Besides the fact that you don't need to mess with dangerous line-voltages, this is no different than normal meter fraud. I can't imagine anything other than incompetence being the reason this was not found. A utility buys electricity, or makes it, and the amount they put on the grid is a known quantity and easily measured. If the amount that they are billing for is less than that, something is wrong. You can do the numbers on a per-line or a per-substation basis, possibly even more granular than that. All the major HV lines and substations have their own meters which report back to HQ. A single person stealing electricity is somewhat hard to catch, but if substantial amounts of people got away with this for an extended period of time, someone was not doing their job.
Outlaw speculation... how will the price be determined?
It is actually simpler than you probably think. The price will be determined by the people who buy oil.
Right now, if you have enough money, you can buy a bunch of oil. But, there are various methods by which you can own the oil but never have to actually take delivery of it. Usually by placing futures orders which allow them to take delivery of the oil at a specific date in the future, which can be weeks or months from now. All we have to do to get rid of the excessive speculation is require that any oil purchased has to be delivered to the buyer within a short but reasonable period of time. What is a short yet reasonable amount of time? I'm not sure, but several months from now is too long. Maybe a week would be good.
I would love to see a hedge fund manager have to deal with having to take physical delivery of some oil, or have the contract be void. It may not make speculation impossible, but it would make it a lot harder.
The only downside might be that legitimate fuel users could not hedge against price increases so well. Most airlines hedge on oil prices since one of their largest operating costs is fuel. However, any price increase would be related to an actual supply/demand problem and not Rich Uncle Pennybags manipulating the market.
Unlike a proper bookies, Wallstreet pays out more money that it receives, so banks around the world place bets on these derivatives in order to make money.
Maybe I don't follow this completely, but I take issue with this. Wall street is basically revenue neutral. For every winner there is a loser, and for every dollar in, that money has to come from somewhere because no wealth is created.
You can argue that value is created, because you can buy something which you value but which somebody else doesn't value so much. The net result of that is an increase in value. For example, suppose I have a Kitkat bar and you have a Hersey bar. I hate Kitkats (in this example anyway) and you don't like Hersey bars. If we had to assign a value to the bars we had, it might be $0.10 each bar, because that might be the price we would pay for candy bars we don't like. But, I happen to love Hersey bars, and you like Kitkat bars. So we trade and the value is increased. I might happily pay $1.00 for a Hersey bar, and similarly you might value Kitkats at $1.20. However, the assets are the same. If they were worth $0.75 before each before, that is still what they are worth.
I don't agree that all this derivatives shenanigans increases either value or wealth. For anybody betting on a derivative, someone must be betting against it. And it doesn't increase value because often the person betting for something doesn't realize that someone else has silly derivatives and/or is actually influencing the company to make sure their derivative pays out. There is no value-increasing trade. That, I think is why we are in the mess we are in.
There's one more shift in their business too. In the 1990's, the industry (not including independents) signed a lot more artists and pushed a lot more albums. Since then, they have been trying to reduce the number of signed artists and push what I would call "manufactured" musicians. Less artists, but more blockbuster albums seems to be the prevailing business model.
In high school (late 90s, early 2000s) I wrote a report which found strong correlations between the reduction of artists and the reduction of revenues.
I would try to dig up some modern sources for that kind of data but I need to be somewhere this morning (gym in 26 minutes etc).
Out of interest, how much money is Foxconn sitting on? You mention Apples pile of cash, but Apple doesn't have a contract with these workers - they have a contract with Foxconn, and Foxconn is the employer. How much profit is Foxconn diverting from the workers pockets into its own? How much more could Foxconn pay the workers from the current contract revenue?
I believe this is also the responsibility of Apple.
The way I heard it, Apple goes into their suppliers and asks to see their books. They figure out how much the supplier needs to make a small profit, and that's all they get. If the supplier wants to make a larger profit, or if inflation means their previous profit margin has dissapeared, they are basically forced to lower costs since Apple won't play ball and may switch suppliers. As far as the supplier is concerned, Apple behaves very much like Walmart and would happily run them into the ground economically.
I suspect that the most common cause, however, is 2). Certainly, in the decade or so that I've been in full-time employment, I've come across quite a few offices where the work could be handled within contracted hours, but where the nature of the workplace culture meant that people were "padding" their working day; making tasks take longer than needed, or spending lots of time browsing the web in the afternoon. It's particularly noticable that workplaces like this seem to prize "being at your desk late in an evening" over "being there early in the morning". In part, I blame the shift to open-plan offices for this - there can be a "walk of shame" factor to leaving the office when your colleagues are still at their desks.
