On Mon, Jul 17, 2006 at 03:41:43PM +0100, Ashish Gulhati wrote: > By definition, if we're running low on energy, the price per unit is > going > to go up, dramatically. Plenty of profit there without state meddling.
No, you're not listening. The price is volatile. The investments required are enormous. This is a case where markets don't work at all well. They start working when you're removing volatility by artificial means, such as e.g. making a fossil tax ratchet. That way, the price can only go up, not down. > >If you look at how oil is made from oil shale > > You mean, of course, only how it is currently made. New tech and > market pressures have this uncanny way of coming up with more > efficient and cheaper ways to make stuff, y'know. You're still not listening. The stuff is a solid diluted by inert matrix, underground. Getting it out takes energy input. That's what the steam is for. Your only other options are in situ gasification (doesn't work, see inert matrix, which bloats), or removing it by mining. Get it? There are no other options. > Also, oil shale is just one example energy source (as is oil itself). > There are plenty of others. There are not very many fossils others. There's gas, which is exploding in price, and there's coal. The deeper coal is, the more energy you need to get it out. To make liquid fuel out of coal you need Fischer-Tropsch. To warrant investment in very large Fischer-Tropsch plant you must first remove the oil/gas volatility, to make the bet for investors a safe one. I also must object that you're only mentioning fossils. We live in a world of free energy, but so far we're too dumb to make a really cheap thin-film PV array with enough durability to ROI many times over lifetime. I genuinely hope that these crazy times where there's not enough polycrystalline silicon production to meet PV demand will be a thing of the past, soon. > >I agree -- just expect the free market to deliver the goods. > >You need to artificially (by regulations, taxes) fix the > > For one, once you start "artificially" (i.e. coercively) start > "fixing" stuff, > that is no longer a "free" market in any sense. For another, it's Precisely. You can use external forcing to create artifical incentives, which the market itself fails to deliver. The state can create new markets, because it's the biggest player. It is also the only player with the nuclear option. > totally > unnecessary and wrong-headed. That's not an argument, that's an opinion. > Private companies are perfectly capable of looking into the future > far more realistically than the state, and of working on tech that will > give them a competitive edge many years in the future. Most major Sorry, you're wrong again. The reality has proved you wrong many times. There are some regimes where markets don't work well. This is one of them. > tech progress so far has happened this way. > > >Another place where state comes handy (free market doesn't > >do long-short R&D at all well) is sinking funds into new > >sources, like synmethanol, biomass synfuels, fuel cells, > >water electrolysis, electric vehicles, liquid hydrogen > >jets, and similiar. > > In (somebody's wrongheaded) theory, maybe. In (somebody's > wrongheaded) theory communism is really neat for the peasants, > too. I think Godwin's law is due for a revision. > In practice, almost all useful new tech is privately invented. With In the real universe, not the Ayn Rand universe, most of long-shot R&D is done by the state. I wish it wasn't that way, but unfortunately the private enterprise typically doesn't do long-range shotgut R&D. Probably because it's a really lousy investment. Just as there are no old high-risk traders but lucky fools, there are no companies which keep betting at lousy odds. The state has no such problem. > some notable exceptions, such as WMDs. In practice, the state with > too much looted cash is good for only, as you put it: > > >Of course, instead you've got porkbarrel, random wars, > >etc. Hey, you're still stuck in the ideal universe. In the real world, both the market and the state can and do fail, on a daily basis. -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org";>leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
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