trees to absorb CO2. One is that some trees have been shown to emit more CO2 during parts of their growth. Another problem is that once the trees die they'll release the CO2 again. What has been proposed is to bury trees deep underground. However others have called those people Envirokooks.
Something I just thought of typing this reply is if burying trees will really work, it may make greenhouse gases in the atmosphere worse. This is because as organic matter decomposes in an anaerobic , without oxygen, it decomposes into methane which is 20 tymes as strong a greenhouse gas as CO2 is.
atleast CANDU reactors are probably getting used elsewhere in the world
According to wiki CANDU designs are being used in several other nations.
The CANDU reactor has the ability to use the waste from LWR directly. And the option to reprocess it before using it again (higher efficiency).
According to the wiki article there's still waste. Looking more I didn't find anything that said the CANDU design eliminates nuclear waste I did find articles that said the amount of waste is significantly reduced. So maybe what can be done is to build more of them to use the spent fuel we already have.
BS! People have been building off the grid since the beginning of civilization. Only those who do it today have electricity. Offgridders use various sources of alternative energy including geothermal, solar, wind, and microhydro along with others.
producing your own needs for electricity is great
but its a VERY SMALL amount of the world's total energy consumption.
Today off grid applications are small but it can easily be expanded. Solar, wind, and other systems can quickly be added. Solar panels can be placed of roofs for instance. Farmers can erect, or have erected, wind gennies on towers. They don't take up much space and they'll create a new source of income for farmers.
we cannot afford to forget that it is nuclear power that promises us the quickest (and cleanest) way to combat our oil dependency.
The last nuclear power plant commissioned in the US took more than 20 years to build and put in operation. But say you could cut that into a quarter, 5 years to build a 1 gigawatt reactor, it's still not the fastest way to add generation. If you erect 20 5 megawatt wind turbines a month in one year you'll add 1.2 gigawatts of capacity in a year.
As and for cleanliness, nuclear power is dirty. There's the mining and initial processing, reprocessing spent fuel, storage of the leftovers as well as toxic chemicals used for reprocessing, then closure of the power plant.
we're going to be deeply screwed when it comes to producing something we've come to take for granted in the modern age - plastics.
Oil, petroleum, isn't needed to make plastic. Before oil was used to make plastic plastic was made from plant material. The original cellophane plastic wrap for sandwiches was made from cellulose, a part of plant cells. Way back when, before 1951, Kodak made their film from cellulose. The only reason bioplastics lost favor was because DuPont invented a process to polymerize petroleum to make plastic and that was cheaper than bioplastics. Today bioplastics are making a comeback. I don't feel like looking for it now but Kodak had a pdf online showing the process of making bioplastic.
Then there's the matter of whether nuclear power is profitable. The libertarian free market CATO Institute has this article: "Nuclear Energy: Risky Business". In it it says
"Given all of this, how do France, India, China, and Russia build cost-effective nuclear power plants? They don't. Government officials in those countries, not private investors, decide what is built. Either these governments build expensive plants and shove them down the market's throat-or they build shoddy plants and hope for the best."
o matter what you do with the coal it's CO2-positive.
So what? CO2 is not the source of global warming.
CO2 is a source for global warming but not the only one. Another greenhouse gas is methane, and lifestock, both cows and sheep emit a lot. Now the amount they emit can be reduced. This is because they are ruminants and naturally eat grass. However many range operations feed them foodstock like corn which their digestive system doesn't process that well.
CO2 is not even the largest (by percentage of content) green house gas in the atmosphere. Water is, and its somewhere in excess of 95% of all greenhouse gas.
But as carbon warms the atmosphere, even if only a little, it increases the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere. Another positive feedback system, which is what this is, is that as temps rise more methane from bogs and permafrost will be released as well.
Global temps are falling. They have been for as long as you have been aware of the so-called issue.
if we could make efficient biofuel out of algae, the difference there would be that the cycle would be closed. CO2->Algae->Biofuel->CO2
It depends, if coal is the source of CO2 for algae growth the loop would not be closed unless the CO2 is captured, By burning biofuels you're still releasing CO2. Now if algae removed CO2 from the atmosphere it may actually be carbon negative. That's because the dead algae can used as a fertilizer and added to farm land soil.
