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What is energy, actually? (2011)

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Re: What is energy, actually? (2011)

#231

Post by TeMPOraL »

ckastner wrote: post #70
supernova87a wrote: post #28

Kind of amusing that this idea is posted here on Hacker News, the center of people seeking jobs and companies that are the definition of growth. If you didn’t have growth, you’d all be waiting for your promotion at the power plant when someone dies and frees up a position for you.

> Kind of amusing that this idea is posted here on Hacker News, the center of people seeking jobs and companies that are the definition of growth. But that's the good kind of growth, you see? I'm being sarcastic, of course. The ironic (and to me: annoying) thing about the really vocal moralists is that the concept of self-reflection seems to be entirely foreign to them. The problem is always with other people, and th…

> The ironic (and to me: annoying) thing about the really vocal moralists is that the concept of self-reflection seems to be entirely foreign to them. The problem is always with other people, and those other people just need to change, no matter at what cost.

That's your assumption, and I believe it's pretty wrong. Advocating for changes that go against your own immediate self-interest isn't lack of self-reflection; if anything, it's often a signal of a correctly pointing moral compass.

No man is an island. Rare is the person whose friends and family work in the same booming industry as they do. Even if you benefit from exploiting other people, you might want to that exploitation to cease for the sake of your own life, or the society you live in.

Re: What is energy, actually? (2011)

#232

Post by worldsayshi »

hliyan wrote: post #9

Somewhat tangentially related: I wrote this in a private note to a friend last year. I don't believe this 100%, but the idea is worth exploring in my opinion: 1. Corporations desperately pursue continuous growth, even when they're already profitable, and do so at the expense of the environment, employee welfare and sometimes, the rule of law. 2. Corporations pursue growth because investors demand it. 3. Investors dem…

I think that there is a misconception about cause and effect when it comes to corporate greed.

We tend to think that all companies inevitably pursue monetary growth regardless of other costs. If you look at the average corporation that will likely not be true.

Big corporations tends to be greedy because that's how they got big. Not so greedy companies either don't grow or they get bought up by more greedy companies.

The majority of corporations may not agree with the philosophies of the big ones at all. But the big corporations eat more of the cake. One way to counteract this is to starve the bigger corporations of workforce.

Re: What is energy, actually? (2011)

#233

Post by dmix »

kome wrote: post #13
hliyan wrote: post #9

Somewhat tangentially related: I wrote this in a private note to a friend last year. I don't believe this 100%, but the idea is worth exploring in my opinion: 1. Corporations desperately pursue continuous growth, even when they're already profitable, and do so at the expense of the environment, employee welfare and sometimes, the rule of law. 2. Corporations pursue growth because investors demand it. 3. Investors dem…

you re-discovered or independently discovered the basis marxism, sort of.

Identifying problems != providing a better solution.

Everyone being equally poor hasn't worked in history yet.

Re: What is energy, actually? (2011)

#234

Post by TeMPOraL »

ezzzzz wrote: post #227
pjc50 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you're being downvoted because of the M word, but you have a point; it's very similar to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tendency_of_the_rate_of_profit...

Can somebody explain the stigma regarding Marx on HN? I mean, I get that this a forum for a VC firm but isn't it also a place for academic discussion? It's pretty hard to discuss things like income disparity, automation, etc without a mention.

It's not HN-specific, it's the general culture stigma against Marx bleeding through. And it's not entirely unjustified, because you definitely want to filter out low-effort, thoughtless Marxism.

Re: What is energy, actually? (2011)

#235

Post by zaroth »

lapinot wrote: post #129
BjoernKW wrote: post #88

The title is misleading in that it's not exactly the conclusion the article arrives at. The article has it quite the other way round: Once energy consumption doesn't grow anymore we either need more efficient means of growth (i.e. less energy consumption per growth unit) or we have to forego growth. It's pre-Industrial-Age Malthus all over again: Barring paradigm shifts that allow for more efficient production planet…

> If NRJ/POP becomes stagnant either GDP/NRJ will have to grow rapidly or there won't by any GDP growth - and by extension population growth - anymore. If i'm not mistaken that's a non sequitur. How do you link GDP growth and population growth? Why would an ever growing population even be a goal? > there have always been such paradigm shifts that allowed us to sustain more people with fewer resources No, paradigm shi…

Resource usage per capita has never been higher, because the goal is not to do the same work with less, the goal is always to achieve more with more (or at least the same).

