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How the U.K. broke its own economy

theatlantic.com

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Re: How the U.K. broke its own economy

#411

Post by smcl »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #408
smcl wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s the time the Conservative Party were voted in and imposed “austerity”. This involved scaling back government spending and scratching their heads wondering why growth is stalled.

"Austerity is the idea that the global financial crash of 2008 was caused by there being too many libraries in Wolverhampton." - Alexei Sayle

It is insane that not only has it lasted multiple Conservative governments and appears to be alive and well under Starmer's Labour, but also that the USA has now decided to embrace it too.

I don't understand it, I thought these guys were all supposed to have studied economics (is that not the "E" in that Oxbridge "PPE" degree they all have) how are they fumbling the basics so badly

Re: How the U.K. broke its own economy

#412

Post by moooo99 »

Manuel_D wrote: post #346
adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's possible (and fairly easy) to build infrastructure that only turns on when there is excess energy

You can see the breakdown of electricity usage here: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/use-of-elect... For residential uses, heating, cooling, and refrigeration are the main uses. For commercial electricity use: computing, refrigeration, cooling, and ventilation. For industrial electricity use: machine drive (lathes, mills, etc.), process and boiler heating, facility heating and cooling, electrochemical…

> For residential uses, heating, cooling, and refrigeration are the main uses.

Heating and cooling can be offloaded into grid peak availability hours relatively easily with the price serving as a reliable trigger. This assumes proper insulation for the most part, but is viable and using the price as an indicator automatically sets up the right incentives. As for refrigeration, the energy use for that in a private household seems to be overstated.

> For commercial electricity use: computing, refrigeration, cooling, and ventilation

For cooling the same applies as for private households, maybe to a lesser extent. The other loads remain pretty static in their demand, but once a commercial operation has a certain scale building out the own battery storage to optimize for purchasing price (assuming a flexible price that reflects spot pricing) may be a viable strategy.

> For industrial electricity use: machine drive (lathes, mills, etc.), process and boiler heating, facility heating and cooling, electrochemical process.

For boiler heating and facility heating and cooling the same applies as for commercial and residential uses. For other energy intense workloads, demand shift is already frequently happening because the ROI is fairly quick. It’s not easy to assess from the outside because you do need an in depth process understanding that you just cannot provide as an outsider. But I have personally witnessed plenty of examples that demonstrate it is well within the realm of possibility

Re: How the U.K. broke its own economy

#413

Post by pjc50 »

byefruit wrote: post #397
pjc50 wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As we can see down thread, people have got into a terrible mess of duelling propaganda and gone mad about wind power. We can have cheap clean energy, it requires a small amount of change, oh no, let's destroy everything instead. I'm going to start suggesting that planning should have a local referendum: approve this set of projects and you'll get cheaper electricity. Disapprove and your bill goes up. Democratic choic…

This has already been proposed by the current government for wind farms: https://inews.co.uk/news/environment/new-energy-bill-discoun... And the switch to zonal energy pricing will likely have a similar effect for other sources of generation.

As a resident of Scotland, I'm looking forward to zonal pricing. It might also balance out the London centric nature of the UK, as I expect it to end up with higher prices.

Re: How the U.K. broke its own economy

#414

Post by devnullbrain »

marliechiller wrote: post #256
tacker2000 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes that’s really funny. Im not sure how you can write an article like this and never even mention it once. Brexit was the most stupid thing a country ever did to itself, and the full effects are just starting to come to the surface now. I dont think the UK will ever fully recover from it.

> Brexit was the most stupid thing a country ever did to itself From an economic standpoint, brexit was indeed a big L, but I dont think brexiteers were largely voting on economic grounds - a point which is lost on most remainers.

I attribute much of our malaise to it being a long time since anything was done on 'economic grounds'. I'd love for us to have a fraction of the desire for capitalist principles that former communist countries have.

Re: How the U.K. broke its own economy

#415

Post by pjc50 »

yodelshady wrote: post #406
blibble wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wouldn't have mattered due to the screwed up energy pricing system, if there's a single watt of electricity in the grid produced by burning gas, we pay for the entire grid output as if it was gas

If there's a single watt demanded by the grid and NOT supplied by gas, or coal or nuclear, because there sure as shit aren't batteries within three orders of magnitude of competitive at TWh scale, the entire grid fucking stalls and dies. At best guess, we can restart it, once. Your renewable energy is worth 0 if it can't meet that need. No other power supply anywhere works on the principle of "yay maybe!". It's not a…

The war is a very strong reason not to rely on imported gas. We've seen that across Europe. Heck, there's a pipeline through the war zone which is surviving because everyone involved depends on it.

Re: How the U.K. broke its own economy

#416

Post by pas »

badgersnake wrote: post #326
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #80

The last government intentionally banned the cheapest source of energy, onshore wind, from being built in England, by making it so that a single complaint could stop a project. I cannot believe this article talks about planning constraints and energy prices and doesn't mention that.

> I cannot believe this article talks about planning constraints and energy prices and doesn't mention that. It doesn’t fit their agenda.

what's their agenda? (honest question, I'm not from the UK/US)

Re: How the U.K. broke its own economy

#417

Post by devnullbrain »

bell-cot wrote: post #3

British economic dysfunction is an old, old story. My favorite quip: "This island is made mainly of coal and surrounded by fish. Only an organizing genius could produce a shortage of coal and fish at the same time." - Aneurin Bevan, British Labour politician, in a speech at Blackpool, 24 May 1945

We have a broken mentality. In the US, they're temporarily embarrassed millionaires. Here, we're temporarily embarrassed landlords. The only ambition that's socially acceptable is a mortgage.

Re: How the U.K. broke its own economy

#418

Post by WalterBright »

smcl wrote: post #349
WalterBright wrote: post #339

> Postwar Britain had been swept up by the theory that nationalization created economies of scale that gave citizens better outcomes than pure capitalism. “There was an idea that if we could rationalize the planning system … then we could build things in the right way—considered, and planned, and environmentally friendly,” ... But the costs of nationalization became clear within a few decades. Central economic planni…

Seems to be working extremely well in China, to be honest.

They've built entire cities that are completely vacant.

Re: How the U.K. broke its own economy

#419

Post by robertlagrant »

Jtsummers wrote: post #179
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #80

The last government intentionally banned the cheapest source of energy, onshore wind, from being built in England, by making it so that a single complaint could stop a project. I cannot believe this article talks about planning constraints and energy prices and doesn't mention that.

> Similarly, in the U.K., any individual who sues to stop a new project on environmental grounds—say, to oppose a new road or airport—generally has their legal damages capped at £5,000, if they lose in court. “Once you’ve done that,” Bowman said, “you’ve created a one-way system, where people have little incentive to not bring spurious cases to challenge any new development.” Not directly stated about wind power, but…

> not low for the average person, but not that expensive either

I think this is very high for the average person.

Re: How the U.K. broke its own economy

#420

Post by milesrout »

rsynnott wrote: post #396
milesrout wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "natural landscape" is a pretty meaningless concept in Britain. Are moors not natural landscapes because they were formed hundreds or thousands of years ago? Is it natural when animals do something but not when humans do it? Or is it natural when hunter gatherers do something but not when agriculturalists do it? Or is it natural when non-industrial people do it, but not when industrialists do it? And why does you…

I mean on that basis you could say that Milton Keynes is natural because humans did it.

I think the point is more that none of it is really "natural". But also yes? We are animals.
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