The only people who logically wouldn't support a tiered system like this, are those who use far more bandwidth than the "average" person--and who therefore, are currently NOT paying for it. As a comparatively low bandwidth person myself, I prefer a tiered solution, where I just pay for what I use.
You're the second person to say the same thing. And as I told the previous one I am not a heavy downloader yet I hate it that cable companies want to change the rules in the middle of the game and cap bandwidth just because they oversold their services. I don't have much of a problem if they want to start tiering broadband with new subscribers, but not with old ones. And not if they pay back the taxpayers who gave them hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies the buildout broadband. They were given the subsidies to buildout broadband but did not.
If you're the kind of user who wants to fight download caps, odds are your the kind of broadband customer that NO ISP WANTS; cable, dsl or otherwise.
Not everyone who does not like caps are heavy downloaders. All I do is surf the web and download email. I don't download HD videos or torrents yet I oppose caps. The only restriction I had when I signed the contract for my broadband was that high speed was not guaranteed. While I wouldn't be happy if my speed was capped I can accept that, what I can not accept is capping my bandwidth, how much I download and upload.
And unless broadband providers buildout broadband then they should give the hundreds of billions of dollars they were given in taxpayer subsidies back to the taxpayers.
Somehow geeks can't get it through their heads that providing bandwidth costs money.
And what others can't get in their heads is that broadband providers were given hundreds of billions to buildout broadband and given monopolies but they didn't build broadband out.
your company will become stagnant, outdated, irrelevant and surpassed by nimbler, smarter companies.
Unfortunately there's little if any competition. In many places there's only one choice, Cable from one company or DSL from another. A small number number have the choice between cable or DSL. But a lot don't have either choice.
Competition ladies and gentleman, a wonderful thing.
I totally agree.
For some reason it seems like Time Warner Cable didn't get the competition memo.
Time Warner doesn't want competition, they know of they have competition they'd have to compeat and lower their prices and or provide a better service.
I bought and paid for my own cable modem to save money...I don't like having to pay rental fees, or the high $$ they charge you that you can buy for significantly less elsewhere.
Generally I agree buying is better than renting and debated about buying my own cable modem instead of renting one. I went ahead and rented mine when I signed up for cable. About a year later I had difficulty connecting so a tech was sent out to diagnose my connection. It ended up the modem died so the tech was able to replace it immediately with a new one. He said it should be faster than the old one, and it certainly seemed to me it was faster. Now if I had bought the modem it would have cost me more than the cost of renting.
They do it because the cell phone companies are making money with it. Utilities use metered because electric load is fairly constant and predictable. Even the use of AC is predictable. With a phone though, I can go a month and use about 60 minutes, and then the next one, I can use up 3000 (yay conference calls). I prefer knowing how much I pay ahead of time to getting wildly differing phone bills.
The problem is that unless you get unlimited you'll more than likely still have differing bills. But if you pay for more than you use you're wasting your money.
Look, one way or the other, almost every broadband ISP has overbuilt their network and was not prepared for the advent of HD video and streaming services.
If they overbuilt their broadband networks then they should be able to handle HD, HD uses broadband. Fact is is they didn't build enough broadband and oversold their services.
The hard fact is that they cannot (and never could) deliver "unlimited" bandwidth. So either they:
a) Raise their prices considerably on all their "unlimited" plans--sucks for the light users, who are basically subsidizing the heavy users who want to stream HD video and movies
If users aren't heavy user then they don't need unlimited, in which case tiered services make sense. However that's not how the service was sold.
c) Set download caps--sucks compared to the "free ride" heavy users are getting now, but at least it's out in the open with no throttling bullshit (and light users don't get penalized).
Setting download caps is setting limits and is a breach of contract. At least it would be with my service, the only limit with mine was that speed was not guaranteed.
you of course left out a few steps in the electric, IE electric power plant 40% efficient, power grid 95% efficient, (not to mention the costly endeavor in land and materials of maintaining the growing need for more grid) and of course the wasted effort of carrying a 800 pound battery instead of a 16 pounds of gas+ 40 pound generator. I am sure you would say something about charging by night or solar, that works as long as only a few cars and eventually... currently renewable energy is taxed over 100% with natural gas/coal needing burned 24/7
And you left out a few steps too, from well head to tank.
