yeah, but don't forget, the privacy implications could be huge... What if my boss simulated my neural network on his pocket quantum computer, finding out how little work I do.
Imagine a world where PHBs can turn their office wall into a window onto any cube
yeah, that got me laughing too! I mean, if they wanted to rob him of his precious privacy ( what do you need it for, at work, anyways?) why not simply remove the walls instead of installing a 100000$ spying mechanisim?
actually, games are part of your real life. What is not real about it? Would you care to explain the difference of 'real' and 'virtual' in terms of perception and cognition? Everything is happening in your brain, and there is no way to be certain that anything in front of your eyes is like you perceive it or 'is' at all. In this light, 'real' as an adjective becomes useless because everything is just as real as everything else. The only useful way to speak about this is in term of 'pops'. How many contexts down are you? But no matter, pop once, you are at work, dealing with customers, your boss, programming whatever. Different context, pop out, pop in, you are with your girlfriend, in her world talking about her issues at work, pop in, pop out, cuddel a little, pop out, go to your computer, pop in, go to slashdot, pop in, pop out, start SL pop in....
Make it easier still. What is real about you posting on slashdot?
You're almost always dealing with companies whose main purpose is to make a profit, not to entertain you
No, they are making profit by entertaining you. Making profit and entertaining/clothing/feeding etc don't exclude each other. It's the other way around instead. Take away the profit and soon you won't be entertained anymore.
So much for actually owning something online.
Yeah, if my car gets stollen and bmw won't give me a new one I didn't actually own it either, right?
Well, I initially thought so too, but in fact, the land can't be generated without limit. Granted it is not as hard and fast as the 'oops, it's the edge of the earth' limit but the fact that each new portion of the maps requires a new server makes land a scare good and so integrates land into the economy.
I call bullshit! What exactly gets 'moved forward'? Clean water, food, medicine consumer technology moves most people forward, in a very individual fashion.
There is no need to view 'mankind' as anything but a species designation, let alone a collective. Even if watching photos from space probes is your favourite past time, it doesn't justify proclaiming it as the be-all and end-all activity for all humans.
I am no scientist, so please forgive. How come the distances between objects seem to be increasing ( space time expansion or so they say) but not their size? What makes matter so special that the space time between molecules is not expanding as well? What makes our perception so special that only the distances between objects we like to observe ( galaxies, stars) increases but not the distances within them?
But, at least in europe everywhere are power customers. So you still would have to put enough windmills in each area to supply the whole of europe and while the costs are prohibitive, you would still have to hope that there really is always wind at any of the locations.
Well uranium could last us a thousand years, just the current process is very wastefull because of fear of weapons grade uranium. Also I heard Thorium, in abundance on earth, could be used with some adjustment. As for the waste issue, basically this is pretty much also linked to the process and eventhough world wide high level waste in 1997 was just 12.000 tons, not to much anyways.
and cost shouldn't be the deciding issue.
Well, at the bottom of the pit, for many people more expensive energy means no energy at all. Also the economic impact of higher power prices are huge as every sector requires it for producing. So actually a price increase manifests it self probalby tenfold.
Well no, because as the amount of wind turbine increases you'll have to build ever more reserve plants, basically you'd have to completely shadow the power output of the windturbines with coal, gas or hydro because you can't just switch on the nuclear reactor in a snap.
So in the then, you end up with 20, 30 coal plants that run sometimes instead of one nuclear that runs all the time and is much, much cheaper.
if you are using resources much faster than
they are created
you are talking millenia! It is very much unfeasable to wait around millions of years for oil to form. Fact is that oil is helping technological progress because it is cheaper than the alternatives allowing for capital accumulation that will be necessary to later find a replacement.
As for iron and uranium your argument is somewhat not well thought through. Uranium is availabe in huge quantities and we only need very little and iron, well it doesn't go anywhere it gets recylced over and over and over again, so what? It's still iron.
Also, about the rape Face it - if you are using resources much faster than they are created, you are engaging in a form of environmental rape.
Rape is appropriat when someone disrespects the human right of someone else in combination with sex. In your methaper who are we raping exactly?
jesus, sorry, I hit 'space' on accident which submitted the form.
To which I respond: The.com bust
http://www.mises.org/freemarket_detail.asp?control =46&sortorder=articledate
basically the boom and bust in the.com era where due to expansion of the money supply by the federal reserve leading to krass overinvestment and skewed profit expectation. Not a free market issue, surely not.