This is a huge problem in Japan. The who country things this way, and takes it to extremes that most workers in the US can only imagine. They even have a word for "death by overworking", and in many places, when 5PM comes, NOBODY gets up to leave. You would expect one person out of an open office plan of over 100 people would leave early, but nobody does. I wondered why this was, then I learned that in our Yokohama office, the various white-collar unions (engineering, IT, etc) ask the workers to stretch out the work and stay late because otherwise it would look bad for the union. The blue-collar people are often looked down on, but they have an 8 hour day.
There are a number of other problems related to that also. If you work past the last train, some Japanese companies will pay for a taxi back to your home. I have heard stories of taxi's keeping small refrigerators full of beer in the car and giving it to the passengers, and then just driving around town on the company dime.
Because this doesn't account for job familiarization and training. In my field, it takes over a year for an electrical or mechanical engineer to get familiar with our computer systems, the products we sell, where to get information, how our products work and how to fix them, etc. If you give him overtime, it suggests that that person gets results and is someone you want to keep. If you burn him out with overtime you have lost that investment and have to start all over with someone new who may or may http://developers.slashdot.org/story/12/03/16/1252220/bring-back-the-40-hour-work-week#not get results. Plus recruiting and hiring have their own costs, which can be substantial.
Because officially, Canada is on the metric system. In reality though, they run a mixed bastardized metric system similar to the US, but leaning towards metric instead of English unit.
Want some pizza Canada? You're probably getting a 12" pizza because Canada has pizza pans designed for the US market
How about a beer to go with that? You're getting a Pint (probably) because like the US, Canada has a large number of people with English/Irish heritage. One guy told me "The day I start drinking beer in liters is the day I stop drinking beer"
And in Engineering? It may be mixed there too. I talk with engineers in Canada somewhat regularly and they frequently convert my metric dimensions into inches. I'm not sure why this is- the machine was made in Japan so most dimensions are a nice round number in mm. Maybe their tooling and measurement equipment is US-style.
Count me in for four at least for my own house, and as many for gifts for Christmas.
What are you waiting for? You can get the Novo 7 advanced II for $130, or the Ramos W6HD for $144 right now. Both have capacative 7" touch screens with multitouch. Both run Android 4 Ice cream sandwich. The only difference with the Asus one is the brand name and the slightly-higher resolution screen compared with the Ramos. $200-$250 is "I gotta think about it" money. Under $150 falls into "compulsive buy" for some people.
The simple solution is get yourself a USB / livecd type distro. Don't touch the hard drive..
I agree, but you don't need a livecd. Livecd's have a lot of disadvantages when it comes to speed. For a while, I was using 2 hard drives, swapping them when I needed change between work and play. It only takes a couple minutes, and you aren't endangering the sensitive data on your work hard drive. You can keep the drives totally separate. The only problem I had was keeping the "other" drive physically safe. My "play" hard disk was an SSD so no problem there. But the "work" hard drive failed after a few months because it was not being transported in a shockproof way.
Does that include the costs of owning a car also? The costs of ownership are high-
1. At least 10,000 USD amortised over a period of perhaps 10-15 years to purchase a car. You can purchase a used car, but it will last a less amount of time.
2. Lubricating oil, coolant, filters.
3. Tires.
4. Insurance. Even if you buy a cheap used car and don't do any maintenance, you can't avoid this in most countries without risking large fines or other penalties.
5. Brakes
6. other miscellaneous repairs and maintenance
How does public transport compare including all that? The unfortunate thing is that there are very few places in the US where you can get by without a car. In Europe, I would expect the situation is a little better. In Japan, you would have to be crazy to even own a car in most parts of Tokyo and Yokohama. The public transportation is excellent and land is at such a premium, parking spaces there cost more than some apartments I have lived in.
We sign contracts now for 4 years to go to college?
It is not a real contract but it is effectively one. Most colleges are dicks when it comes to transferring credits. They often won't accept credit from other colleges, and when they do, they often count the credit as "humanities elective" or "free elective" or some other BS. The result is that when you change schools, you are usually throwing away all the work you did before. The "escape clause" is pretty unfavorable to the student, as it were.
