I'm not disputing anything, but would it have killed arstechnica to include some primary source links to back up their assertions?
Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid
261–270 of 481 posts
Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I am reminded by the perhaps revisionist history but still applicable belief that slavery was really ended by industrialization making abolition economically advantageous and not actually a socially driven movement. (In reality it was certainly a convoluted mixture of the two I'm sure.) More or less. Adam Smith famously wrote that slavery was economically detrimental way back in 1776. It still took nearly 100 years…
> Adam Smith famously wrote that slavery was economically detrimental way back in 1776. It still took nearly 100 years to abolish slavery... Slavery had basically been a thing for all of human history up to that point, and based on my discussions on HN many smart people don't believe a lot of what Adam Smith said. There are still a lot of basic economic ideas that would make people much wealthier that struggle to get…
Slavery was already being abolished in the West when Adam Smith wrote the Wealth of Nations. But what was notable was that Adam Smith was really the first to make a strong case and prediction that it was not just the moral thing to do, but would lead to prosperity.
Adam Smith also differentiated between different levels of slavery - that Roman slavery was different than Serfdom was different from chattel slavery in the US.
It's worth noting that Adam Smith did not think total abolition was possible. One of his concerns about free markets was that people deeply desired control of other people, and slavery would increase as a byproduct of wealth.
Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I am reminded by the perhaps revisionist history but still applicable belief that slavery was really ended by industrialization making abolition economically advantageous and not actually a socially driven movement. (In reality it was certainly a convoluted mixture of the two I'm sure.) More or less. Adam Smith famously wrote that slavery was economically detrimental way back in 1776. It still took nearly 100 years…
> Adam Smith famously wrote that slavery was economically detrimental way back in 1776. It still took nearly 100 years to abolish slavery... Slavery had basically been a thing for all of human history up to that point, and based on my discussions on HN many smart people don't believe a lot of what Adam Smith said. There are still a lot of basic economic ideas that would make people much wealthier that struggle to get…
Ah, the master of bad takes is at it again.
> Slavery had basically been a thing for all of human history up to that point,
Except that of course it wasn't.
> and based on my discussions on HN many smart people don't believe a lot of what Adam Smith said.
And many smart people do.
> There are still a lot of basic economic ideas that would make people much wealthier that struggle to get out into the wild.
Yes, such as the one that wealth is not very good as a context free metric for societal success.
> With that perspective the near-total abolition of slavery in a century seems pretty quick.
You missed that bit about the war. If not for that who knows where we'd be today.
> And we see what happened to the people who tried to maintain slavery over that century - they ended up poor then economically, socially and historically humiliated.
Yes, they relied on the misery of others to drive their former wealth, but they are not the important people in that story. The important people are the ones that were no longer slaves.
And never mind that many of those former slave owners did just fine economically afterwards, after all, they already were fantastically wealthy so they just switched 'business models' and still made money hand over fist.
Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Adam Smith famously wrote that slavery was economically detrimental way back in 1776. It still took nearly 100 years to abolish slavery... Slavery had basically been a thing for all of human history up to that point, and based on my discussions on HN many smart people don't believe a lot of what Adam Smith said. There are still a lot of basic economic ideas that would make people much wealthier that struggle to get…
Slavery was already being abolished in the West when Adam Smith wrote the Wealth of Nations. But what was notable was that Adam Smith was really the first to make a strong case and prediction that it was not just the moral thing to do, but would lead to prosperity. Adam Smith also differentiated between different levels of slavery - that Roman slavery was different than Serfdom was different from chattel slavery in t…
And effectively it did: many people are kept in their place by the combined pressure points of debt and employment to stay (barely) afloat.
This is of course nothing compared to the cruelty of real slavery but the effect is much the same, a lot of people are working their asses of for an upper class that can ruin their lives at the drop of a hat. That there are no whips involved is nice but it also clearly delineated who was the exploiter and who were the exploited. That's a bit harder to see today.
Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe - a lot of the material wealth of the South was having a lot of land divided amongst fewer people. Enjoying more leisure has a nasty habit of not making people richer in the end. Here's specifically what Adam Smith had to say in the Wealth of Nations: > But if great improvements are seldom to be expected from great proprietors, they are least of all to be expected when they employ slaves for their workmen. The…
> Enjoying more leisure has a nasty habit of not making people richer in the end. Human slavery might be one of the few exceptions to this. People can reproduce and create more people provided they are given the bare necessities of life. As long as you could keep the enslaved under control, you would have new slaves you could constantly sell and they mostly took care of themselves. Honestly it sounds like a great lif…
That's the dream. Except in the minds of those who aim to bring it about you are in some unmarked plot.
Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I am reminded by the perhaps revisionist history but still applicable belief that slavery was really ended by industrialization making abolition economically advantageous and not actually a socially driven movement. (In reality it was certainly a convoluted mixture of the two I'm sure.) More or less. Adam Smith famously wrote that slavery was economically detrimental way back in 1776. It still took nearly 100 years…
[flagged]
> …if you exclude the enslaved…
If you ignore the part that makes you wrong, then you are right.
Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Enjoying more leisure has a nasty habit of not making people richer in the end. Human slavery might be one of the few exceptions to this. People can reproduce and create more people provided they are given the bare necessities of life. As long as you could keep the enslaved under control, you would have new slaves you could constantly sell and they mostly took care of themselves. Honestly it sounds like a great lif…
That's the dream. Except in the minds of those who aim to bring it about you are in some unmarked plot.
Yeah roving bands of murdering robots would be a problem in that scenario. We should be able to keep/maintain our current security and rule of law though.
Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid
#268Earlier quoted context omitted.
Those offshore wind farms are getting completed mostly because they were so deep into development when Trump tried to cancel them, with a ton of sunk costs. So the companies were able to make the decision to go forward because the extra costs of delays and lawsuits were still cheaper than abandoning the build entirely. Future offshore wind farms now need to add in the expected costs and project risks of this sort of…
I hear you, I'm just saying we keep grinding forward. This admin has less than 3 years to go. Nothing stops this freight train, even if they try to slow it down. You can't fix stupid, you can just keep turning the gears to grind it down. > Trump is likely to have delayed off shore wind in the US by at least 4 years, and may be many more. This will cost ratepayers a lot, and set the US behind most other countries in t…
Your comments make me hopeful. Thank you.
Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except that slaves also make new slaves that can be sold. I really dislike this idea that slavery was just a cultural aberration and not economic. For one thing, that lightens the moral stain of slavery adjacent activity, most notably colonialism and the exploitation of the colonies. This never went away. Economic colonialism exists to this day. We just call it “outsourcing”, “offshoring” and “subcontracting”.
Offshoring generally improves the lives of the people who get the offshored jobs. Usually foreign companies pay more and have better working conditions than the local companies.
Yeah, that's a lie. It's propaganda.
Consider as just one example the lawsuit over child slavery against Nestle, etc [1]. The Supreme Court ultimately ruled that Nestle can't be held responsible for the child slavery even though they have full knowledge of it happening. Go figure. In fact, that's what they pay for.
The whole shipbreaking industry in Bangladesh is incredibly dangerous for those involved and couldn't possibly be done in any developed nation.
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/feb/12/m...
Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid
#270I am reminded by the perhaps revisionist history but still applicable belief that slavery was really ended by industrialization making abolition economically advantageous and not actually a socially driven movement. (In reality it was certainly a convoluted mixture of the two I'm sure.) I hope we are in a similar era with regards to climate change. Surely there's a lot of money to be made in harnessing effectively un…
> With a bit of social pressure we should be able to extinct the fossil fuel industry Taking Europe versus China, California versus Texas, it seems like social pressure is less effective than markets. Let markets build the power source they want to build and lo and behold you get lots of solar and wind and batteries.
Wait, which part is China and which is Europe? Solar didn't win in China because of social pressure, but also not because of market forces. It did win because the CCP made energy independence a political goal.