Resources mean different things to different people.
exactly this is a reason for the free market. As resources are limited allocation requirements are conflicting (beautiful view versus hydro dam) requiring a mechanism by which different needs can be coordinated. Now, energy is for most people a bigger, more important need than scenery and until that changes, profits made by creating power will be higher than charging admission from tourists.
requiring environmental impact surveys, and accepting or rejecting the proposed dam based on the results.
More often its more about getting the right check to the right person at the responsible government agency in exchange for 'pollution rights' on others people property.
When it is cheaper to pour waste into the river because your company won't have to absorb all the costs of the cancers and birth defects of the people downriver,
My point exactly! Dirty rivers only became a problem because they cannot be owned, meaning the government ist responsible and can at will assign pollution rights to anyone. Now, were the river privatly owned ( maybe even by many parties )polluting it would be treated the same as if I just dumped my thrash on your front lawn. Libertarians will always emphasize that my rights end on the boundarys to your property.
Nevertheless, the free market isn't ideal.
Depending on ones standards it is. Still, libertarians would claim that the free market is the most ideal at archieving prosperiety, liberty and peace and that any trust put into government and gov regulations is constantly betrayed by the perverse and 'suboptimal' results it produces.
Instead of rationally analyzing the situation, my dog will do the impossible
We are not dogs and we can rationally analyze the situation. Matter of fact, especially people in the energy business are just doing this at the moment. With every cent that the oil prices rises, peoples imagination will be spured by the profits they could make by substituting it or making applications of it unnecessary.
Comming back to the whole oil thing, my theory on how the process will proceed from here is this:
Should it turn out that oil production really is at its end ( which seems unlikely, the first oil crash was predicted at the end of the 19th century), there are plenty of substitues that could replace oil.
Natural gas for heat and powerplants
Methanol and biodiesel for gasoline
uncoventional oil, though not yet of any use, might be processed as to be used in the future. Reserves of this unconventional oil even exceed the original reserves of conventional oil.
I never said, or even implied, that I was in favor of abolishing the free market.
well, market advocates would say you did by implying that it would be benificial to do anything. But I won't even go there because as we will see, this is precisely the source of our conflict.
You've just become a multimillionaire, but what exactly did you do to "earn" it? Not a thing. Yet your newfound wealth has just put you in charge of determining the proper disposition of vast resources.
Well, clearly I won't be drilling for oil though anyways. Shell or Brent will offer to buy this land so that they might extract oil to sell it themselves. And yes, I will get filthy fucking rich but meanwhile what has happend? The million barrels of oil on my land will make an impact on the oil market, enabling millions to buy cheaper oil than previously or at the same price for a longer time. Basically I am trading my oil ( something they, you want) for myriad other goods ( something I want). So quite obviously I have made avialable to people the exact same value that I have become richer.
This is exactly the allocation I was talking about. The high value of the newly discovered oil fields tempt me to realize the profits from them, telling me with force that drilling for oil there is more important to consumers world wide than my previous plan to use this land for farming.
this is just not true! There is ( used to be?) a fucking price cap on electricity in CA so 'they' weren't able to charge more for the same. Essentially your argument conveys nothing more than lacking economic understanding. Forget that 'marginal utility' crap, it's not happening. The vast mayority of shortages comes about due to government interference, against what would happen on the market. Just consider: why is there no shortage on computers, cds, clothes, food, dvd players, cars in the us and why are there serve shortages in north korea? how come *only* heavily regulated sectors in the US suffer those same shortages? There is a common element, but it's not greed. It's naive, make-a-better-world politics that for example prevents power plants to be built in CA.
well, H2O is among the very few ( maybe the only other except N) molecule(s)/atoms that fits in there. So my point still stands: Fundamental atoms like carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen and molecules like C02, O2 or H2O are not suggested when claiming 'unpleasant chemicals'.
Especially not in the context of earths atmosphere where CO2 is
a)'digested' by all plants
b) vented by all animals
The reason I felt it necessary to point that out is that I noticed, slight and somewhat subliminal, how CO2 is ever more portrait as being 'toxic' ( which is not true in the sense that most people understand 'toxic' like snakebite toxic) and actual pollution. Yeah, lets talk about the greenhouse effect but don't make it seem like exhausting CO2 is the same as putting lead in babyfood.