I tried to transfer once as a junior (2 years completed) to a comparable school 50 miles away in the same state. The schools even have some joint initiatives and research. They would have effectively made me a freshman again had I gone through with it.
Another one is SC Johnson (which is not the same company). One visit to their headquarters (free tours of the Frank Loyd Wright building) was all I needed to know that they are a long-term company that treats their employees very well. They are the Google of cleaning products. Unfortunately, you can't buy their stock because they are aren't listed and are family owned.
Maybe we should go back to the era of family-owned corporations, if that is possible. Companies like Standard Oil and US Steel might have been ruthlessly monopolistic (some would say evil), but they didn't trade tomorrow's profits for a profit today.
And while 2001 is a fantastic movie, comparing it to the other movies in question, it's not even close. It's like making the equivalent of an NIT tournament in College Basketball. No, if a Sci-Fi movie cannot stand on it's own against the other top movies, it's not worthy of a "best movie" award.
The winner of the Oscar and the Golden Globe that year for best picture was Oliver. Nobody has ever asked me if I saw Oliver. Nobody has ever told me I should watch that movie. 2001 became the classic. That isn't even just my opinion. 2001 is on the National Film Preservation Board registry. Oliver, while it may be a good movie, was mostly forgotten after 1969.
You can argue about these awards actually choosing the best picture or not. But they don't seem to be choosing the memorable movies that become classics in many cases.
Thanks for the video. I saw one of these on a jobsite (a steam turbine jobsite, so the use of this strange looking thing was not obvious) and had no clue what it was.
I think you are ignoring the distribution costs, which are not trivial. The distribution fee is a significant part of my utility bill. It means that Solar or a small wind turbine doesn't have to be compeditive with the efficiency and cost of retail electricity at all. It could be miserably inefficient actually. But if the generation cost is cheaper than the utility's generation+distribution fees, then it may be financially viable.
There are lots of things where, if you're willing to pay more and take a more traditional approach (e.g., leather instead of high-tech fabrics), you can buy local. For example, it is easy to buy all your furniture from a local craftsman/woodworker - but the price will not even be remotely like what you'd find at Wal-mart.
Often the initial price will be higher, but the total cost of ownership is lower. My father has a set of bookshelves that he built himself when he was in his 20's. Now he is over 60 and the bookshelves have held up through countless moves and heavy books sitting on them for decades. I don't believe they even had cheap bookshelves 40 years ago, but I know for sure that if I bought Ikea/Walmart bookshelves now they would not last as long as that.
Last year I bought a Weber (American made) charcoal grill. It was a few dollars more than the cheap chinese grill but the metal is thick and the paint is a high quality enamel. It is going to last a long time, but people buying grills might think twice about the higher price.
Things are being made cheaper and cheaper everyday. I have a coworker who recently worked at an automotive safety testing company and according to him even the high end (BMW/Mercedes) manufacturers are getting rid of the real leather seats in favor of fake stuff. Only high end models get the real leather. Fewer and fewer companies make quality products every year.
Shareholder often keep their shares for only (fractions of) seconds
The advent of higher and higher speed trading has diluted the word "shareholder" and "stockholder". A person who owns the share for a very short period of time is not really a shareholder, although they meet the dictionary definition. They are a speculator. Someone who holds the share over a long time period is a shareholder. Such persons should want the company making long-term decisions that benefit the company both now and in the future
Some people are joyous to get the free pittance offered to them in "compensation". Others sit in airports, sometimes for days, waiting for flights.
This often isn't a nefarious thing. The last time I took a bump, I got a $400 voucher (I believe this is the minimum required by the government for most flights) and they put me on a direct flight instead of having a layover somewhere else. I got home sooner than I would have otherwise, and I have tons of miles so I sold the vouchers for $300 cash.
Some modern plants use super-critical "steam", and the water never really boils.
Sure it boils. Supercritical steam is at a pressure where the density of water and the density of the steam are the same. It means that you need to force the circulation of the water since density won't make the bubbles rise. But rest assured that liquid water is turning into a gaseous form.
The ROI goes straight into big pharma. Paying for condoms and pills for a single couple over 40 years is probably $20,000
I think you may be overestimating that a little bit. A 24 pack of condoms every week only adds up to around $20k between a woman's puberty and menopause. That's a pace that very few (if any) couples can match. Birth control pills are more than 40 years old now. If ever there was a cheap pill, it would be that one. If it were allowed to be OTC, it would be even cheaper (as Zyrtec and various other prescription to OTC medicines have shown).
