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To make electricity cheaper and greener, connect the world's grids

economist.com

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Re: To make electricity cheaper and greener, connect the world's grids

#101

Post by naming_the_user »

danny_codes wrote: post #98
arthurofbabylon wrote: post #5

Time and time again, from one industry to another, the bottleneck in progress remains human, or political, or social organization (whatever you wish to call it). No matter our technological progress since the Industrial Revolution this failure point appears to persist. As my gardening instructor would tell our class: it’s not the features themselves that matter, but the relationships between features that define the…

IMO this is structurally a part of capitalism. Capitalism provides limited avenues for cooperation. If your problem doesn't meet those limits, capitalism can't solve it. This seems to arises because capitalism seeks to maximize a personal reward function, rather than a societal one. A good example is car-dependency. Designing land use around car-dependency has a lot of rather painful externalities. Capitalism doesn't…

The issue with your assessment is that everyone includes the individuals.

The externalities associated with driving are probably -1 utility points for me whereas driving is +20 or even more.

I think that basically what you are saying only makes sense if society includes a bunch of people who do not benefit, when in reality that’s usually a fairly small group (e.g. in the US or UK the small number of homeless).

Re: To make electricity cheaper and greener, connect the world's grids

#102

Post by rickydroll »

danny_codes wrote: post #98
arthurofbabylon wrote: post #5

Time and time again, from one industry to another, the bottleneck in progress remains human, or political, or social organization (whatever you wish to call it). No matter our technological progress since the Industrial Revolution this failure point appears to persist. As my gardening instructor would tell our class: it’s not the features themselves that matter, but the relationships between features that define the…

IMO this is structurally a part of capitalism. Capitalism provides limited avenues for cooperation. If your problem doesn't meet those limits, capitalism can't solve it. This seems to arises because capitalism seeks to maximize a personal reward function, rather than a societal one. A good example is car-dependency. Designing land use around car-dependency has a lot of rather painful externalities. Capitalism doesn't…

Car dpendency is a bad example because it assumes that everyone has the same values and weighs the externalities the same. For me,

- Living in an urban space is a huge negative. - Living in a suburban space is a mild negative. - Living in low-density suburbs is a huge positive. - Driving an electric car is a positive. - Driving an ICE car is a negative. - Riding a bicycle or walking is a positive if my knees aren't acting up. It's a negative if they are.

A more nuanced description of positive and negative externalities would give a fuller picture, but that's a basic assessment of my values.

I think you'll find the same for other examples of externalities. Corporate air and water pollution is a positive for a company (i.e., a company that disposes of waste cheaply). For people in surrounding areas, it's a huge negative. Different values for different populations

Re: To make electricity cheaper and greener, connect the world's grids

#106

Post by NumberWangMan »

naming_the_user wrote: post #101
danny_codes wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO this is structurally a part of capitalism. Capitalism provides limited avenues for cooperation. If your problem doesn't meet those limits, capitalism can't solve it. This seems to arises because capitalism seeks to maximize a personal reward function, rather than a societal one. A good example is car-dependency. Designing land use around car-dependency has a lot of rather painful externalities. Capitalism doesn't…

The issue with your assessment is that everyone includes the individuals. The externalities associated with driving are probably -1 utility points for me whereas driving is +20 or even more. I think that basically what you are saying only makes sense if society includes a bunch of people who do not benefit, when in reality that’s usually a fairly small group (e.g. in the US or UK the small number of homeless).

I think the whole problem with externalities is that even if everyone gains a private benefit from their choice, you can all be worse off due to the externalities.

To take your example, if you have a society of 30 people, each of whom drives, and gains +20 utility for driving, but -1 for each other car on the road, you get a net utility of -9 per person. But if any individual decides not to drive, their utility drops to -29, even as they provide a total benefit of +29 utility to everyone else by choosing not to drive.

It's obviously a lot more complicated than that. You have local externalities (noise, particulate pollution, health issues due to a more sedentary lifestyle, deaths and injuries due to accidents) and global ones (GHG emissions). Using public transport also subjects people to some negative externalities, if crime isn't controlled enough, or if people are noise. And you don't want a place that makes driving hard, but also has crappy public transit -- though usually, crappy public transit is a symptom of car-centric design, in my opinion.

But I think on balance, places where driving is discouraged in favor of other modes of transport are better off, and especially, a world where private automobiles are rarely used is better than a world where most everyone drives everywhere.

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