As far as renewables being taxed, correctly if I'm wrong but I'll take that to mean they can't provide all the electrical needs. If so, SciAm's article "A Solar Grand Plan" says solar energy can provide 69% of the US's electrical needs by 2050. Another abundant source of energy is wind. The Rocky Mountains along have enough potential wind power to provide the 48 continuous states with electricity. The Wind Energy Resource Atlas of the United States details wind potential in various regions of the US. As a baseload geothermal energy can be used.
The problem is, the market does lead to consolidated ownership, in a mature market. That's how that works - the example you give with the phone company - the monopoly was not given to the phone company,
Governments did give phone companies monopolies. They basically said they'll give the companies exclusive rights to the rights of ways if they offered phone service. Even then the government paid for the infrastructure to be built. The universal service program was a tax on phone bills that paid for phone service in sparsely populated areas.
It works like this:
1. Government investment in research/technology/science leads to new opportunity. The internet and computer industries were both born this way.
And neither the internet nor computer industries are monopolies.
The resurgence of the American car industry after WWII was largely a result of this kind of thing too - and the airline industry.
Here I agree. During the war automakers geared up to produce vehicles for the war, then once the war ended they were able to convert to making autos for civilian use. And because the original GI Bill funded the education for returning military personnel the auto makers had people who could afford to buy cars.
3. Industry matures, when one or a few players dominate the market, and things break down (higher prices, falling quality). At this point, there tends to need to be some government intervention
Except it's usually the industries being regulated who want the regulations. Regulations make it harder for competitors to start. A good example today is lawn care. Companies want cities to license and regulate the lawn care industry in an attempt to limit competition.
I agree with most of the second part of your post, but can't help but read that and think, "Well great, but that's not the free market!"
I did say some libertarians would disagree with it. Just as with Democrats and Republicans libertarians are a diverse group with different ideas about government. For the 2004 election there were even Libertarians for Dean as well as a website with that as it's domain name.
Slashdot Mirror
There's no fallacy in there. Even if it was under warranty when my cable modem failed I could have had it replaced as quickly as I did, nor would I have gotten a faster one as a replacement.
If you buy a new modem off the shelf, based on your own research and subject to your own maintenance, it's unlikely it would just flame out after a year.
And you don't think a cable company modem wouldn't last a year?
you can really tune the performance and get measurable speed increases 24/7.
You can tune performance using company owned modems as well. At the tyme the modem I had failed, when the tech replaced it he offered to do a tuneup but I said I'd do it myself. Speedguide.net can help as can others.
Falcon
Yeah, if you go to the anti clean coal websites, that seems to be their only legitimate complaint.
Some who oppose may only do so because of CO2 but others do for other reasons as well. Others, like Appalachian Voices and Mountain Justice oppose Mountaintop Removal. And others have other reasons to oppose coal.
Falcon
invaders
If India tried to invade Russia because Global Warming decimated Indian agriculture they wouldn't have the problems Napoleon and Hitler had. Neither army could handle the cold that well. India'd have another problem though. Currently India and Russia are friendly, and Pakistan and China are friendly, to each other. India does not get along with either China or Pakistan though. The Sino-Indian War was a war between China and India in 1962 and they still have bad feelings between them. Then India and Pakistan were partitioned from British India. And India would have to go through one or the other to invade Russia.
Falcon
we are pretty efficient at digging up and combusting coal. Why not work harder to scrub it better and deliver more electricity for the plug in hybrids?
That efficiency is one of the reasons coal is so dirty. Mountaintop removal is quite destructive of the environment, as is breakage of slurry containment ponds.
Falcon
I guess we (rich countries) could also try to suck CO2 out of the air, but I haven't yet seen a proven method.
Trees?
There are two problems I know of to use trees to absorb CO2. One is that some trees have been shown to emit more CO2 during parts of their growth. Another problem is that once the trees die they'll release the CO2 again. What has been proposed is to bury trees deep underground. However others have called those people Envirokooks.
