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Amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it (2017)

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Re: Amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it (2017)

#171

Post by HWR_14 »

pipes wrote: post #133
sgift wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Each time people start asking pointed questions about wealth distribution and the economic system you can almost count down the hours until one of these newspapers makes a "oh, look how much more of x you can get now than before". And I get it. It's great that everyone can have a TV for 1/100 of what it cost in 1950 or whatever, but it does not solve the very obvious issues. People have problems paying rent, they hav…

Until the very recent inflation increase, food has been cheaper than ever. It's been making up less and less of household budgets for decades. https://seekingalpha.com/article/92689-over-the-past-100-yea...

The basket of goods doesn't look random, and I wonder if it was chosen specifically and wrongly to make that point.

Re: Amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it (2017)

#172

Post by seventytwo »

joelfried wrote: post #119

I was all set to read and see whether they took LED manufacturers at their word for how long their bulbs lasted, and it turned out the article's source is nearly 30 years old. Can we update the flair to say 1994, given that the embedded numbers date from that year? Regurgitating the data in 2017 doesn't make the information actually from 2017.

And for LED lights, it’s almost always the ballast circuitry that fails, not the actual LEDs.

LED lighting lifetime needs to be measured as an assembly, not just the LED component.

Re: Amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it (2017)

#173

Post by seventytwo »

p_j_w wrote: post #62
abakker wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are lucky. I’ve personally had a lot of failures. I like that they don’t make heat and are brighter. (And I also like how they can be packed more densely on dedicated lighting circuits than traditional fixtures), but they are definitely prone to early failures.

>You are lucky. I’ve personally had a lot of failures. Or perhaps you're unlucky. LEDs on the whole have longer lives than incandescent bulbs do.

Under lab conditions they do.

Re: Amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it (2017)

#174

Post by bumby »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #165
bumby wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but isn't there value in concentrating wealth to those who you have psychological proximity with? Consider a more dire twist: you have money to pay for a life-saving operation for either your own child or another child on the other side of the world. Are you saying there is should be no personal preference in this scenario? I'm saying there are perfectly reasonable expectations to concentrate that wealth due t…

> isn't there value in concentrating wealth to those who you have psychological proximity with Yes. That's why I said the difference isn't invalid. It's just more like a hidden redistributive tax. In small doses, this is fine and a way democracies repay their patrons. In larger doses, it leaves everyone poor. Too poor to afford a life-saving operation for anyone around.

Ah, I see you point. Sorry it took me awhile to get there :)

Regarding "it leaves everyone poor", how is the case if it's zero sum? It seems like it comes down to how you define your metric of 'poor'. It seems like it presupposes there isn't enough money to go around, so it's better to have a few people rich and the rest destitute, rather than have everyone just be marginally poor.

Or are we getting into productivity incentive territory here?

Re: Amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it (2017)

#175

Post by bombcar »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #167
coryrc wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Freeways, parking lots, commercial skyscrapers at night, storage facilities, etc

From the GP: > millions of uninhabited acres. Is my closet “uninhabited” when I’m not using it? If so, then yes, these are definitely some examples.

I was thinking of all the street lamps on completely empty roads in the middle of nowhere.

Re: Amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it (2017)

#176

Post by _yb2s »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #88

> Back in the prehistoric era a person would have to gather, chop and burn wood for roughly 10 hours a day for six days straight in order to produce the equivalent light of a modern lightbulb shining for about an hour. This feels like a very odd comparison/metric. It doesn't really matter how many lumens/watts it has, I think a better metric is "How much does it take to 'comfortably' light a single room for 1 hour".…

This is why I resent the laws banning incandescent lights. I consider myself an environmentalist, and am very careful about wasting electricity. I love the warm dim light from an incandescent and think it helps me fall asleep... the light from one incandescent dimmed to about 20-40W is all I need after sunset, and all I want. It's like sitting near a campfire. My house is solar powered, and I keep a window open without even heat even in the winter - my utility bills are negative from my solar array.

Yet it is "normal" to create massive light pollution with hundreds of watts of LEDs, heating and lighting an entire house including unoccupied rooms, and nearly everybody has LED lights on the front porch and backyard that they leave on all night long. Pisses me off that lighting and electricity are so cheap that people have no regard for it, and yet my minuscule usage is nowadays categorically illegal /rant

Re: Amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it (2017)

#177

Post by comfypotato »

_yb2s wrote: post #176
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #88

> Back in the prehistoric era a person would have to gather, chop and burn wood for roughly 10 hours a day for six days straight in order to produce the equivalent light of a modern lightbulb shining for about an hour. This feels like a very odd comparison/metric. It doesn't really matter how many lumens/watts it has, I think a better metric is "How much does it take to 'comfortably' light a single room for 1 hour".…

This is why I resent the laws banning incandescent lights. I consider myself an environmentalist, and am very careful about wasting electricity. I love the warm dim light from an incandescent and think it helps me fall asleep... the light from one incandescent dimmed to about 20-40W is all I need after sunset, and all I want. It's like sitting near a campfire. My house is solar powered, and I keep a window open witho…

Just use an LED that produces the same color. They 100% exist.

I agree that incandescent is better than cold LED. A little shopping and consumer research will 100% find you exactly the LED you want.

Re: Amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it (2017)

#178

Post by _yb2s »

comfypotato wrote: post #177
_yb2s wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I resent the laws banning incandescent lights. I consider myself an environmentalist, and am very careful about wasting electricity. I love the warm dim light from an incandescent and think it helps me fall asleep... the light from one incandescent dimmed to about 20-40W is all I need after sunset, and all I want. It's like sitting near a campfire. My house is solar powered, and I keep a window open witho…

Just use an LED that produces the same color. They 100% exist. I agree that incandescent is better than cold LED. A little shopping and consumer research will 100% find you exactly the LED you want.

It doesn't look or feel the same to me. Maybe something to do with CRI (I don't really understand that).

I am not switching to LEDs... It would be wasteful to throw away something that works great and replace it with something new that doesn't work as well. I like incandescent, and my 40 year old reading lamp and a few extra bulbs will last forever running a few hours a night dimmed to ~20W.

Re: Amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it (2017)

#180

Post by badcppdev »

_yb2s wrote: post #178
comfypotato wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just use an LED that produces the same color. They 100% exist. I agree that incandescent is better than cold LED. A little shopping and consumer research will 100% find you exactly the LED you want.

It doesn't look or feel the same to me. Maybe something to do with CRI (I don't really understand that). I am not switching to LEDs... It would be wasteful to throw away something that works great and replace it with something new that doesn't work as well. I like incandescent, and my 40 year old reading lamp and a few extra bulbs will last forever running a few hours a night dimmed to ~20W.

"This is why I resent the laws banning incandescent lights."

and

"my 40 year old reading lamp and a few extra bulbs will last forever running a few hours a night dimmed to ~20W."

You resent the laws although they barely affect you. And it's time for me to take a break from discussion threads.

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