OnToMars
Now on to the making of films!
Member # 621
posted
quote: By that logic, government should mandate the teardown all of our coal power plants right now and rebuild them as nuclear fission reactors, right? And immediately replace all incandescent, flourescent, and CFL bulbs with LED? And perhaps all automobiles and lawnmowers running off of internal combustion should be banned by, say, June 2011.
That is correct.
We went to the moon in nine years through a government mandate, returning more money to the economy than the government spent, to say nothing of the softer returns of prestige, morale, and inspiration.
Or the G.I. Bill, which, in addition to being a worthy reward for the service provided and providing an education to a generation of people, returned $7 to the economy for every $1 the government spent.
Sometimes, government spending is more efficient and more effective than the free market.
Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
Sometimes, but not terribly often. Certainly not often enough to support socialist nonsense like what you're proposing.
In 2006, Americans spent a billion dollars to buy two billion light bulbs, and only a small percentage of those were CFLs.
Let's assume that those two billion light bulbs constitute the entire photonic arsenal of the United States, and are to be replaced by government action. Thus, they must purchase and distribute two billion LED light bulbs.
Clamoring for votes, the lawmakers cave and actually distribute LED bulbs which put out the correct amount of light for a 40w bulb. That means the cheap 10-buck LED bulbs I have, which claim 40W equivalence but actually only put out the equivalent of 10W, are too cheap. The awesome ones are about $50.
There's also the question of manufacturing capability and such, so the whole argument about economies of scale for a crash Apollo LED program are in doubt.
All things considered, let's say that they'll still end up at 10-30 bucks each. And, since not all of those 40w-equiv light bulbs will be able to work alone, let's say that they actually end up having to make, oh, 2.5 billion of them, conservatively.
So, you've basically committed the US government to spending 25-70 billion just on the light bulbs alone, not to mention the extra money required to convert/build factories, distribute the bulbs, solve all the various logistical challenges, and so on. Given normal governmental procedures, earmarks, and so on, this would probably end up as a multi-hundred-billion-dollar program ... we'll call it 200 billion for ease. In other words, it might be equal to NASA's entire budget during 1962-1972, which in 2007 dollars was $262 billion.
And then what? When they're done, nobody's gonna need bulbs for awhile, so all of the sudden those jobs are gone and the manufacturing capacity goes back down to crap, until the day comes when the bulbs start going out again and demand outstrips supply.
Sounds wasteful to me. And for what? Residential electricity consumption for lighting purposes is estimated at 215 billion kWh for 2007. That's 24.5 gigawatts. The United States produces about a terawatt, or 1000 gigawatts.
So let's say we cut those lighting gigawatts by 90 percent, so it's 2.5 gigawatts for residential lighting. What of it? You've saved 22 gigawatts, or two percent of our total electrical capacity. At a billion dollars each, we could have simply built 70 or so 300MW power plants for that, reducing electricity prices, and not only saved $100 billion in direct cost but also allowed the LED technology to mature and slowly, properly get adopted.
Further, in 2004, the price per kWh was 7.57 cents. So for residential lighting, that's 16 billion dollars, or 53 dollars per person in the United States (at 300 million). Dropping it to 1.6 billion dollars assuming the 90 percent LED power reduction, that's saving 48 dollars per person per year.
Even if we multiply that by ten for all the lightbulbs outside of residential contexts, that's 480 bucks per person. Guess what that comes out to? 144 billion. Or, in other words, not enough to justify what you've proposed.
Not to mention the fact that you're proposing the discarding of two billion perfectly good light bulbs. How wasteful.
(Oh, and then there's the cost of revolution when Americans get fed up with this socialist horsecrap, but I don't know how to calculate that.)
-------------------- . . . ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
OnToMars
Now on to the making of films!
Member # 621
posted
quote:Originally posted by Guardian 2000: socialist nonsense like what you're proposing.
Hey now, no need to get disparaging.
I should make a correction, or at least a distinction I failed to make the first time around:
We shouldn't replace everything with LED's; we should replace incandescents with more efficient alternatives, which include not only LEDs, but also CFLs and probably other alternatives that I'm not aware of.
But you are correct that replacing light bulbs would be a comparatively smaller effect for the effort undertaken, which I imagine is why you picked that example in the first place.
Funding a national initiative to replace coal firing plants with cleaner alternatives, building clean and efficient regional and inter-regional railways, and upgrading our electrical infrastructure would all produce far more bang for the buck, in addition to already being necessary undertakings.
quote:(Oh, and then there's the cost of revolution when Americans get fed up with this socialist horsecrap, but I don't know how to calculate that.)