Meanwhile, an uncomplicated normal vaginal delivery starts at $15k. Add a couple complications and you can easily reach $30k or more. Per kid. Plus all the other medical costs that come with kids- routine medicines, doctor visits, etc. If a kid really has something wrong with him, the costs can skyrocket.
Insurance companies have people on staff that try to manage costs. If they can spend $20k to save $40k, they will do it. Big pharma is a powerful force, but don't forget that the medical system in the US is a 3-party system, which includes doctors, insurance companies, and big pharma.
Don't forget also that in a major accident, there may be other costs involved besides simply replacing the vehicle. Property damage might have occurred, towing fees, car rental fees, etc add up. In some municipalities you are billed a significant amount of money for fire department response to an accident. If someone decides to sue you, it can push costs into the hundreds of thousands of dollars fairly easily. And your insurance will cover most of this depending on your coverage.
I hate paying the monthly fees, but I don't have the net worth to have $100,000 in a bank account for the day when someone decides to sue me because they ran a red light and got paralyzed. Few people do, and those that do probably want insurance to protect their assets.
I have a Progressive Snapshot device plugged into the ODB port on my wife's car. After a month of driving with it, they gave us a 30% discount (the largest discount under the program). My wife drives infrequently since she is unemployed, and apparently drives safely when she does drive. My coworker also has a Snapshot device and is saving 20%. The only downside is that it has a habit of draining batteries. We were carrying jumper cables for a while and couldn't figure out why the battery kept testing good but was always run down.
The snapshot device does NOT have a GPS. It takes ODB data only and tracks vehicle speed. Because it does not have a GPS, it doesn't really know if you are speeding. I would not have signed up for a GPS device.
For us, the discount adds up to almost $200 a year. $200 I don't have to spend on insurance is $200 I can do something else with. My only regret is that our other car is a 1989 and can't participate in the program since it has no ODB port. However, the insurance on that is so low anyway it doesn't matter that much.
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Besides the fact that you don't need to mess with dangerous line-voltages, this is no different than normal meter fraud. I can't imagine anything other than incompetence being the reason this was not found. A utility buys electricity, or makes it, and the amount they put on the grid is a known quantity and easily measured. If the amount that they are billing for is less than that, something is wrong. You can do the numbers on a per-line or a per-substation basis, possibly even more granular than that. All the major HV lines and substations have their own meters which report back to HQ. A single person stealing electricity is somewhat hard to catch, but if substantial amounts of people got away with this for an extended period of time, someone was not doing their job.
Outlaw speculation... how will the price be determined?
It is actually simpler than you probably think. The price will be determined by the people who buy oil.
Right now, if you have enough money, you can buy a bunch of oil. But, there are various methods by which you can own the oil but never have to actually take delivery of it. Usually by placing futures orders which allow them to take delivery of the oil at a specific date in the future, which can be weeks or months from now. All we have to do to get rid of the excessive speculation is require that any oil purchased has to be delivered to the buyer within a short but reasonable period of time. What is a short yet reasonable amount of time? I'm not sure, but several months from now is too long. Maybe a week would be good.
I would love to see a hedge fund manager have to deal with having to take physical delivery of some oil, or have the contract be void. It may not make speculation impossible, but it would make it a lot harder.
The only downside might be that legitimate fuel users could not hedge against price increases so well. Most airlines hedge on oil prices since one of their largest operating costs is fuel. However, any price increase would be related to an actual supply/demand problem and not Rich Uncle Pennybags manipulating the market.
Unlike a proper bookies, Wallstreet pays out more money that it receives, so banks around the world place bets on these derivatives in order to make money.
Maybe I don't follow this completely, but I take issue with this. Wall street is basically revenue neutral. For every winner there is a loser, and for every dollar in, that money has to come from somewhere because no wealth is created.
You can argue that value is created, because you can buy something which you value but which somebody else doesn't value so much. The net result of that is an increase in value. For example, suppose I have a Kitkat bar and you have a Hersey bar. I hate Kitkats (in this example anyway) and you don't like Hersey bars. If we had to assign a value to the bars we had, it might be $0.10 each bar, because that might be the price we would pay for candy bars we don't like. But, I happen to love Hersey bars, and you like Kitkat bars. So we trade and the value is increased. I might happily pay $1.00 for a Hersey bar, and similarly you might value Kitkats at $1.20. However, the assets are the same. If they were worth $0.75 before each before, that is still what they are worth.
