How do these ideas of energy relate to things like google search and software in general? I know server farms use a ton of energy and I also am pretty sure the human brain is by far the biggest consumer of energy in the human body. Maybe it is just that different forms of value creation take different amounts of energy. I suppose it takes much more energy to create a car than to add a new software user.
What is energy, actually? (2011)
241–250 of 286 posts
Re: What is energy, actually? (2011)
#242Earlier 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…
Normally we use the term "evicted" to imply someone with a lease no longer gets usage of the property; but in this case, these people own the property, so what are you saying happens then? Does the property get given to the government, who then... sells it? I am not complaining (yet), I just want to understand what happens in your mind after the "eviction" as the term isn't clear for me in this context.
> Normally we use the term "evicted" to imply someone with a lease no longer gets usage of the property; but in this case, these people own the property, so what are you saying happens then? Does the property get given to the government, who then... sells it? I am not complaining (yet), I just want to understand what happens in your mind after the "eviction" as the term isn't clear for me in this context.
exactly. the property returns to the market to someone who is willing to pay the property tax.
Re: What is energy, actually? (2011)
#243Earlier 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…
I think "everyone must pay" is even more politically infeasible than setting the tax at 5%, sadly.
> I think "everyone must pay" is even more politically infeasible than setting the tax at 5%, sadly.
This surfaces how little say individuals have in our public policy. I specifically added a clause that would more than offset this tax for a modest one bedroom unit for each individual over the age of eighteen. However, I suspect you are right. However, there will be massive lobbying to kill this proposal before it can even gain any traction. Huge data centers, ware houses, grocery chains, malls, sports stadiums and all these things don't actually pay that much in property taxes and claim that they operate on such razor thin margins that they simply can't exist without a zero percent property tax. These institutions threaten to pull out from our communities if we don't give them rebates on property taxes. Well I'd like to see where they move to when we have a federal property tax!
Re: What is energy, actually? (2011)
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
What dematerialization? Facebook's entire business model is advertising, in other words: getting you to buy things. It used to be Google's and Amazon's entire business model, too, until they diversified into cloud services. It's the exact opposite of dematerialization. Edit: To clarify, I'm not at all against these things. On the contrary. My point is that among those people most vocal in demanding (sometimes radical…
It doesn't really matter whether the people calling for radical change are hypocrites or not. That has no material affect on whether there really is a need for radical change. It does make them rather annoying and gives those resistant to change something to criticise them over but it doesn't alter the facts of the situation.
It affects the discussion of the situation and, by extension, the politics surrounding it, and thereby ultimately the one force that might actually effect the necessary change.
Re: What is energy, actually? (2011)
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's asset inflation, which is where most of the Fed's inflation (eg many trillions of dollars of overvaluation into the stock market) via artificially low rates has gone since the Clinton and Bush years when they helped to spark the stock market bubble (#1, #2 and now #3) and then the housing bubble that way. Then they openly admitted to intentionally reinflating the housing market with their various market interven…
> 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…
Some other assets besides houses and stocks that you see inflation in are education and health...
Re: What is energy, actually? (2011)
#246Earlier 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.
HN is okish at academic discussion, despite the constant risk of "middlebrow dismissal" (as the moderation guidelines call it). But people aren't widely read in certain areas outside STEM.
The legitimate objections to Marx are that he's old - Marxist analysis is like Freudian analysis, there's a big risk of pretending that nothing has happened in the field for a century. And therefore he's not great on the influences of technology; he pre-dates the microchip and the internal combustion engine.
Less seriously, Marxists have a tendency to be annoying jargon-spouters (see Orwell on the subject), and there's a big contingent of fanatical anti-communists who will kick of at the merest mention of his name.
In my long list of round-tuit projects is "see what of Marx can be rescued from the Marxists".
Re: What is energy, actually? (2011)
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
HN is okish at academic discussion, despite the constant risk of "middlebrow dismissal" (as the moderation guidelines call it). But people aren't widely read in certain areas outside STEM. The legitimate objections to Marx are that he's old - Marxist analysis is like Freudian analysis, there's a big risk of pretending that nothing has happened in the field for a century. And therefore he's not great on the influences…
Thanks for a thoughtful answer.
Re: What is energy, actually? (2011)
#248Somewhat 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…
Inflation ensures the status quo is never good enough. This drives technological progress to achieve better efficiencies. Good regulations provide the constraints of the game - maintain clear air / water /power etc...
What you call social justice in reality would cement the status quo and deincentivize technological progress. See the lack of innovation in socialist countries. Great at copying, bad at inventing.
Re: What is energy, actually? (2011)
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I would also like to point out that if there were to be no growth and no inflation (edit: and a static population level!), then the only way to add a dollar to your pile is to permanently make someone else a dollar poorer. Is this really true? Aren't you mixing up production growth with production? Imagine I live alone on my small farm in the middle of nowhere. I produce 20 bags of wheat every year. I eat 19 and sa…
I think more accurate assumption would be that any increase of productivity on your farm (say going from producting 20 to 25 bags per year) would need to be met with a corresponding decrease of productivity somewhere else in the economy - it's the only way to maintain zero growth.
Yes, that is obviously true. But that is not what was claimed in the comment I answered too.
Re: What is energy, actually? (2011)
#250The argument is based on looking a the world as a whole. In developed world energy intensity of GDP is decreasing even when you take into account imports. Post-industrial economies can grow while decreasing energy use. What the author is suggesting is that the developing world should stop growing. I can't agree with that. They need their electricity and washing machines. GDP per unit of energy use (constant 2011 PPP…
You can not get exponential increase of energy efficiency. In some cases you even obviously already know the limits. At one point or another you will always be caught by physical realities; if all your activities are tertiary and highly valuable, great! But what do you eat? How do you heat? How do you move the basic goods to you?
So the best you can get from where we are now are constant factors, either in a direction interesting for us (increase of energy efficiency) or not really interesting (from the energy needs point of view) but much needed and even ineluctable (lowering carbon emission and/or lack of petrol resources) -- and that's because we are already VERY far beyond the negligible impact on Earth point. Classic economic models are based on the approximation, now long gone, that resources are free. Still some are attempting to replace physical activities by virtual ones, to save the models (I don't really understand what's the point, but whatever): this does not hold, because you can not replace everything and worse: even just the essentials are problematic.
So the question is actually not: "[do] they need their electricity and washing machines?"
The question is rather: is there even a physically/politically/etc. reasonable way for everybody to get that; and actually even just to stay durably in a not too much chaotic world.
And frankly this will be a HARD problem to solve. To the point relative peace in the industrialized world is clearly at risk, IMO.