If you truly believe that's a possibility, please go prepare for it and remove yourself from a political process you see as doomed anyway. And let the rest of us get on with actually solving the massive problems facing us.
-------------------- If God didn't want us to fly, he wouldn't have given us Bernoulli's Principle.
Registered: Jun 2001
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OnToMars
Now on to the making of films!
Member # 621
posted
I guess we're done here, then.
-------------------- If God didn't want us to fly, he wouldn't have given us Bernoulli's Principle.
Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
We have not yet begun. But I'm taking your advice and not wasting time talking politics to someone who believes the political absurdities you believe.
Centrally planned economies and societies are the natural enemy of freedom and individual liberty. Though, on paper, they have the potential to be more efficient than capitalism, the truth on the ground is that they never are.
It takes a combination of ignorance of the history of death and misery in centrally planned economies and a good bit of arrogance about one's preferred political leaders to believe that our central planning could succeed when all others failed, and this time without any citizens shoeless or starving to death as usually occurs under centrally planned economies.
Give a capitalist a dumb idea and he can make himself poor and starved. Give a government a dumb idea and it can make everyone poor and starved.
So while you go vote for hopey-changey stuff and doom everyone to failure while "actually solving the massive problems facing us" (because your philosophy does that oh so well, which is why all the problems you guys campaigned on in the 60's are still here), I hope that reason will again rise in the Republic and we'll at least slow this 'progressive' train enough to avoid the real crash.
-------------------- . . . ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
posted
You know I find it interesting how the right, for it's criticism of "progressives" and "socialists", doesn't offer an alternative to the policies of the left. They don't even push for tax cuts as aggressively as they used to, it's just opposition for the sake of opposition. Sure it may win them votes in the short run, and sure they might derail the train of failure that is liberalism, but it seems like they're all for maintaining the status quo, when it's obvious the status quo isn't cutting it anymore (well unless your part of that lucky 1%).
Registered: Feb 2005
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OnToMars
Now on to the making of films!
Member # 621
posted
quote:Originally posted by Guardian 2000: But I'm taking your advice and not wasting time talking politics to someone who believes the political absurdities you believe.
Again, political absurdities that won World War II, sent a generation of GI's to college, and men to the moon.
quote:Centrally planned economies and societies are the natural enemy of freedom and individual liberty. Though, on paper, they have the potential to be more efficient than capitalism, the truth on the ground is that they never are.
Tyranny is the natural enemy of freedom. That tyranny can come from unchecked corporate interests as much as it can from unchecked government ones.
quote:It takes a combination of ignorance of the history of death and misery in centrally planned economies and a good bit of arrogance about one's preferred political leaders to believe that our central planning could succeed when all others failed, and this time without any citizens shoeless or starving to death as usually occurs under centrally planned economies.
This presumes that I'm proposing the same as what has come before, which I'm not. This also presumes that we don't have citizens shoeless or starving to death right now, which is incorrect.
quote:So while you go vote for hopey-changey stuff and doom everyone to failure while "actually solving the massive problems facing us" (because your philosophy does that oh so well, which is why all the problems you guys campaigned on in the 60's are still here), I hope that reason will again rise in the Republic and we'll at least slow this 'progressive' train enough to avoid the real crash.
You should thank me for working so hard to elect Obama president, since the market seems to like his hopey-changey stuff quite a bit.
Registered: Jun 2001
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WizArtist II
"How can you have a yellow alert in Spacedock? "
Member # 1425
posted
There is nothing that the government can give you that it has not first taken away from you.
-------------------- There are 10 types of people in the world...those that understand Binary and those that don't.
Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:So while you go vote for hopey-changey stuff and doom everyone to failure
I never thought I would see someone on Flare actively choosing to quote Sarah Palin. Don't stop. Don't ever stop! It's like the pre-war sound bites of the Falloutverse; "Vote for me, and together we will make the world go faster!"
Registered: Aug 1999
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OnToMars
Now on to the making of films!
Member # 621
posted
quote:Originally posted by WizArtist II: There is nothing that the government can give you that it has not first taken away from you.
This statement makes no sense. The government gave us the Apollo program. It did not take the Apollo program from me (or my parents) prior to that.
-------------------- If God didn't want us to fly, he wouldn't have given us Bernoulli's Principle.
Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
1. Leftism did not win World War II. It was the cause.
2. Centrally planned economies are tyranny. The difference between corporate tyranny and government tyranny is that in the first case, you have someone to turn to for help.
3. You are proposing exactly what has come before. Policy nuances do not alter the inherent arrogant stupidity of central planning and 'investment' by government.
It's a gamble with the money of all, obtained at threat of the barrel of a gun, and the people pulling the lever are not in a position of risk, especially since they can also pull the trigger.
4. Your claim Obama is a success on the grounds of Wall Street is self-contradictory, since you guys also blame Wall Street for all the nation's ills. Please make up your mind.
From my perspective, the market is half-broken anyway. Markets function only as well as the information known to and the rationality of the members of the market. You'll recall, of course, that the market was doing splendidly while the left blocked those who would regulate Fannie and Freddie after the left interfered in the housing market with all the hopey-changey stuff in the first place, and while a separate gambling market between banks took shape so they could still try to make money.
See what central planning does?
And right now, despite the US rushing headlong into unprecedented debt, you point to the market in its current state and say all must be well. Seriously?
5. The government took Apollo because it took the money to fund it from you . . . you can't possibly be so obtuse as to not see that.
Americans largely supported that on a national pride and Cold War defense level, since in the 20th Century spaceflight (especially manned) was such a costly endeavor that only deep pockets like governments and militaries could hope to afford the startup costs, and we had to make sure the communists did not get unchallenged access to space.
Apollo was not a pattern to follow, in other words, but a required compromise action in regards to capitalist principles versus national defense and international diplomacy. And in that regard, it really kicked ass.*
As we see now, it would've required many more years for fully private space access that truly pays off. And when an American lands on the moon from an American corporation, that's really when to cheer.
(*This is why Obama's cancellation of the return to the moon is evidence of weakness, because it's just another example of him caving and bowing to China at every turn. China is now what the US once was, and in my opinion if American supremacy is to be maintained it is unwise for us to let them go unchallenged into a Chinese Century.
All that having been said, though, I'd love it if it was a space race between China and a private American corporation. That would be best.
For similar historical references to Apollo, look to the construction of railways and interstates (both with national defense implications) in the United States and similar. Specifically, private railways were being built that were financially feasible, but the US government intervened and created a boondoggle of corruption and waste not seen in the James J. Hill private transcontinental line.)
-------------------- . . . ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
quote:Originally posted by Nim: I never thought I would see someone on Flare actively choosing to quote Sarah Palin.
She's not always the quickest CFL bulb to come on when you flip the switch, but she shines more brightly than many . . . including most of those who would mandate CFLs in the first place.
-------------------- . . . ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
quote:Originally posted by Guardian 2000: 1. Leftism did not win World War II. It was the cause.
Well that's just wrong. If you're going to bring up unrelated subjects, make sure you get them right. World War II occurred for a variety of reasons. There was bitterness and resentment among Germans over the Treaty of Versailles, which forced the country to take responsibility for the war and pay reparations to the allies, weakening Germany's economy. They also had to effectively dismantle their armed forces. The Nazi Party was to play on this resentment and rise to power and BTW, they didn't identify themselves as leftist and in fact actively took part in the removal of leftist groups like socialists, communists, and progressives. The Nazis believed that in order to ensure the survival of their nation, they would have acquire more land and resources to maintain a growing economy, so they began invading and seizing land from neighboring countries. Most of Europe and the U.S. was unwilling to halt Germany's aggressive expansion, since they too felt resentment over the First World War and wanted to avoid another conflict. Eventually the Nazis invasion of Poland forced Britain and France to declare war of Germany, the Soviet Union later joining the fray when Hitler reneged on his non-aggression pact with Russia. In the east, Imperial Japan also felt the need for aggressive expansion in order to obtain natural resources to supply its economy, and found the U.S. to be a threat to its expansion. So the Japanese went on the offensive and attacked the naval base at Pearl Harbor, bringing America into the war.
Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
1. OntoMars claimed leftist political philosophy won World War II. I responded.
2. National socialists fighting socialists and communists (who also dispute one another) is just a case of family squabbling, nothing more.
3. All wars have many causes, but if you don't think the assorted progressivist political philosophies of the day were primary, then I don't know what to tell you.
-------------------- . . . ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
posted
After much loud condemnation....a quiet retraction. . 21st century muckracking to sell papers right before a summit on global warming- William Randolph Hearst would be so proud.
Registered: Aug 2002
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