IMO this is a classic case of underestimating how far manufacturing improvements can get you on the cost scale. You see a promising technology in the lab and it’s hard to imagine a 1 million x reduction in price, yet we see that time and time again as tech gets scaled out.
What’s wild to me is how the US is leaving itself in the dust. How the GOP imagines we’ll be competitive when the rest of the world can produce electricity 10x cheaper than we can is a wonder in itself
Easy: the GOP doesn't care about future competitiveness.
They are currently getting lobbied by oil executives, who are trying to maximize short-term profit while they still can. The wider industry doesn't have the long-term vision to preemptively outlobby them, so the GOP is doing what oil wants.
Dealing with competition in a post-oil world is a problem left for the next generation: the current GOP will be long-dead by then and will have enjoyed the fruits of accepting decades of oil bribes.
Not true, energy is cheap in the US. Politicians rise and fall with energy prices, fossils fuels are still cheaper. America (outside of California which is not governed by the GOP) has some of the cheapest energy costs of competitive countries.
At that point, who really cares? As scale goes down and economies of scale go away, it just becomes an irrelevant novelty. But the actual question is: how much will industrial applications matter.
>What’s wild to me is how the US is leaving itself in the dust. How the GOP imagines we’ll be competitive when the rest of the world can produce electricity 10x cheaper than we can is a wonder in itself
I almost paid < $1USD/gal gas a couple months ago ($1.20 89 octane). My electric is ~ $.12USD/kwh. Gas is just as inexpensive.
I mean where are all the factories making batteries in Europe? It’s not like the US is purposefully preventing battery tech. It’s why all of the government-funded solar companies imploded as well. The manufacturers do not compete
Some people like to say they did, but when you look at the money it was almost all private capital, from big banks and large infrastructure and private pension funds.
That does not make the investment any better. Private capital can be misallocated too.
Not in one year no, but in 5-10 years, certainly. Solar is cheaper than coal in China today and they blew through their capacity targets. I was just there and the EV adoption is phenomenal. The buses, even some heavy trucks are EV.
If this pace keeps up for 10 years I don’t see how methane will be useful in the energy sector. Let’s face it, we’re investing in a dying industry. In 20 years our kids (or grandkids) will laugh at any country burning methane to make electricity.
I feel we need a term for these attempts to paint gambling as something other than gambling. Or just proper enforcement for gambling platforms like "prediction markets". Personally I find it disappointing to see so many people wasting their time on this stuff. I'm sure Coplan, for example, could be a productive member of society, but instead chooses to waste his time on stupid stuff like Polymarket.
Prediction markets perform the valuable function of information aggregation, at least in theory. When there is a financial incentive to make a correct prediction, the market should converge on the probability an ideal observer would assign to the event.
Of course in practice, there are issues like low trading volume, market manipulation, etc. And whether or not a particular market is performing better than, say, super-forecasters or experts in a given field is an empirical question.
That said, it seems a bit excessive to dismiss prediction markets as merely gambling platforms that add no value to society.
1. Iran has frequent large protests that consistently get crushed. So while I assume the vast majority of Americans oppose the Iranian government, it’s hard to get worked up for the 5th, 6th time.
2. The US doesn’t support the Iranian government. We already sanction them. What additional support can US citizens lobby for? In the case of Israel, decreased US support would have a tangible effect. Unclear how increased US support for Iranian protestors would matter.
The US does support the Saudi government, though, and the collective response from the concerned citizens brigade about their relentless 10+ year pulverization of Yemen has been... nothing.
Depends on your goals. If you are the platform then there is nothing to solve: you’re running an illegal gambling website and currently getting away with it. If you are an inside trader you’re also doing well.
It’s not great for the gambling addicts but helping people better themselves doesn’t seem to be a theme in federal policy at the moment
> In almost all cities land has run out, so the only way to actually increase supply is to increase density. That means fewer single-family-homes, and more townhomes, multi-family, condos, and apartments.
Existing property owners can only afford to hold this opinion because land rents are insufficiently taxed. Through some sort of monumental stupidity we decided to tax labor instead of land. In this sense the SFH, “Americans like suburbia” problem is just a function of poor tax strategy. If homeowners were faced with the economic reality of their choices then markets would fix land use by themselves.
More than 70% of the US population lives in a state with state income tax. So I think it's fair to say that "we" tax labor, in general, even if it's not universal.
And regardless, "we" also means the US federal government here, and everyone in the US is subject to US income tax, regardless of which state you live in.
> it's fair to say that "we" tax labor, in general, even if it's not universal
The point is we have a natural difference-in-differences layout, and it doesn’t sustain the hypothesis that taxing labor is the problem (for this effect).
That’s a loophole. Regulation hasn’t caught up to the innovation of non-exclusive licensing deal. Hopefully we’ll get some competence back in government soon-ish and can rectify the mistake
What’s wild to me is how the US is leaving itself in the dust. How the GOP imagines we’ll be competitive when the rest of the world can produce electricity 10x cheaper than we can is a wonder in itself
reply