Sorry if I barked up the wrong tree there.
I was wrong on the cramps though, you'd have to replace all nitrogen... sorry again.
But creating plastics efficiently pretty much
demands hydrocarbons. So it's not a matter
of "who gets to decide." Energy is vital, but
it can be generated without using oil. Plastics are vital, but they absolutely require oil.
Yes, but reality is not an rts where some great wise leader knows it all and just assigns resources where he thinks it's necessary. So how do you propose to organize this practically? The way it is now, some people can produce oil, because they own the land where the oil fields are, and offer to sell it to anyone who is willing to pay the price. In my opinion this mechanism is impartial and fair while assuring that a resource gets used most efficiently.
The way you think does not at all fit in with the way the market works. You don't even frame the sentences in terms appropriate to it. Do you really want to abolish the market? Are you really in favour of command economy?
Well, thanks for the nonsense;-)...
"the mind creates meaning, so every decision made by a mind is as good as any other."
I did not say that. I meant to say: just as there is no meaning without the mind ( any will do), a resource is not a resource unless it gets used. This was in relation to a former post crying about how we 'rape the earth [for] resources'. My point was: They are only resources to us, so its totally ok to use them. Smart people use their resources wisely, and
plan their lives in such a way that they don't use them faster than they can come in.
The only organizations that constantly overconsum are governments. this is why I very much advise against any central, state-run energy manangement scheme...
On a global scale, the market penalizes excessive consumption by sharply rising prices. True overcosumption is not possible, you can't eat what is not there.
> But creating plastics efficiently pretty much
> demands hydrocarbons. So it's not a matter
> of "who gets to decide." Energy is vital, but
> it can be generated without using oil. Plastics > are vital, but they absolutely require oil.
Yes, but reality is not an rts where some great wise leader knows it all and just assigns resources where he thinks it's necessary. So how do you propose to organize this practically? The way it is know, some people can produce oil, because they own the land where the oil fields are, and offer to sell it to anyone who is willing to pay the price. In my opinion this mechanism is impartial and fair while assuring that a resource gets used most efficiently.
The way you think does not at all fit in with the way the market works. You don't even frame the sentences in terms appropriate to it. Do you really want to abolish the market? Are you really in favour of command economy?
Well, thanks for the nonsense;-)...
"the mind creates meaning, so every decision made by a mind is as good as any other."
I did not say that. I meant to say: just as there is no meaning without the mind ( any will do), a resource is not a resource unless it gets used. This was in relation to a former post crying about how we 'rape the earth [for] resources'. My point was: They are only resources to us, so its totally ok to use them.
> Smart people use their resources wisely, and
> plan their lives in such a way that they don't > use them faster than they can come in.
The only organizations that constantly overconsum are governments. this is why I very much advise against any central, state-run energy manangement scheme...
On a global scale, the market penalizes excessive consumption by sharply rising prices. True overcosumption is not possible, you can't eat what is not there.
thats the problem! the minute you accept anything scientific as end-of-all truth you are in trouble. We have long since replaced religious dogma with scientific dogma and feel so enlightened. Only that the real accomplishment of the enlightenment was the principle of doubt. Now, we don't do this anymore, do we?
When have you last seen someone critical about climate change or the human influence on it on tv? What happens to people that disagree ( like the bush administration or that björn lomborg guy that was called nazi and heretic).
civilized discourse my ass. We are still fearing deamons and burning witches...
Is it? Sorry, the raping part seemed to me like extracting them at all not just 'using resources intelligently'.
But still, even 'intelligent use' is not something to be mandated top down style. My point being: why should your monitor casing be 'using resources intelligently' and my SUV 'raping resources' ( i don't drive SUVs, btw, but I'll defend the right to drive one for anyone else). Who gets to decide, you or I?
> Look at it like this: we are pumping countless > tons of unpleasant chemicals into the > environment every day. Do you suppose it all > just disappears? Or is it going somewhere, > doing something we don't want?