I don't agree that all this derivatives shenanigans increases either value or wealth. For anybody betting on a derivative, someone must be betting against it. And it doesn't increase value because often the person betting for something doesn't realize that someone else has silly derivatives and/or is actually influencing the company to make sure their derivative pays out. There is no value-increasing trade. That, I think is why we are in the mess we are in.
There's one more shift in their business too. In the 1990's, the industry (not including independents) signed a lot more artists and pushed a lot more albums. Since then, they have been trying to reduce the number of signed artists and push what I would call "manufactured" musicians. Less artists, but more blockbuster albums seems to be the prevailing business model.
In high school (late 90s, early 2000s) I wrote a report which found strong correlations between the reduction of artists and the reduction of revenues.
I would try to dig up some modern sources for that kind of data but I need to be somewhere this morning (gym in 26 minutes etc).
Out of interest, how much money is Foxconn sitting on? You mention Apples pile of cash, but Apple doesn't have a contract with these workers - they have a contract with Foxconn, and Foxconn is the employer. How much profit is Foxconn diverting from the workers pockets into its own? How much more could Foxconn pay the workers from the current contract revenue?
I believe this is also the responsibility of Apple.
The way I heard it, Apple goes into their suppliers and asks to see their books. They figure out how much the supplier needs to make a small profit, and that's all they get. If the supplier wants to make a larger profit, or if inflation means their previous profit margin has dissapeared, they are basically forced to lower costs since Apple won't play ball and may switch suppliers. As far as the supplier is concerned, Apple behaves very much like Walmart and would happily run them into the ground economically.
I suspect that the most common cause, however, is 2). Certainly, in the decade or so that I've been in full-time employment, I've come across quite a few offices where the work could be handled within contracted hours, but where the nature of the workplace culture meant that people were "padding" their working day; making tasks take longer than needed, or spending lots of time browsing the web in the afternoon. It's particularly noticable that workplaces like this seem to prize "being at your desk late in an evening" over "being there early in the morning". In part, I blame the shift to open-plan offices for this - there can be a "walk of shame" factor to leaving the office when your colleagues are still at their desks.
This is a huge problem in Japan. The who country things this way, and takes it to extremes that most workers in the US can only imagine. They even have a word for "death by overworking", and in many places, when 5PM comes, NOBODY gets up to leave. You would expect one person out of an open office plan of over 100 people would leave early, but nobody does. I wondered why this was, then I learned that in our Yokohama office, the various white-collar unions (engineering, IT, etc) ask the workers to stretch out the work and stay late because otherwise it would look bad for the union. The blue-collar people are often looked down on, but they have an 8 hour day.
There are a number of other problems related to that also. If you work past the last train, some Japanese companies will pay for a taxi back to your home. I have heard stories of taxi's keeping small refrigerators full of beer in the car and giving it to the passengers, and then just driving around town on the company dime.
Because this doesn't account for job familiarization and training. In my field, it takes over a year for an electrical or mechanical engineer to get familiar with our computer systems, the products we sell, where to get information, how our products work and how to fix them, etc. If you give him overtime, it suggests that that person gets results and is someone you want to keep. If you burn him out with overtime you have lost that investment and have to start all over with someone new who may or may http://developers.slashdot.org/story/12/03/16/1252220/bring-back-the-40-hour-work-week#not get results. Plus recruiting and hiring have their own costs, which can be substantial.
Because officially, Canada is on the metric system. In reality though, they run a mixed bastardized metric system similar to the US, but leaning towards metric instead of English unit.
Want some pizza Canada? You're probably getting a 12" pizza because Canada has pizza pans designed for the US market
How about a beer to go with that? You're getting a Pint (probably) because like the US, Canada has a large number of people with English/Irish heritage. One guy told me "The day I start drinking beer in liters is the day I stop drinking beer"
And in Engineering? It may be mixed there too. I talk with engineers in Canada somewhat regularly and they frequently convert my metric dimensions into inches. I'm not sure why this is- the machine was made in Japan so most dimensions are a nice round number in mm. Maybe their tooling and measurement equipment is US-style.
Count me in for four at least for my own house, and as many for gifts for Christmas.
