[PEN-L] Thomas Friedman
I'm told that today's Thomas Friedman column extols decoupling for utilities. It is no surprise that he doesn't know what he;s talking about. Can anyone who gets the column send me a copy? Gene Coyle
Re: [PEN-L] Thomas Friedman
Gene Coyle wrote: I'm told that today's Thomas Friedman column extols decoupling for utilities. It is no surprise that he doesn't know what he;s talking about. Can anyone who gets the column send me a copy? The New York Times / August 22, 2007 Go Green and Save Money By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN Have your eyes recently popped out of your head when you opened your electric bill? Do you, like me, live in one of those states where electricity has been deregulated and the state no longer oversees the generation price so your utility rates have skyrocketed since 2002? If so, you need to listen to a proposal being aired by Jim Rogers, the chairman and chief executive of Duke Energy, and recently filed with the North Carolina Utilities Commission. (Duke Energy is headquartered in Charlotte.) It's called save-a-watt, and it aims to turn the electricity/utility industry upside down by rewarding utilities for the kilowatts they save customers by improving their energy efficiency rather than rewarding them for the kilowatts they sell customers by building more power plants. Mr. Rogers's proposal is based on three simple principles. The first is that the cheapest way to generate clean, emissions-free power is by improving energy efficiency. Or, as he puts it, The most environmentally sound, inexpensive and reliable power plant is the one we don't have to build because we've helped our customers save energy. Second, we need to make energy efficiency something that is as back of mind as energy usage. If energy efficiency depends on people remembering to do 20 things on a checklist, it's not going to happen at scale. Third, the only institutions that have the infrastructure, capital and customer base to empower lots of people to become energy efficient are the utilities, so they are the ones who need to be incentivized to make big investments in efficiency that can be accessed by every customer. The only problem is that, historically, utilities made their money by making large-scale investments in new power plants, whether coal or gas or nuclear. As long as a utility could prove to its regulators that the demand for that new plant was there, the utility got to pass along the cost, and then some, to its customers. Mr. Rogers's save-a-watt concept proposes to change all of that. The way it would work is that the utility would spend the money and take the risk to make its customers as energy efficient as possible, he explained. That would include installing devices in your home that would allow the utility to adjust your air-conditioners or refrigerators at peak usage times. It would include plans to incentivize contractors to build more efficient homes with more efficient boilers, heaters, appliances and insulation. It could even include partnering with a factory to buy the most energy-efficient equipment or with a family to winterize their house. Energy efficiency is the 'fifth fuel' — after coal, gas, renewables and nuclear, said Mr. Rogers. Today, it is the lowest-cost alternative and is emissions-free. It should be our first choice in meeting our growing demand for electricity, as well as in solving the climate challenge. Because energy efficiency is, in effect, a resource, he added, in order for utilities to use more of it, efficiency should be treated as a production cost in the regulatory arena. The utility would earn its money on the basis of the actual watts it saves through efficiency innovations. (California's decoupling systems goes partly in this direction.) At the end of the year, an independent body would determine how many watts of energy the utility has saved over a predetermined baseline and the utility would then be compensated by its customers accordingly. Over time, said Mr. Rogers, the price of electricity per unit will go up, because there would be an incremental cost in adding efficiency equipment — although that cost would be less than the incremental cost of adding a new power plant. But your overall bills should go down, because your home will be more efficient and you will use less electricity. Once such a system is in place, Mr. Rogers added, our engineers would wake up every day thinking about how to squeeze more productivity gains out of new technology for energy efficiency — rather than just how to build a bigger transmission or distribution network to meet the growing demands of customers. (Why don't we think about incentivizing U.S. automakers the same way — give them tax rebates for save-a-miles?) That is how you produce a more efficient energy infrastructure at scale. Universal access to electricity was a 20th century idea — now it has to be universal access to energy efficiency, which could make us the most energy productive country in the world, he added. Pulling all this off will be very complicated. But if Mr. Rogers and North Carolina can do it, it would be the mother of all energy paradigm shifts. -- Jim Devine / In every [stock-dealing] swindle every one knows
[PEN-L] Thomas Friedman parody I wrote
The World is Flattening, But our Metaphorical Tectonics Have More in Store Thomas Friedman New York Times June 20, 2006 At the dawn of the twentieth century, people in the advanced nations lived in global societies. The expansion of capitalism, technology, and political democracy allowed an American company to be sold to financiers in London, with the money received in exchange to be spent on textiles produced in Japan. However, in the twenty first century, individuals truly live global lives. Your typical American citizen can pause his DVD of Amelie to use his Japanese cell phone to call a manager from the Third Italy district to see if the flec-spec command center they ordered for their innovatorium is done being customized. Professor James Kartzengreb, an economist at Columbia University, estimates that interlinkedness among people doubles every three years. We don't have exact numbers on domestic interlinkedness from 1996 Kartzengreb cautions, but adds that the level interlinkedness among Americans and Europeans today probably outweighs that the domestic level among Americans a decade ago. The world is of course flattening, but experts are now realizing that its getting smaller as well. Steve Warmerdam, professor of International Relations at Stanford points out that as the world gets smaller, economic tectonic plates must come into contact with and put stress on each other. The end result must of course be mountains. Does this mean that the earth isn't flattening? Warmerdam disagrees. If we look behind the metaphor, the new mountains arising merely represent shifts in the global economy's commanding heights. While industrial economies were formerly dominated by massive Fordist industries, modern economies now find their dynamism in small, flexible techno-innovatory production sub units. The large masses of semi skilled workers are now replaced by expert technicians. Karl Marx once described the capitalist firm by way of the metaphor of a general leading an industrial army. It is now more appropriate to refer to the most dynamic firms as elite special forces units sub-contracted out to industrial commandos. Of course, the clash of tectonic plates creates Earthquakes. In the 1940s, the legendary economist Joseph Schumpeter coined the term creative destruction to refer to the process of innovation. As new industries are created, old ones are destroyed. It is up to the government to ease this transition. However, the United states government is still wrapped up in the pre-post-industrial world. The only solution is to begin the quasi-privatization of education so today's innovators can teach the technocrats of tomorrow. The late John Galbraith coined the term technostructure, which was appropriate for the immediate post war period with Keynesian policy and Fordist production. However, our literature departments are pioneering the way for the technocrats of the future. They will have to run the technopoststructure. I thus propose the merging of engineering and English departments at our universities. Such is the only way that we can have a government appropriate to our flat, shrinking would with rough terrain.
