5 ms·

I'm not sure about a bureaucratic approach, bureaucracy seems to be limited by a need to conserve the status quo. The more popular approach is a company like Te

by ctack 10y ago

I'm not sure about a bureaucratic approach, bureaucracy seems to be limited by a need to conserve the status quo. The more popular approach is a company like Tesla which seems to be on the verge achieving - or at least sparking - a huge victory over fossil fuels while realising investor returns. The challenge is to identify a cleaner and cheaper way to do something and then disrupting the hell out of the existing field. The guys attempting to grow meat in labs are set to disrupt things when their meat becomes cheaper than slash and burn burgers(it likely already is as the true cost of rainforest loss is externalised - rainforest loss to soya fields that is 70% fed to cattle amounts to the same thing: rainforest loss for meat). Once they're done with meat maybe it is possible to culture high quality wood in a lab. They'd save the amazon rainforest and make themselves and their investors a ton of money. But the patten is there, already laid out. The only role bureaucracy might play will be to get out of the way. To not impede.

TeMPOraL 10y ago
> But the patten is there, already laid out. The only role bureaucracy might play will be to get out of the way. To not impede. It has another potential role to play though: safeguarding the playing field. For each Tesla trying to make the world a better place, there's an Uber, fucking society over for profit. The role of bureaucracy should be to allow the former and prevent the latter.
- arjie 10y ago
  I don't know if you can say that Uber has made the world a worse place. That requires at least a total ordering on Uber's biggest actions and probably quantification of the consequences. If the advent of Uber has resulted in a billion drink deaths not happening but one person making $2 less per hour, it's clear. The other way around is clear too. But as it is right now, you can't assert that as is. You have to bring something more convincing to the table.
- ctack 10y ago
  True, that statement does suffer from overreach. I was stuck in thinking of big government and entrenched players using economic tools to stifle positive disruptors. Of course there is a role for good as well.
- specialist 10y ago
  Yup. Functioning market economy requires a fair and impartial judicial system. Among other things. Freedom Markets™ is a religion, not economics.
matt4077 10y ago
> The only role bureaucracy might play will be to get out of the way. To not impede. That's an incredibly myopic view of reality, and of the history of scientific progress. Bureaucrats eradicated polio and smallpox, invented the internet, space travel, GPS – and actually almost anything important you could think of (if you include public universities and publicly-funded research). They have the power to massively support new technology until it is self-sustaining. There wouldn't be any renewable energy production today without the help of bureaucrats organising massive subsidies that allowed these industries to scale up to competitiveness. With regards to power-consumption, regulation has played a massive role in decreasing energy needs: from fuel efficiency standards to seemingly stupid stuff like standby modes, which used to consume dozens of watts continuously because that was a few cents cheaper to manufacture, and consumers just didn't care. Tesla is a fantastic company. But their best allies are just those bureaucrats and politicians: many countries support electric cars with tax breaks, sane countries have long ago started taxing the externalities of oil consumption, and there are thousands of initiatives on the smallest local level to allow electric cars to compete. Cities create reserved parking with charging infrastructure, or open bus- and taxi-lanes to electric vehicles. Universities have massively invested in the basic research that made not just those cars possible, but also the generation of it's power from non-fossile fuels. Not to mention that (at least in sane countries), public transport and bike infrastructure have probably prevented CO_2 emissions at a rate that's still 3 or 4 orders of magnitude ahead of Tesla.
- lend000 10y ago
  > Bureaucrats eradicated polio and smallpox, invented the internet, space travel, GPS – and actually almost anything important you could think of (if you include public universities and publicly-funded research) I don't think anyone in their right mind would call the purchase of technology from privately funded research at a public university (Polio) to count as bureaucrats innovating, nor would I say that bureaucrats did any of those things, with the exception of space travel which was indeed fully done in-house by NASA. The real innovation that government could bring to environmental issues is consumption-based pollution taxes instead of convoluted, mis-incentivizing mandates like Obama's call for each auto company to each produce one 54 MPG car by 2025. Tesla wouldn't need the bureaucrats if we had a fair, simple, liberty-maximizing set of environmental regulations.
the8472 10y ago
> it likely already is as the true cost of rainforest loss is externalised - rainforest loss to soya fields that is 70% fed to cattle amounts to the same thing: rainforest loss for meat Last time I've read related news those lab-grown muscle cells were supplied with calf blood serum. That makes your sustainability speculation sound more like wishful thinking. I'm sure they're working on that issue, but we're not even close to being able to feed billions with vat-grown meat. And you need to feed that meat with some nutrients too, probably plant-derived ones. So on a per-calorie basis feeding the humans with those plant-derived nutrients directly would probably be more efficient, if your goal is to reduce carbon footprint.