I think I saw the grandparent write about climate change. Im very sure of that. Now climate change is all about CO2. CO2 or more precisely C as in Carbon is the basis of all life, and O2 is required by almost all life. Also, CO2 has been around in the athmosphere far longer than any primate has been on earth. In fact, CO2 is the reason why earth is as friendly to life as it is. Without CO2, the earth would be approximatly -15C on average. Without CO2, no warmth, no plants, no mamals, no you. Also, were all the CO2 replaced by O2, you'd probably shortly be wondering why you are experiencing the worst cramps of your life before finally dying. So no, C02 is definatly not anmong the 'unpleasant chemicals '
> And that's a reason to rely on oil that is > guaranteed to not be any good in the long term?
Actually my post was intended to lend support for nuclear energy. Especially in central energy creation ( power grid), renewables are, in my opinion, not even real alternatives. The issues I tried to bring up are very real and very much unsolved. A renomated ( even somewhat leftie) weekly here in germany ( Der Spiegel) ran a cover story on wind energy. They described the issues with having to have reserve plants that can balance load differences in a blink of an eye. What most people don't realize is that the power grids input has to match the output almost preciesly. For this reason a horde of statisticans work out detailed models to predict fluctuations in power demand ( an example for the US would be: minutes before the superbowl starts, millions of tvs get switched on at the almost the same instance, requiring activation of sleeping plants to supply the necessary power). It's easy to see how difficult the utilities business is, already. And now imagine wind turbines with added outputs from 0 to gigawatts going on and of as the wind blows and providing energy with powers *everywhere* in that spectrum, distributed in a chaotic fashion.
> Let's harness the nature's powers instead of > raping it's resources.
This really ticks me off regulary! Why the hell do you think it is a resource in the first place? Because WE use it und thus WE gave value to it! The earth, the solar system, the universe doesn't give a shit wether liquified dinos get burned or not *because* 'they' can't. They are just objects, like almost everything else. Meaning does not exist seperated from our mind, and resources aren't unless they get used!
Maybe you should read up on how reserve (coal, for practical reasons) plants have to be kept in standby mode to balance the eratic energy generation by wind. Maybe you should realize that the sun is not always shining everywhere on earth. Maybe you want to imagine how many people do not life near rivers, lakes or oceans. Renewables are not going anywhere...
Slashdot Mirror
yeah, but don't forget, the privacy implications could be huge
Imagine a world where PHBs can turn their office wall into a window onto any cube
yeah, that got me laughing too! I mean, if they wanted to rob him of his precious privacy ( what do you need it for, at work, anyways?) why not simply remove the walls instead of installing a 100000$ spying mechanisim?
actually, games are part of your real life. What is not real about it? Would you care to explain the difference of 'real' and 'virtual' in terms of perception and cognition? Everything is happening in your brain, and there is no way to be certain that anything in front of your eyes is like you perceive it or 'is' at all. In this light, 'real' as an adjective becomes useless because everything is just as real as everything else. The only useful way to speak about this is in term of 'pops'. How many contexts down are you? But no matter, pop once, you are at work, dealing with customers, your boss, programming whatever. Different context, pop out, pop in, you are with your girlfriend, in her world talking about her issues at work, pop in, pop out, cuddel a little, pop out, go to your computer, pop in, go to slashdot, pop in, pop out, start SL pop in. ...
Make it easier still. What is real about you posting on slashdot?
You're almost always dealing with companies whose main purpose is to make a profit, not to entertain you
No, they are making profit by entertaining you. Making profit and entertaining/clothing/feeding etc don't exclude each other. It's the other way around instead. Take away the profit and soon you won't be entertained anymore.
So much for actually owning something online.
Yeah, if my car gets stollen and bmw won't give me a new one I didn't actually own it either, right?
Well, I initially thought so too, but in fact, the land can't be generated without limit. Granted it is not as hard and fast as the 'oops, it's the edge of the earth' limit but the fact that each new portion of the maps requires a new server makes land a scare good and so integrates land into the economy.
I call bullshit! What exactly gets 'moved forward'? Clean water, food, medicine consumer technology moves most people forward, in a very individual fashion.
There is no need to view 'mankind' as anything but a species designation, let alone a collective. Even if watching photos from space probes is your favourite past time, it doesn't justify proclaiming it as the be-all and end-all activity for all humans.
wouldn't this imply that gravitational force would become greater if the expansion slows down or stops?
What? don't tell me its complicated, I know. don't tell me members should be private either.
I am no scientist, so please forgive. How come the distances between objects seem to be increasing ( space time expansion or so they say) but not their size? What makes matter so special that the space time between molecules is not expanding as well? What makes our perception so special that only the distances between objects we like to observe ( galaxies, stars) increases but not the distances within them?