What are you waiting for? You can get the Novo 7 advanced II for $130, or the Ramos W6HD for $144 right now. Both have capacative 7" touch screens with multitouch. Both run Android 4 Ice cream sandwich. The only difference with the Asus one is the brand name and the slightly-higher resolution screen compared with the Ramos. $200-$250 is "I gotta think about it" money. Under $150 falls into "compulsive buy" for some people.
The simple solution is get yourself a USB / livecd type distro. Don't touch the hard drive..
I agree, but you don't need a livecd. Livecd's have a lot of disadvantages when it comes to speed. For a while, I was using 2 hard drives, swapping them when I needed change between work and play. It only takes a couple minutes, and you aren't endangering the sensitive data on your work hard drive. You can keep the drives totally separate. The only problem I had was keeping the "other" drive physically safe. My "play" hard disk was an SSD so no problem there. But the "work" hard drive failed after a few months because it was not being transported in a shockproof way.
Does that include the costs of owning a car also? The costs of ownership are high-
1. At least 10,000 USD amortised over a period of perhaps 10-15 years to purchase a car. You can purchase a used car, but it will last a less amount of time.
2. Lubricating oil, coolant, filters.
3. Tires.
4. Insurance. Even if you buy a cheap used car and don't do any maintenance, you can't avoid this in most countries without risking large fines or other penalties.
5. Brakes
6. other miscellaneous repairs and maintenance
How does public transport compare including all that? The unfortunate thing is that there are very few places in the US where you can get by without a car. In Europe, I would expect the situation is a little better. In Japan, you would have to be crazy to even own a car in most parts of Tokyo and Yokohama. The public transportation is excellent and land is at such a premium, parking spaces there cost more than some apartments I have lived in.
The real conspiracy is getting everyone on salary to work an extra day for the same pay.
We sign contracts now for 4 years to go to college?
It is not a real contract but it is effectively one. Most colleges are dicks when it comes to transferring credits. They often won't accept credit from other colleges, and when they do, they often count the credit as "humanities elective" or "free elective" or some other BS. The result is that when you change schools, you are usually throwing away all the work you did before. The "escape clause" is pretty unfavorable to the student, as it were.
I tried to transfer once as a junior (2 years completed) to a comparable school 50 miles away in the same state. The schools even have some joint initiatives and research. They would have effectively made me a freshman again had I gone through with it.
Another one is SC Johnson (which is not the same company). One visit to their headquarters (free tours of the Frank Loyd Wright building) was all I needed to know that they are a long-term company that treats their employees very well. They are the Google of cleaning products. Unfortunately, you can't buy their stock because they are aren't listed and are family owned.
Maybe we should go back to the era of family-owned corporations, if that is possible. Companies like Standard Oil and US Steel might have been ruthlessly monopolistic (some would say evil), but they didn't trade tomorrow's profits for a profit today.
And while 2001 is a fantastic movie, comparing it to the other movies in question, it's not even close. It's like making the equivalent of an NIT tournament in College Basketball. No, if a Sci-Fi movie cannot stand on it's own against the other top movies, it's not worthy of a "best movie" award.
The winner of the Oscar and the Golden Globe that year for best picture was Oliver. Nobody has ever asked me if I saw Oliver. Nobody has ever told me I should watch that movie. 2001 became the classic. That isn't even just my opinion. 2001 is on the National Film Preservation Board registry. Oliver, while it may be a good movie, was mostly forgotten after 1969.
You can argue about these awards actually choosing the best picture or not. But they don't seem to be choosing the memorable movies that become classics in many cases.
Thanks for the video. I saw one of these on a jobsite (a steam turbine jobsite, so the use of this strange looking thing was not obvious) and had no clue what it was.
The government doesn't pour $7 million. They dish it out with an eyedropper.
Not that $7 million isn't a lot of money for you and me, but for the US government it is a rounding error.
I think you are ignoring the distribution costs, which are not trivial. The distribution fee is a significant part of my utility bill. It means that Solar or a small wind turbine doesn't have to be compeditive with the efficiency and cost of retail electricity at all. It could be miserably inefficient actually. But if the generation cost is cheaper than the utility's generation+distribution fees, then it may be financially viable.
There are lots of things where, if you're willing to pay more and take a more traditional approach (e.g., leather instead of high-tech fabrics), you can buy local. For example, it is easy to buy all your furniture from a local craftsman/woodworker - but the price will not even be remotely like what you'd find at Wal-mart.