by ctack 10y ago

TeMPOraL 10y ago

> But the patten is there, already laid out. The only role bureaucracy might play will be to get out of the way. To not impede. It has another potential role to play though: safeguarding the playing field. For each Tesla trying to make the world a better place, there's an Uber, fucking society over for profit. The role of bureaucracy should be to allow the former and prevent the latter.

arjie 10y ago
I don't know if you can say that Uber has made the world a worse place. That requires at least a total ordering on Uber's biggest actions and probably quantification of the consequences. If the advent of Uber has resulted in a billion drink deaths not happening but one person making $2 less per hour, it's clear. The other way around is clear too. But as it is right now, you can't assert that as is. You have to bring something more convincing to the table.
ctack 10y ago
True, that statement does suffer from overreach. I was stuck in thinking of big government and entrenched players using economic tools to stifle positive disruptors. Of course there is a role for good as well.
specialist 10y ago
Yup. Functioning market economy requires a fair and impartial judicial system. Among other things. Freedom Markets™ is a religion, not economics.

matt4077 10y ago

> The only role bureaucracy might play will be to get out of the way. To not impede. That's an incredibly myopic view of reality, and of the history of scientific progress. Bureaucrats eradicated polio and smallpox, invented the internet, space travel, GPS – and actually almost anything important you could think of (if you include public universities and publicly-funded research). They have the power to massively support new technology until it is self-sustaining. There wouldn't be any renewable energy production today without the help of bureaucrats organising massive subsidies that allowed these industries to scale up to competitiveness. With regards to power-consumption, regulation has played a massive role in decreasing energy needs: from fuel efficiency standards to seemingly stupid stuff like standby modes, which used to consume dozens of watts continuously because that was a few cents cheaper to manufacture, and consumers just didn't care. Tesla is a fantastic company. But their best allies are just those bureaucrats and politicians: many countries support electric cars with tax breaks, sane countries have long ago started taxing the externalities of oil consumption, and there are thousands of initiatives on the smallest local level to allow electric cars to compete. Cities create reserved parking with charging infrastructure, or open bus- and taxi-lanes to electric vehicles. Universities have massively invested in the basic research that made not just those cars possible, but also the generation of it's power from non-fossile fuels. Not to mention that (at least in sane countries), public transport and bike infrastructure have probably prevented CO_2 emissions at a rate that's still 3 or 4 orders of magnitude ahead of Tesla.

lend000 10y ago
> Bureaucrats eradicated polio and smallpox, invented the internet, space travel, GPS – and actually almost anything important you could think of (if you include public universities and publicly-funded research) I don't think anyone in their right mind would call the purchase of technology from privately funded research at a public university (Polio) to count as bureaucrats innovating, nor would I say that bureaucrats did any of those things, with the exception of space travel which was indeed fully done in-house by NASA. The real innovation that government could bring to environmental issues is consumption-based pollution taxes instead of convoluted, mis-incentivizing mandates like Obama's call for each auto company to each produce one 54 MPG car by 2025. Tesla wouldn't need the bureaucrats if we had a fair, simple, liberty-maximizing set of environmental regulations.

the8472 10y ago

> it likely already is as the true cost of rainforest loss is externalised - rainforest loss to soya fields that is 70% fed to cattle amounts to the same thing: rainforest loss for meat Last time I've read related news those lab-grown muscle cells were supplied with calf blood serum. That makes your sustainability speculation sound more like wishful thinking. I'm sure they're working on that issue, but we're not even close to being able to feed billions with vat-grown meat. And you need to feed that meat with some nutrients too, probably plant-derived ones. So on a per-calorie basis feeding the humans with those plant-derived nutrients directly would probably be more efficient, if your goal is to reduce carbon footprint.