But, at least in europe everywhere are power customers. So you still would have to put enough windmills in each area to supply the whole of europe and while the costs are prohibitive, you would still have to hope that there really is always wind at any of the locations.
Well uranium could last us a thousand years, just the current process is very wastefull because of fear of weapons grade uranium. Also I heard Thorium, in abundance on earth, could be used with some adjustment. As for the waste issue, basically this is pretty much also linked to the process and eventhough world wide high level waste in 1997 was just 12.000 tons, not to much anyways.
and cost shouldn't be the deciding issue.
Well, at the bottom of the pit, for many people more expensive energy means no energy at all. Also the economic impact of higher power prices are huge as every sector requires it for producing. So actually a price increase manifests it self probalby tenfold.
Well no, because as the amount of wind turbine increases you'll have to build ever more reserve plants, basically you'd have to completely shadow the power output of the windturbines with coal, gas or hydro because you can't just switch on the nuclear reactor in a snap.
So in the then, you end up with 20, 30 coal plants that run sometimes instead of one nuclear that runs all the time and is much, much cheaper.
if you are using resources much faster than they are created
you are talking millenia! It is very much unfeasable to wait around millions of years for oil to form. Fact is that oil is helping technological progress because it is cheaper than the alternatives allowing for capital accumulation that will be necessary to later find a replacement.
As for iron and uranium your argument is somewhat not well thought through. Uranium is availabe in huge quantities and we only need very little and iron, well it doesn't go anywhere it gets recylced over and over and over again, so what? It's still iron.
Also, about the rape
Face it - if you are using resources much faster than they are created, you are engaging in a form of environmental rape.
Rape is appropriat when someone disrespects the human right of someone else in combination with sex. In your methaper who are we raping exactly?
jesus, sorry, I hit 'space' on accident which submitted the form.
.com bust
l =46&sortorder=articledate
.com era where due to expansion of the money supply by the federal reserve leading to krass overinvestment and skewed profit expectation. Not a free market issue, surely not.
To which I respond: The
http://www.mises.org/freemarket_detail.asp?contro
basically the boom and bust in the
Resources mean different things to different people.
exactly this is a reason for the free market. As resources are limited allocation requirements are conflicting (beautiful view versus hydro dam) requiring a mechanism by which different needs can be coordinated. Now, energy is for most people a bigger, more important need than scenery and until that changes, profits made by creating power will be higher than charging admission from tourists.
requiring environmental impact surveys, and accepting or rejecting the proposed dam based on the results.
More often its more about getting the right check to the right person at the responsible government agency in exchange for 'pollution rights' on others people property.
When it is cheaper to pour waste into the river because your company won't have to absorb all the costs of the cancers and birth defects of the people downriver,
My point exactly! Dirty rivers only became a problem because they cannot be owned, meaning the government ist responsible and can at will assign pollution rights to anyone. Now, were the river privatly owned ( maybe even by many parties )polluting it would be treated the same as if I just dumped my thrash on your front lawn. Libertarians will always emphasize that my rights end on the boundarys to your property.
Nevertheless, the free market isn't ideal.
Depending on ones standards it is. Still, libertarians would claim that the free market is the most ideal at archieving prosperiety, liberty and peace and that any trust put into government and gov regulations is constantly betrayed by the perverse and 'suboptimal' results it produces.
Instead of rationally analyzing the situation, my dog will do the impossible
We are not dogs and we can rationally analyze the situation. Matter of fact, especially people in the energy business are just doing this at the moment. With every cent that the oil prices rises, peoples imagination will be spured by the profits they could make by substituting it or making applications of it unnecessary.
Comming back to the whole oil thing, my theory on how the process will proceed from here is this:
Should it turn out that oil production really is at its end ( which seems unlikely, the first oil crash was predicted at the end of the 19th century), there are plenty of substitues that could replace oil.
Natural gas for heat and powerplants
Methanol and biodiesel for gasoline
uncoventional oil, though not yet of any use, might be processed as to be used in the future. Reserves of this unconventional oil even exceed the original reserves of conventional oil.
I never said, or even implied, that I was in favor of abolishing the free market.
well, market advocates would say you did by implying that it would be benificial to do anything. But I won't even go there because as we will see, this is precisely the source of our conflict.