Often the initial price will be higher, but the total cost of ownership is lower. My father has a set of bookshelves that he built himself when he was in his 20's. Now he is over 60 and the bookshelves have held up through countless moves and heavy books sitting on them for decades. I don't believe they even had cheap bookshelves 40 years ago, but I know for sure that if I bought Ikea/Walmart bookshelves now they would not last as long as that.
Last year I bought a Weber (American made) charcoal grill. It was a few dollars more than the cheap chinese grill but the metal is thick and the paint is a high quality enamel. It is going to last a long time, but people buying grills might think twice about the higher price.
Things are being made cheaper and cheaper everyday. I have a coworker who recently worked at an automotive safety testing company and according to him even the high end (BMW/Mercedes) manufacturers are getting rid of the real leather seats in favor of fake stuff. Only high end models get the real leather. Fewer and fewer companies make quality products every year.
Shareholder often keep their shares for only (fractions of) seconds
The advent of higher and higher speed trading has diluted the word "shareholder" and "stockholder". A person who owns the share for a very short period of time is not really a shareholder, although they meet the dictionary definition. They are a speculator. Someone who holds the share over a long time period is a shareholder. Such persons should want the company making long-term decisions that benefit the company both now and in the future
Some people are joyous to get the free pittance offered to them in "compensation". Others sit in airports, sometimes for days, waiting for flights.
This often isn't a nefarious thing. The last time I took a bump, I got a $400 voucher (I believe this is the minimum required by the government for most flights) and they put me on a direct flight instead of having a layover somewhere else. I got home sooner than I would have otherwise, and I have tons of miles so I sold the vouchers for $300 cash.
Some modern plants use super-critical "steam", and the water never really boils.
Sure it boils. Supercritical steam is at a pressure where the density of water and the density of the steam are the same. It means that you need to force the circulation of the water since density won't make the bubbles rise. But rest assured that liquid water is turning into a gaseous form.
The ROI goes straight into big pharma. Paying for condoms and pills for a single couple over 40 years is probably $20,000
I think you may be overestimating that a little bit. A 24 pack of condoms every week only adds up to around $20k between a woman's puberty and menopause. That's a pace that very few (if any) couples can match. Birth control pills are more than 40 years old now. If ever there was a cheap pill, it would be that one. If it were allowed to be OTC, it would be even cheaper (as Zyrtec and various other prescription to OTC medicines have shown).
Meanwhile, an uncomplicated normal vaginal delivery starts at $15k. Add a couple complications and you can easily reach $30k or more. Per kid. Plus all the other medical costs that come with kids- routine medicines, doctor visits, etc. If a kid really has something wrong with him, the costs can skyrocket.
Insurance companies have people on staff that try to manage costs. If they can spend $20k to save $40k, they will do it. Big pharma is a powerful force, but don't forget that the medical system in the US is a 3-party system, which includes doctors, insurance companies, and big pharma.
Don't forget also that in a major accident, there may be other costs involved besides simply replacing the vehicle. Property damage might have occurred, towing fees, car rental fees, etc add up. In some municipalities you are billed a significant amount of money for fire department response to an accident. If someone decides to sue you, it can push costs into the hundreds of thousands of dollars fairly easily. And your insurance will cover most of this depending on your coverage.
I hate paying the monthly fees, but I don't have the net worth to have $100,000 in a bank account for the day when someone decides to sue me because they ran a red light and got paralyzed. Few people do, and those that do probably want insurance to protect their assets.
I have a Progressive Snapshot device plugged into the ODB port on my wife's car. After a month of driving with it, they gave us a 30% discount (the largest discount under the program). My wife drives infrequently since she is unemployed, and apparently drives safely when she does drive. My coworker also has a Snapshot device and is saving 20%. The only downside is that it has a habit of draining batteries. We were carrying jumper cables for a while and couldn't figure out why the battery kept testing good but was always run down.
The snapshot device does NOT have a GPS. It takes ODB data only and tracks vehicle speed. Because it does not have a GPS, it doesn't really know if you are speeding. I would not have signed up for a GPS device.
For us, the discount adds up to almost $200 a year. $200 I don't have to spend on insurance is $200 I can do something else with. My only regret is that our other car is a 1989 and can't participate in the program since it has no ODB port. However, the insurance on that is so low anyway it doesn't matter that much.