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I think this is a good idea but please consider carefully the energy costs involved in transporting grain. It may have to be a very local project.
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Looking at ugly houses
Please justify this. Who is forcing you to look at ugly houses? Do you have a right to be surrounded by rainbows as far as the eye can see? Centralized fiat currencies. Please justify this. How are you forced to use fiat currency? |
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No the system hates free. Taxes are based on profit. Profit is based on monopoly. Monopolies are thus encouraged and then regulated and taxed.
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There are videos on YouTube. Basically you need a lot of computers to make it worthwhile, especially things like processors and memory. Gold is on the connectors of older processors and RAM chips. Depending on what you have you probably want to extract any silver as well. Copper probably wouldn't be worthwhile -- stripping magnet wire is difficult. Small transformers can probably be sold on e-bay.
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First of all, like many of you, I am a Libertarian. I believe that force is the sole and ultimate societal ill, and that identification and elimination of force is the key to creating a more just and productive world. Along those lines, I think it's consistent to say that the economic manifestation of force is the concept of "negative externality". A negative externality is simply a cost or harm that is imposed on others without their consent. Furthermore, and just as a technicality, since I do not think it is consistent to attribute any inherent value to goodwill (goodwill is just as much force as ill-will) I ignore positive externalities and do not believe that they are capable of offsetting the cost of negative externalities also without explicit consent. I'd like to perform a little exercise in this thread. I'd like to crowdsource a list of all of the negative externalities that exist in the world, in order of global impact. For a refresher or for those new to the subject, some discussion of externalities: http://www.auburn.edu/~johnspm/gloss/externalityhttp://economics.fundamentalfinance.com/negative-externality.phpSo, please, help add to the list. You can 1) add an item to the list, 2) separate an existing item into two or more items, or 3) re-order items in the list. Please provide justification for your addition or change. - air pollution
- water pollution
- traffic
- noise pollution
- monetary inflation
- regulatory transaction costs
- taxes
- infectious diseases
- littering
- corporate liability shields
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Based on your English and the fact that you know a man named Toni, I'm guessing your military training was something like this. |
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Wait so your house had cable hooked up when you moved in so you just kept paying the bill?
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I'm really only interested in energy production; all the rest is stamp collecting. But these are my thoughts on the tech in the video, in the order in which they appear:
Window Solar Cells
Low efficiency, limited materials, and difficult to scale up production
All of the windows in all the buildings on Earth would amount to about 100 Watts / person
Not insignificant but probably not worth the cost
Space Solar Power
Require 10 km^2 receivers?
Huge risk of failure
High energy costs of launch
Limited materials
Will only really be feasible once space mining / manufacturing is cost effective
Geothermal
All of the potential geothermal energy in Iceland:
20 TWh / year == 2,281,591,050 watts == 0.25 watts / person
About one LED light bulb
Requires good sites
Deep drilling is energy intensive and risky
Ocean Thermal Energy / Organic Rankine Cycle
This is interesting and I'm actually currently looking into this
Wave Power
Looks like lots of concrete and steel
Doesn't last long in saltwater
Requires lots of energy to produce / poor EROEI
Floating Wind Farms
Haven't done the EROEI on these but it is questionable
Could have potential though
In General
These are huge machines that require lots of skilled human labor to build
And usually they don't scale down
In a RBE, how do you convince skilled workers to build them for free?
Giant Vertical Axial Wind Turbines
Even bigger machines
Require extremely good sites -- coastal with high winds and no picky neighbors
Hydrocarbon Fuel Cells
Useful on a small scale for peak power production
That Bloom guy is lying about exponential growth in efficiency
He's also lying about 'sand' being the basis of the tech
There are probably some limited materials required
Hydrocarbons are better used as transport fuel than for electricity
Prices tell us this
In an RBE we would have no price signals
Co-gen has been used for a while and is cheaper on large scales
Prices tell us this too
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I hardly see how you can come to that conclusion from his post.
Sorry if that sounded harsh but it was actually more of a hypothetical than an accusation. But it does need to be pointed out that Austrians explicitly re-define and shift terms in order to justify the notion that all value exists solely in terms of immediate human preference. On the other hand, I finally finished that video and he waits until the final two minutes to deliver the punchline: "It (Mengerian analysis) is not about explaining long run prices... what prices will tend to be after all adjustments take place in the market." |
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The US is a republic, meaning that it is comprised of a limited set of public resources that are commonly owned and governed separately from private resources. These common resources are managed democratically, via elected representatives. So, while I think the idea of more direct democratic control of the US is a great idea, please don't confuse it with direct democratic control of all private resources in the US.
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If you get free electricity and free water, but you live on a cruiseship, hydrogen is pretty much free, while you need to pay to get more iron (you got only a limited amount of it avaiable for extracting from the ship itself).
If I live on a cruise ship and I get free electricity, I can extract iron from seawater for free. Or, I can fuse my free hydrogen into iron. I would have an infinite amount. As to Austrian economists, "utility" is a loaded term that implies usefulness to humans. So, if you've been brainwashed into believing that "value" has no meaning, fine. But I prefer to use terms according to their colloquial meanings. |
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If apple trees were a pest and destroying your solar array, then no.
"No" what? Your assertion has nothing to do with the value of apple trees in relation to one another, but the value of apple trees relative to solar panels. If for what ever you produce you need carbon dioxide but not carbon, than carbon is worthless to you and its dioxide is more valuable. It is possible to make carbon dioxide from carbon. In fact, it is possible to make carbon dioxide from *only* carbon, and to do so profitably. Regardless, I probably should have said instead that one ton of carbon and oxygen in 1:2 molar ratio has more intrinsic value than one ton of carbon dioxide. Also the value is relative to places, 1 liter of water in a rain forest worth nothing, the same liter of water in a desert worth whatever the seller wants to ask for it. Subjective "value" to humans perhaps, but not intrinsic value. |
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Yeah well obviously I was assuming identical apple trees.
Two ounces of gold have more intrinsic value than one ounce of gold.
A ton of carbon has more intrinsic value than a ton of carbon dioxide.
A ton of hydrogen has more intrinsic value than a ton of iron.
A ton of iron has more intrinsic value than a ton of iron oxide.
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Two apple trees have more intrinsic value than one apple tree.
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That video is metaphysical hogwash. Value is only subjective when it is arbitrarily bound up with separate concepts such as human work and action. Intrinsic, objective value exists irrespective of humans altogether. The fact that Austrian (or any other) economics has no connection to physical reality doesn't mean that everything is inherently subjective.
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There are publicly available sources of random data produced by quantum hardware generators.
One problem with using a public source of random data is that anyone with sufficient resources to attack your code would probably have already thought of this idea and would be able to check against it pretty trivially. Using the Bitcoin network for key distribution is a recipe for disaster.
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Worldwide debt stands at trillions of dollars. What resources does this amount reflect? Human resources. There are more than enough resources available to provide for all people. We can harness the abundant natural renewable sources of energy to power machines that can produce abundant sources of food, clean air and water, and products necessary for a high standard of living. Okay, what resources are available that are not being utilized? What sources of renewable energy, and what technologies, can be used to power machines like cars and steel mills for example? How high of a standard of living can your ideal society produce given current technology? Is it something along the lines of India/China or more like Western Europe? |
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You see inflation is good because without it no one would have incentive to produce centralized failure-prone easily-monopolized technologies that they can then sell to central banks hurf durf.
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Along those lines, I'd like to know what constitutes a "resource". Is it just raw materials? Refined materials? Produced goods? Services?
And if it includes goods and services, then how do you propose to produce them in abundance? Forced labor? Zero-point energy generators?
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