You've just become a multimillionaire, but what exactly did you do to "earn" it? Not a thing. Yet your newfound wealth has just put you in charge of determining the proper disposition of vast resources. Well, clearly I won't be drilling for oil though anyways. Shell or Brent will offer to buy this land so that they might extract oil to sell it themselves. And yes, I will get filthy fucking rich but meanwhile what has happend? The million barrels of oil on my land will make an impact on the oil market, enabling millions to buy cheaper oil than previously or at the same price for a longer time. Basically I am trading my oil ( something they, you want) for myriad other goods ( something I want). So quite obviously I have made avialable to people the exact same value that I have become richer.
This is exactly the allocation I was talking about. The high value of the newly discovered oil fields tempt me to realize the profits from them, telling me with force that drilling for oil there is more important to consumers world wide than my previous plan to use this land for farming.
this is just not true! There is ( used to be?) a fucking price cap on electricity in CA so 'they' weren't able to charge more for the same.
Essentially your argument conveys nothing more than lacking economic understanding.
Forget that 'marginal utility' crap, it's not happening.
The vast mayority of shortages comes about due to government interference, against what would happen on the market.
Just consider: why is there no shortage on computers, cds, clothes, food, dvd players, cars in the us and why are there serve shortages in north korea? how come *only* heavily regulated sectors in the US suffer those same shortages?
There is a common element, but it's not greed. It's naive, make-a-better-world politics that for example prevents power plants to be built in CA.
well, H2O is among the very few ( maybe the only other except N) molecule(s)/atoms that fits in there.
... sorry again.
So my point still stands: Fundamental atoms like carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen and molecules like C02, O2 or H2O are not suggested when claiming 'unpleasant chemicals'. Especially not in the context of earths atmosphere where CO2 is
a)'digested' by all plants b) vented by all animals
The reason I felt it necessary to point that out is that I noticed, slight and somewhat subliminal, how CO2 is ever more portrait as being 'toxic' ( which is not true in the sense that most people understand 'toxic' like snakebite toxic) and actual pollution.
Yeah, lets talk about the greenhouse effect but don't make it seem like exhausting CO2 is the same as putting lead in babyfood.
Sorry if I barked up the wrong tree there.
I was wrong on the cramps though, you'd have to replace all nitrogen
But creating plastics efficiently pretty much demands hydrocarbons. So it's not a matter of "who gets to decide." Energy is vital, but it can be generated without using oil. Plastics are vital, but they absolutely require oil.
;-) ... ...
Yes, but reality is not an rts where some great wise leader knows it all and just assigns resources where he thinks it's necessary. So how do you propose to organize this practically? The way it is now, some people can produce oil, because they own the land where the oil fields are, and offer to sell it to anyone who is willing to pay the price. In my opinion this mechanism is impartial and fair while assuring that a resource gets used most efficiently. The way you think does not at all fit in with the way the market works. You don't even frame the sentences in terms appropriate to it. Do you really want to abolish the market? Are you really in favour of command economy?
Well, thanks for the nonsense
"the mind creates meaning, so every decision made by a mind is as good as any other."
I did not say that. I meant to say: just as there is no meaning without the mind ( any will do), a resource is not a resource unless it gets used. This was in relation to a former post crying about how we 'rape the earth [for] resources'. My point was: They are only resources to us, so its totally ok to use them.
Smart people use their resources wisely, and plan their lives in such a way that they don't use them faster than they can come in.
The only organizations that constantly overconsum are governments. this is why I very much advise against any central, state-run energy manangement scheme
On a global scale, the market penalizes excessive consumption by sharply rising prices. True overcosumption is not possible, you can't eat what is not there.
> But creating plastics efficiently pretty much > demands hydrocarbons. So it's not a matter > of "who gets to decide." Energy is vital, but > it can be generated without using oil. Plastics > are vital, but they absolutely require oil. Yes, but reality is not an rts where some great wise leader knows it all and just assigns resources where he thinks it's necessary. So how do you propose to organize this practically? The way it is know, some people can produce oil, because they own the land where the oil fields are, and offer to sell it to anyone who is willing to pay the price. In my opinion this mechanism is impartial and fair while assuring that a resource gets used most efficiently. The way you think does not at all fit in with the way the market works. You don't even frame the sentences in terms appropriate to it. Do you really want to abolish the market? Are you really in favour of command economy? Well, thanks for the nonsense ;-) ...
