Seeing the issue with the net CO2 emissions of burning every ounce of coal in the ground that's currently known(much less going prospecting for more) would have extremely dangerous consequences for both the economy and people. So phasing out(except where fossil fuels can't be replaced yet, like air travel) has to happen. It has to happen in the next 50ish years, no less.
I don't think Wall Street has learned to account for how fickle website userbases are(how about that slashdot beta?). They have no brand loyalty. And the lack of barrier to entry means that every facebook, zygna, myspace, and yahoo are going to get knocked from the perch and end up in a pile of former stars that have no usage.
It has nothing to do with the products, and everything to do with how existing companies see workers(especially tech workers) as "cost centers". We're kind of reaping the results of a system that views employees as "at will temporary work power" through massive layoffs at the earliest convenience.
It was "Just the cost of doing business" and we weren't supposed to hold it against them, as it concentrated wealth upwards and made peoples' lives more fragile and terrified. You didn't know if you could count on your next check, but you had to live in a housing market that did assume that. No one really wants to be a whim. Or if they are, they'd like to be a whim of their own, at least.
So, pretend that was the point, and debate semantics. Shut up, you're boring. I'm not advocating any particular technology, except a long-term phase-out of fossil fuels.
That's not got a simple answer. You keep assuming I've got some kind of simple approach here. One needs to target tax rates and incentives to balance externalizes, with a mind to slow technological improvement over time. This is not an easy task, but it needs to be done, because some serious shit is on the line. That's all there is here. We have to manage a long-term sustainable plan. And the free market has a terrible history of sorting out these questions.
"Enjoy the benefits of some economic liberalism"!="being neoliberal". You can shut down idiots who are anti-union, pro-corporate psuedofascists, without saying "hey competition on price and private ownership of capital are bad". If one scrolls to the bottom of the article there, you can see that list of criticisms? Every one of those is pretty damned important.
Race-to-the-bottom and casualization of labor are both particularly important problems that lay unaddressed, other than "in theory".
Oh, I see, you meant to imply the entire world is either neo-liberal or like Venezula. That's so stupid a parsing of your statement it didn't even occur to me.
Right, because you can't build hydro, more nukes, and whatnot to stabilize these issues over time. Solar and wind both tend to peak production very near the same time as peak usage. We're pretending solar and wind are the only options because I'm a libby lib lib, right?
No, but we can plan to move further away with more sources over time. I assert that this is a simple idea and that you are intentionally ignoring that.
You understand the point of electric cars is to enable the changeover from fossil fuels at a systemic level, right? The car doesn't care where the energy is coming from, allowing a regulatory framework to change as pragmatic options become available.
(My area's electricity is about 50% nuclear, 15% renewable)
Yes, it's okay to hate thatcher, if you're British. She did terrible fucking things to her own country in pursuit of an unworkable ideology. It'd be okay to hate Stalin this much if you lived under him.
It's the fallout from the "English Major? More like Fry Cook." response to how the economic crisis was screwing recent graduates. People see that and go "I don't want to be like that in 4 years"
Yeah, but the amount of death, destruction, and long term economic cost was lower. This is like saying that the sun doesn't dwarf the earth because a lot of people don't know that.
I'm not trying to make the argument that there are huge biological or innate differences in people. This is intended to communicate a problem(that the education system has since gotten wise to).
When we were taught to multiply in elementary school, the teacher handed out peices of paper with a big grid of all the multiples from 1x1 to 12x12, and we were told to memorize them(and spend all class several days repeatedly, by rote regurgitating rows in the table with quizzes built to emphasize this). I didn't bother. I started seeing patterns in the numbers. Basic stuff. 5*x=half of x with a 5 on the end if x was odd. You know the patterns with 9 too, I'm sure. As a result, I never had trouble with any multiplication, even as multi-digit things started coming. But students who learned by rote, they really got stuck, right at the 3 digit multiplication.
The same problem crops up in middle school pre-algebra. They teach students a series of steps to get from mx+b=n to get to x=(n-b)/m, rather than explaining the goal, and the tools in your toolbox to get there. It was "do these things". So students who spent their study time doing those same steps over and over were simply not prepared for true algebra, and solving quadratic equations, and had to learn from the beginning again.
It's a failure of the teaching process to show that math is an elegant set of interactions of ideas, rather than a process, where the student is just a slow computer. Your or I could replace someone who's only skill is following those simple steps over and over with a simple shell script.
Slashdot Mirror
And who said that we wanted that?
Seeing the issue with the net CO2 emissions of burning every ounce of coal in the ground that's currently known(much less going prospecting for more) would have extremely dangerous consequences for both the economy and people. So phasing out(except where fossil fuels can't be replaced yet, like air travel) has to happen. It has to happen in the next 50ish years, no less.
I don't think Wall Street has learned to account for how fickle website userbases are(how about that slashdot beta?). They have no brand loyalty. And the lack of barrier to entry means that every facebook, zygna, myspace, and yahoo are going to get knocked from the perch and end up in a pile of former stars that have no usage.