Something I just thought of typing this reply is if burying trees will really work, it may make greenhouse gases in the atmosphere worse. This is because as organic matter decomposes in an anaerobic , without oxygen, it decomposes into methane which is 20 tymes as strong a greenhouse gas as CO2 is.
Falcon
What's going to happen when the reality of America's dependence fossil fuels meets the reality of climate change?
We'll fully commit ourselves to nuclear and finally have the ammo we need to silence the anti-nuclear crowd?
"Climate Change Briefing 'Nuclear power is no solution to climate change: exposing the myths'".
Falcon
atleast CANDU reactors are probably getting used elsewhere in the world
According to wiki CANDU designs are being used in several other nations.
The CANDU reactor has the ability to use the waste from LWR directly. And the option to reprocess it before using it again (higher efficiency).
According to the wiki article there's still waste. Looking more I didn't find anything that said the CANDU design eliminates nuclear waste I did find articles that said the amount of waste is significantly reduced. So maybe what can be done is to build more of them to use the spent fuel we already have.
Falcon
BS! People have been building off the grid since the beginning of civilization. Only those who do it today have electricity. Offgridders use various sources of alternative energy including geothermal, solar, wind, and microhydro along with others.
producing your own needs for electricity is great
but its a VERY SMALL amount of the world's total energy consumption.
Today off grid applications are small but it can easily be expanded. Solar, wind, and other systems can quickly be added. Solar panels can be placed of roofs for instance. Farmers can erect, or have erected, wind gennies on towers. They don't take up much space and they'll create a new source of income for farmers.
But the first thing offgridders do though is to reduce energy use, conserve electricity. Instead of using 75 watt incandescent lights, they'll use 15 watt CFLs or LEDs under 10 watts. For hot water, tankless instant on water heaters are more efficient. Solar hot water heater systems can bee used themselves, or can preheat water for instant on heaters. Passive solar designs can reduce any need for heating and cooling of indoor space, and with insulation with high R values heating and cooling can be eliminated. But even if heating is needed or wanted geothermal heating can be used. And by reversing the system when hot it can cool space as well.
There are many things that can be done to reduce energy consumed.
Falcon
we cannot afford to forget that it is nuclear power that promises us the quickest (and cleanest) way to combat our oil dependency.
The last nuclear power plant commissioned in the US took more than 20 years to build and put in operation. But say you could cut that into a quarter, 5 years to build a 1 gigawatt reactor, it's still not the fastest way to add generation. If you erect 20 5 megawatt wind turbines a month in one year you'll add 1.2 gigawatts of capacity in a year.
As and for cleanliness, nuclear power is dirty. There's the mining and initial processing, reprocessing spent fuel, storage of the leftovers as well as toxic chemicals used for reprocessing, then closure of the power plant.
we're going to be deeply screwed when it comes to producing something we've come to take for granted in the modern age - plastics.
Oil, petroleum, isn't needed to make plastic. Before oil was used to make plastic plastic was made from plant material. The original cellophane plastic wrap for sandwiches was made from cellulose, a part of plant cells. Way back when, before 1951, Kodak made their film from cellulose. The only reason bioplastics lost favor was because DuPont invented a process to polymerize petroleum to make plastic and that was cheaper than bioplastics. Today bioplastics are making a comeback. I don't feel like looking for it now but Kodak had a pdf online showing the process of making bioplastic.
Falcon
Citation needed indeed. Like you would be willing to even follow the URL
There was no url posted in the post I replied to. If there had been one I would have followed it.
Its pretty clear your mind is made up on this issue.
It's pretty clear you don't want to inform and debate.
Falcon
My old university McMaster has a CANDU reactor which recycles the spent nuclear fuel as well.
According to this "How is high-level nuclear waste managed in Canada?" reprocessing is not done in Canada.
Falcon
I don't know why we can't do it, hell, look at France, they've done very well using nuclear energy this way
France has not been successful at reprocessing nuclear waste.
Falcon
Just like there's no such thing as clean nuclear (gotta do something with that waste)
Actually, the French have been recycling their spent nuclear fuel for years.
And "France Acknowledges Massive Radioactive Pollution at La Hague".