Re: [PEN-L] Thomas Friedman parody I wrote
I suspect this is a actual Friedman column, Walt, and you're just making it seem like a parody by saying it's a parody you wrote. ;-) I hereby authorize you to use the title, Son of Sandwichman. On 6/20/06, Walt Byars [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The World is Flattening, But our Metaphorical Tectonics Have More in Store -- Sandwichman
Re: [PEN-L] Thomas Friedman parody I wrote
Why not father of Sandwichman? Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University michael at ecst.csuchico.edu Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
Re: [PEN-L] Thomas Friedman parody I wrote
On 6/21/06, Perelman, Michael [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Why not father of Sandwichman? Because: 1. No alliteration. 2. No play on words on a notorious serial (or cereal) killer. -- Sandwichman
Re: [PEN-L] Thomas Friedman parody I wrote
Salami tactics? On 6/21/06, Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 6/21/06, Perelman, Michael [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Why not father of Sandwichman? isn't that former Congresscritter Tom Deli? JD -- Sandwichman
[PEN-L] Thomas Friedman blather
(Check out the reference to the CP of West Bengal declaring tech workers' strikes against the law.) NY Times, June 3, 2005 Op-Ed Columnist A Race to the Top By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN Bangalore, India It was extremely revealing traveling from Europe to India as French voters (and now Dutch ones) were rejecting the E.U. constitution - in one giant snub to President Jacques Chirac, European integration, immigration, Turkish membership in the E.U. and all the forces of globalization eating away at Europe's welfare states. It is interesting because French voters are trying to preserve a 35-hour work week in a world where Indian engineers are ready to work a 35-hour day. Good luck. Voters in old Europe - France, Germany, the Netherlands and Italy - seem to be saying to their leaders: stop the world, we want to get off; while voters in India have been telling their leaders: stop the world and build us a stepstool, we want to get on. I feel sorry for Western European blue collar workers. A world of benefits they have known for 50 years is coming apart, and their governments don't seem to have a strategy for coping. One reason French voters turned down the E.U. constitution was rampant fears of Polish plumbers. Rumors that low-cost immigrant plumbers from Poland were taking over the French plumbing trade became a rallying symbol for anti-E.U. constitution forces. A few weeks ago Franz Müntefering, chairman of Germany's Social Democratic Party, compared private equity firms - which buy up failing businesses, downsize them and then sell them - to a swarm of locusts. The fact that a top German politician has resorted to attacking capitalism to win votes tells you just how explosive the next decade in Western Europe could be, as some of these aging, inflexible economies - which have grown used to six-week vacations and unemployment insurance that is almost as good as having a job - become more intimately integrated with Eastern Europe, India and China in a flattening world. To appreciate just how explosive, come to Bangalore, India, the outsourcing capital of the world. The dirty little secret is that India is taking work from Europe or America not simply because of low wages. It is also because Indians are ready to work harder and can do anything from answering your phone to designing your next airplane or car. They are not racing us to the bottom. They are racing us to the top. Indeed, there is a huge famine breaking out all over India today, an incredible hunger. But it is not for food. It is a hunger for opportunity that has been pent up like volcanic lava under four decades of socialism, and it's now just bursting out with India's young generation. India is the oldest civilization, the largest democracy and the youngest population - almost 70 percent is below age 35 and almost 50 percent is 25 and under, said Shekhar Gupta, editor of The Indian Express. Next to India, Western Europe looks like an assisted-living facility with Turkish nurses. Sure, a huge portion of India still lives in wretched slums or villages, but more and more of the young cohort are grasping for something better. A grass-roots movement is now spreading, demanding that English be taught in state schools - where 85 percent of children go - beginning in first grade, not fourth grade. What's new is where this movement is coming from, said the Indian commentator Krishna Prasad. It's coming from the farmers and the Dalits, the lowest groups in society. Even the poor have been to the cities enough to know that English is now the key to a tech-sector job, and they want their kids to have those opportunities. The Indian state of West Bengal has the oldest elected Communist government left in the world today. Some global technology firms recently were looking at outsourcing there, but told the Communists they could not do so because of the possibility of worker strikes that might disrupt the business processes of the companies they work for. No problem. The Communist government declared information technology work an essential service, making it illegal for those workers to strike. Have a nice day. This is not about wages at all - the whole wage differential thing is going to reduce very quickly, said Rajesh Rao, who heads the innovative Indian game company, Dhruva. It is about people who have been starving finally seeing the ability to realize their dreams. Both Infosys and Wipro, India's leading technology firms, received more than one million applications last year for a little more than 10,000 job openings. Yes, this is a bad time for France and friends to lose their appetite for hard work - just when India, China and Poland are rediscovering theirs. -- www.marxmail.org