It has nothing to do with the products, and everything to do with how existing companies see workers(especially tech workers) as "cost centers". We're kind of reaping the results of a system that views employees as "at will temporary work power" through massive layoffs at the earliest convenience.
It was "Just the cost of doing business" and we weren't supposed to hold it against them, as it concentrated wealth upwards and made peoples' lives more fragile and terrified. You didn't know if you could count on your next check, but you had to live in a housing market that did assume that. No one really wants to be a whim. Or if they are, they'd like to be a whim of their own, at least.
So, pretend that was the point, and debate semantics. Shut up, you're boring. I'm not advocating any particular technology, except a long-term phase-out of fossil fuels.
That's not got a simple answer. You keep assuming I've got some kind of simple approach here. One needs to target tax rates and incentives to balance externalizes, with a mind to slow technological improvement over time. This is not an easy task, but it needs to be done, because some serious shit is on the line. That's all there is here. We have to manage a long-term sustainable plan. And the free market has a terrible history of sorting out these questions.
Because no black market is a bad thing, of course. If the market has demand for hired killers, for example, obviously they should exist.
(The is/should fallacy of free marketism is legitimately scary to me)
"Enjoy the benefits of some economic liberalism"!="being neoliberal". You can shut down idiots who are anti-union, pro-corporate psuedofascists, without saying "hey competition on price and private ownership of capital are bad". If one scrolls to the bottom of the article there, you can see that list of criticisms? Every one of those is pretty damned important.
Race-to-the-bottom and casualization of labor are both particularly important problems that lay unaddressed, other than "in theory".
Oh, I see, you meant to imply the entire world is either neo-liberal or like Venezula. That's so stupid a parsing of your statement it didn't even occur to me.
Right, because you can't build hydro, more nukes, and whatnot to stabilize these issues over time. Solar and wind both tend to peak production very near the same time as peak usage. We're pretending solar and wind are the only options because I'm a libby lib lib, right?
I didn't the GP did. Chill, windbag.
Again, because you say so(in your even simpler world-view, apparently).
Transport 27.5%(2000) 27.3%(2008).
A quarter is a "small fraction"?
No, but we can plan to move further away with more sources over time. I assert that this is a simple idea and that you are intentionally ignoring that.
I'm not going to take advice from someone who uses the term "neoliberal" to mean its literal opposite.
Derp. "Liberals have never considered [obvious point that is a step along the way to goal]" because I say so.
You understand the point of electric cars is to enable the changeover from fossil fuels at a systemic level, right? The car doesn't care where the energy is coming from, allowing a regulatory framework to change as pragmatic options become available.
(My area's electricity is about 50% nuclear, 15% renewable)
Yes, it's okay to hate thatcher, if you're British. She did terrible fucking things to her own country in pursuit of an unworkable ideology. It'd be okay to hate Stalin this much if you lived under him.
You'd be surprised how hard some institutions make it to give them money these days, though.
"Your money for our product? Not without an elaborate contract that serves no real purpose"
No, it was a joke. About how some people aren't quantifiers like us slashdotters have a natural tendency towards.
It's the fallout from the "English Major? More like Fry Cook." response to how the economic crisis was screwing recent graduates. People see that and go "I don't want to be like that in 4 years"
There are two kinds of people, those that try to quantify everything, and an abstract, unclear bunch of other groups.
Yeah, but the amount of death, destruction, and long term economic cost was lower. This is like saying that the sun doesn't dwarf the earth because a lot of people don't know that.
If only that achieved anything.(not sarcasm)
I'm not trying to make the argument that there are huge biological or innate differences in people. This is intended to communicate a problem(that the education system has since gotten wise to).
When we were taught to multiply in elementary school, the teacher handed out peices of paper with a big grid of all the multiples from 1x1 to 12x12, and we were told to memorize them(and spend all class several days repeatedly, by rote regurgitating rows in the table with quizzes built to emphasize this). I didn't bother. I started seeing patterns in the numbers. Basic stuff. 5*x=half of x with a 5 on the end if x was odd. You know the patterns with 9 too, I'm sure. As a result, I never had trouble with any multiplication, even as multi-digit things started coming. But students who learned by rote, they really got stuck, right at the 3 digit multiplication.
The same problem crops up in middle school pre-algebra. They teach students a series of steps to get from mx+b=n to get to x=(n-b)/m, rather than explaining the goal, and the tools in your toolbox to get there. It was "do these things". So students who spent their study time doing those same steps over and over were simply not prepared for true algebra, and solving quadratic equations, and had to learn from the beginning again.
It's a failure of the teaching process to show that math is an elegant set of interactions of ideas, rather than a process, where the student is just a slow computer. Your or I could replace someone who's only skill is following those simple steps over and over with a simple shell script.
Goddammit, you stole the thunder out of so many potentially good posts, fast-acting AC.