Or "PRESS RELEASE"
"Vice-President Cheney Wrong About French Nuclear Repository Program, Independent Institute Asserts"
"French Public's Opposition to Nuclear Waste Repositories as Deep as that in the United States"
Then there's the matter of whether nuclear power is profitable. The libertarian free market CATO Institute has this article: "Nuclear Energy: Risky Business". In it it says
"Given all of this, how do France, India, China, and Russia build cost-effective nuclear power plants? They don't. Government officials in those countries, not private investors, decide what is built. Either these governments build expensive plants and shove them down the market's throat-or they build shoddy plants and hope for the best."
Falcon
And, I am thoroughly against the idiotic "Cap and Trade" gimmick. It is a farce, in the extreme.
As are all Libertarians.
This post is what's a farce.
Falcon
o matter what you do with the coal it's CO2-positive.
So what? CO2 is not the source of global warming.
CO2 is a source for global warming but not the only one. Another greenhouse gas is methane, and lifestock, both cows and sheep emit a lot. Now the amount they emit can be reduced. This is because they are ruminants and naturally eat grass. However many range operations feed them foodstock like corn which their digestive system doesn't process that well.
CO2 is not even the largest (by percentage of content) green house gas in the atmosphere. Water is, and its somewhere in excess of 95% of all greenhouse gas.
But as carbon warms the atmosphere, even if only a little, it increases the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere. Another positive feedback system, which is what this is, is that as temps rise more methane from bogs and permafrost will be released as well.
Global temps are falling. They have been for as long as you have been aware of the so-called issue.
Citation needed.
Falcon
if we could make efficient biofuel out of algae, the difference there would be that the cycle would be closed. CO2->Algae->Biofuel->CO2
It depends, if coal is the source of CO2 for algae growth the loop would not be closed unless the CO2 is captured, By burning biofuels you're still releasing CO2. Now if algae removed CO2 from the atmosphere it may actually be carbon negative. That's because the dead algae can used as a fertilizer and added to farm land soil.
Falcon
The only people who logically wouldn't support a tiered system like this, are those who use far more bandwidth than the "average" person--and who therefore, are currently NOT paying for it. As a comparatively low bandwidth person myself, I prefer a tiered solution, where I just pay for what I use.
You're the second person to say the same thing. And as I told the previous one I am not a heavy downloader yet I hate it that cable companies want to change the rules in the middle of the game and cap bandwidth just because they oversold their services. I don't have much of a problem if they want to start tiering broadband with new subscribers, but not with old ones. And not if they pay back the taxpayers who gave them hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies the buildout broadband. They were given the subsidies to buildout broadband but did not.
Falcon
If you're the kind of user who wants to fight download caps, odds are your the kind of broadband customer that NO ISP WANTS; cable, dsl or otherwise.
Not everyone who does not like caps are heavy downloaders. All I do is surf the web and download email. I don't download HD videos or torrents yet I oppose caps. The only restriction I had when I signed the contract for my broadband was that high speed was not guaranteed. While I wouldn't be happy if my speed was capped I can accept that, what I can not accept is capping my bandwidth, how much I download and upload.
And unless broadband providers buildout broadband then they should give the hundreds of billions of dollars they were given in taxpayer subsidies back to the taxpayers.
Falcon
Somehow geeks can't get it through their heads that providing bandwidth costs money.
And what others can't get in their heads is that broadband providers were given hundreds of billions to buildout broadband and given monopolies but they didn't build broadband out.
Falcon
your company will become stagnant, outdated, irrelevant and surpassed by nimbler, smarter companies.
Unfortunately there's little if any competition. In many places there's only one choice, Cable from one company or DSL from another. A small number number have the choice between cable or DSL. But a lot don't have either choice.
Competition ladies and gentleman, a wonderful thing.
I totally agree.
For some reason it seems like Time Warner Cable didn't get the competition memo.
Time Warner doesn't want competition, they know of they have competition they'd have to compeat and lower their prices and or provide a better service.
Falcon
I bought and paid for my own cable modem to save money...I don't like having to pay rental fees, or the high $$ they charge you that you can buy for significantly less elsewhere.