"the mind creates meaning, so every decision made by a mind is as good as any other."
I did not say that. I meant to say: just as there is no meaning without the mind ( any will do), a resource is not a resource unless it gets used. This was in relation to a former post crying about how we 'rape the earth [for] resources'. My point was: They are only resources to us, so its totally ok to use them.
> Smart people use their resources wisely, and
> plan their lives in such a way that they don't > use them faster than they can come in.
The only organizations that constantly overconsum are governments. this is why I very much advise against any central, state-run energy manangement scheme ...
On a global scale, the market penalizes excessive consumption by sharply rising prices. True overcosumption is not possible, you can't eat what is not there.
thats the problem! the minute you accept anything scientific as end-of-all truth you are in trouble. We have long since replaced religious dogma with scientific dogma and feel so enlightened. Only that the real accomplishment of the enlightenment was the principle of doubt. Now, we don't do this anymore, do we? When have you last seen someone critical about climate change or the human influence on it on tv? What happens to people that disagree ( like the bush administration or that björn lomborg guy that was called nazi and heretic). civilized discourse my ass. We are still fearing deamons and burning witches ...
Is it? Sorry, the raping part seemed to me like extracting them at all not just 'using resources intelligently'. But still, even 'intelligent use' is not something to be mandated top down style. My point being: why should your monitor casing be 'using resources intelligently' and my SUV 'raping resources' ( i don't drive SUVs, btw, but I'll defend the right to drive one for anyone else). Who gets to decide, you or I?
> Look at it like this: we are pumping countless > tons of unpleasant chemicals into the
> environment every day. Do you suppose it all
> just disappears? Or is it going somewhere,
> doing something we don't want?
I think I saw the grandparent write about climate change. Im very sure of that. Now climate change is all about CO2. CO2 or more precisely C as in Carbon is the basis of all life, and O2 is required by almost all life. Also, CO2 has been around in the athmosphere far longer than any primate has been on earth. In fact, CO2 is the reason why earth is as friendly to life as it is. Without CO2, the earth would be approximatly -15C on average.
Without CO2, no warmth, no plants, no mamals, no you.
Also, were all the CO2 replaced by O2, you'd probably shortly be wondering why you are experiencing the worst cramps of your life before finally dying.
So no, C02 is definatly not anmong the 'unpleasant chemicals '
> And that's a reason to rely on oil that is
> guaranteed to not be any good in the long term?
Actually my post was intended to lend support for nuclear energy. Especially in central energy creation ( power grid), renewables are, in my opinion, not even real alternatives. The issues I tried to bring up are very real and very much unsolved.
A renomated ( even somewhat leftie) weekly here in germany ( Der Spiegel) ran a cover story on wind energy. They described the issues with having to have reserve plants that can balance load differences in a blink of an eye.
What most people don't realize is that the power grids input has to match the output almost preciesly. For this reason a horde of statisticans work out detailed models to predict fluctuations in power demand ( an example for the US would be: minutes before the superbowl starts, millions of tvs get switched on at the almost the same instance, requiring activation of sleeping plants to supply the necessary power).
It's easy to see how difficult the utilities business is, already. And now imagine wind turbines with added outputs from 0 to gigawatts going on and of as the wind blows and providing energy with powers *everywhere* in that spectrum, distributed in a chaotic fashion.
> Let's harness the nature's powers instead of
> raping it's resources.
This really ticks me off regulary! Why the hell do you think it is a resource in the first place? Because WE use it und thus WE gave value to it! The earth, the solar system, the universe doesn't give a shit wether liquified dinos get burned or not *because* 'they' can't. They are just objects, like almost everything else. Meaning does not exist seperated from our mind, and resources aren't unless they get used!
Maybe you should read up on how reserve (coal, for practical reasons) plants have to be kept in standby mode to balance the eratic energy generation by wind. ...
Maybe you should realize that the sun is not always shining everywhere on earth.
Maybe you want to imagine how many people do not life near rivers, lakes or oceans.
Renewables are not going anywhere
> massive quantities of radioactive sludge
t e
obviously you just don't know better. High level nuclear waste 1997 worldwide? 12,000 tonnes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_was
Thats practically nothing compared to the amount of energy created and it could be far less if it weren't for nuclear arms control treaties.