Achieving “the same with less” at a macroeconomic level is actually impossible. Because if you reduce your inputs, you are by definition reducing demand for someone else’s outputs, leading to ultimately less demand for your outputs, i.e. a recession.

The “way out” is for the increasing output to be more ecological harvested, less polluting, and more recyclable than before.

Re: What is energy, actually? (2011)

#236

Post by coldtea »

gpanders wrote: post #204
coldtea wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And sometimes its to the benefit of the environment, the employees and its in accordance with the rule of law. Yes. Sometimes lottery is also the right investment: in the 1/10000000 of cases where you win...

The companies that do exhibit social and environmental responsibility rarely make it into the news, since they don’t support the daily need for outrage or the narrative that Corporations Are Evil. It’s mere selection bias.

>The companies that do exhibit social and environmental responsibility rarely make it into the news,

That's because they're either insignificantly small, or environmental theater (a la Apple).

Re: What is energy, actually? (2011)

#237

Post by coldtea »

nickik wrote: post #224
coldtea wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And sometimes its to the benefit of the environment, the employees and its in accordance with the rule of law. Yes. Sometimes lottery is also the right investment: in the 1/10000000 of cases where you win...

Do yourself a favor and go down the list of every major industrial process and compare its waste stream and environmental impact, its pretty evident that the majority these process are more efficient and less wasteful. Companies make thins more efficient, and thus they impact the environment less.

>Do yourself a favor and go down the list of every major industrial process and compare its waste stream and environmental impact, its pretty evident that the majority these process are more efficient and less wasteful.

Compared to what?

Surely not with not doing them at all...

Re: What is energy, actually? (2011)

#238

Post by antonvs »

kachnuv_ocasek wrote: post #202
deergomoo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've long been of the opinion that the public trading of companies is directly responsible for much of the social injustice we see in the West. As soon as there's a fiduciary duty to maximise ROI, morals go out the window. If you as an officer resist, the collective of shareholders will replace you with someone who will make more money. There's a dissolution of responsibility that comes with the distributed nature of…

There's no legal basis for the shareholders to insist on maximizing ROI: https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2012/06/26/the-shareholder-v...

There's not a legal requirement, but generally people are investing because of the expected returns. That creates a competitive requirement, with people investing most in the most profitable companies. The pressure towards maximizing profit is systemic.

Re: What is energy, actually? (2011)

#239

Post by carapace »

> The term “GDP per energy unit” is nothing else than the energy efficiency of the economy: the more efficient the economic system is, the more GDP is produced with the same amount of energy. In other words, when this term increases, it means that for the same amount of kWh (or BTU!), we can have more furniture, glasses, cars, frozen peas, buildings or coffee machines.

FWIW, i want to point out that this is an often-overlooked leverage point for improving our situation. Our systems today are grossly inefficient. For example, something like 30%-50% of the electricity we generate (okay, transform) is lost in the grid on the way to the consumer. Much of it is lost after that too.

Re: What is energy, actually? (2011)

#240

Post by mcny »

corporate_shi11 wrote: post #225
mcny wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Warren Buffett likes to regularly point out that the Fed's rates act like gravity on stock valuations. The lower the rates, the less gravity. The same is largely true of how housing is affected by the Fed's rates. If you want to absolutely crush housing prices, push Fed rates back up to where mortgage rates are at 15-20% again. What that all really means is, the lower the rates, the more asset valuation inflation o…

What you're describing would completely cripple the economy and raise rents rather than lower them, the opposite of what you hope for. A severe tax on property would simply force property owners to raise rents. This in turn would price people out of the market. The housing stock would suffer as property owners would have no excess funds to make improvements and repairs to property. Building of new property would slow…

> A severe tax on property would simply force property owners to raise rents. This in turn would price people out of the market. The housing stock would suffer as property owners would have no excess funds to make improvements and repairs to property. Building of new property would slow as the market for property deteriorates.

I am not an economist but this implies property owners are leaving money on the table right now. I don't think that is the case. The market already charges as much as renters can afford to pay. There is not much room for rent to go up.

> You also mention government doing many wonderful things with its newfound revenue, but the reality is that government spending is usually wasted on bureaucratic bloat and other inefficient allocations.

I absolutely agree with you on this one. This is why I want as much automation as possible. However, having worked in the private sector, I can assure you bloat and inefficiency happens in both public and private sector. The main difference I think is that things are much more transparent in the public sector.

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