Generally I agree buying is better than renting and debated about buying my own cable modem instead of renting one. I went ahead and rented mine when I signed up for cable. About a year later I had difficulty connecting so a tech was sent out to diagnose my connection. It ended up the modem died so the tech was able to replace it immediately with a new one. He said it should be faster than the old one, and it certainly seemed to me it was faster. Now if I had bought the modem it would have cost me more than the cost of renting.
Falcon
They do it because the cell phone companies are making money with it. Utilities use metered because electric load is fairly constant and predictable. Even the use of AC is predictable. With a phone though, I can go a month and use about 60 minutes, and then the next one, I can use up 3000 (yay conference calls). I prefer knowing how much I pay ahead of time to getting wildly differing phone bills.
The problem is that unless you get unlimited you'll more than likely still have differing bills. But if you pay for more than you use you're wasting your money.
Falcon
Look, one way or the other, almost every broadband ISP has overbuilt their network and was not prepared for the advent of HD video and streaming services.
If they overbuilt their broadband networks then they should be able to handle HD, HD uses broadband. Fact is is they didn't build enough broadband and oversold their services.
The hard fact is that they cannot (and never could) deliver "unlimited" bandwidth. So either they:
a) Raise their prices considerably on all their "unlimited" plans--sucks for the light users, who are basically subsidizing the heavy users who want to stream HD video and movies
If users aren't heavy user then they don't need unlimited, in which case tiered services make sense. However that's not how the service was sold.
c) Set download caps--sucks compared to the "free ride" heavy users are getting now, but at least it's out in the open with no throttling bullshit (and light users don't get penalized).
Setting download caps is setting limits and is a breach of contract. At least it would be with my service, the only limit with mine was that speed was not guaranteed.
Falcon
you of course left out a few steps in the electric, IE electric power plant 40% efficient, power grid 95% efficient, (not to mention the costly endeavor in land and materials of maintaining the growing need for more grid) and of course the wasted effort of carrying a 800 pound battery instead of a 16 pounds of gas+ 40 pound generator. I am sure you would say something about charging by night or solar, that works as long as only a few cars and eventually... currently renewable energy is taxed over 100% with natural gas/coal needing burned 24/7
And you left out a few steps too, from well head to tank.
As far as renewables being taxed, correctly if I'm wrong but I'll take that to mean they can't provide all the electrical needs. If so, SciAm's article "A Solar Grand Plan" says solar energy can provide 69% of the US's electrical needs by 2050. Another abundant source of energy is wind. The Rocky Mountains along have enough potential wind power to provide the 48 continuous states with electricity. The Wind Energy Resource Atlas of the United States details wind potential in various regions of the US. As a baseload geothermal energy can be used.
Falcon
The problem is, the market does lead to consolidated ownership, in a mature market. That's how that works - the example you give with the phone company - the monopoly was not given to the phone company,
Governments did give phone companies monopolies. They basically said they'll give the companies exclusive rights to the rights of ways if they offered phone service. Even then the government paid for the infrastructure to be built. The universal service program was a tax on phone bills that paid for phone service in sparsely populated areas.
It works like this:
1. Government investment in research/technology/science leads to new opportunity. The internet and computer industries were both born this way.
And neither the internet nor computer industries are monopolies.
The resurgence of the American car industry after WWII was largely a result of this kind of thing too - and the airline industry.
Here I agree. During the war automakers geared up to produce vehicles for the war, then once the war ended they were able to convert to making autos for civilian use. And because the original GI Bill funded the education for returning military personnel the auto makers had people who could afford to buy cars.
3. Industry matures, when one or a few players dominate the market, and things break down (higher prices, falling quality). At this point, there tends to need to be some government intervention
Except it's usually the industries being regulated who want the regulations. Regulations make it harder for competitors to start. A good example today is lawn care. Companies want cities to license and regulate the lawn care industry in an attempt to limit competition.
I agree with most of the second part of your post, but can't help but read that and think, "Well great, but that's not the free market!"
I did say some libertarians would disagree with it. Just as with Democrats and Republicans libertarians are a diverse group with different ideas about government. For the 2004 election there were even Libertarians for Dean as well as a website with that as it's domain name.
Falcon