4 ms·

So salvage it from sunken ships is cheaper then?

by nix23 6y ago

DonHopkins 6y ago
Just cheaper for whoever salvages the ship -- somebody else had to pay for the sunken cost of building and sinking the ship.
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago
  > sunken cost Nice.
- nix23 6y ago
  > somebody else had to pay for the sunken cost of building and sinking the ship Na remember it was war, so all the money went back to the economy :/
  - fennecfoxen 6y ago
    Money-oriented thinking is a road to economic misunderstanding. The economy is about stuff. In practice one often measures all the stuff using money, yes, because what else would one use? but as a proxy measure for its value; it's never actually about the money itself. (stuff = "final goods and services" to be technical)
    - nix23 6y ago
      > because what else would one use? Energy witch can be food, oil, gas, the energy transformator is a human (or his brain) a maschine or a animal, and the exchange between energie to the endresult is often money. So money/exchangemedium has just the worth both partys agreed on.
      - fennecfoxen 6y ago
        Now you are measuring electricity instead of the light you read by, and fuel instead of the vacation trip you take with it. You have worsened the problem I refer to.
        nix23 6y ago
        Energy IS electricity, and to create a Lightbulp you NEED energy, it's exactly the same. For your vacation trip you NEED energie in form of food an fuel, the vehicle you travel in, is made by food and fuel...exacly the same. If the transport company accept your fuel (or workforce witch again is fulled by energie (your food)) as payment, you exchanged energie to energie, probably they dont and thats why you use a exchangemedium called money. EDIT: You dont have to messure anything, if you need light exchange energy to light, travel exchange fuel to distance, working body food to (body)-energy. To make stuff you calculate the sum of the energie needed for, and thats the price of the product, sure exeptions like apple exists ;)
        fennecfoxen 6y ago
        the fundamentally inescapable problem is your approach measures an input instead of output, and thus makes technology improvements look like an economic crash consider the 'light' market: https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2013/12/Trends-in-the-Prices-of-Energy-for-Lighting-and-of-Lighting-Services-1300-2000-Fouquet-and-Pearson-20120.png https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2013/12/Trends-in-the-Pri...
        doukdouk 6y ago
        Surely energy input is the right metric. If I use a gallon of gas to power a life-saving ambulance or if I burn it just for fun, those two actions should have the same importance.
awalton 6y ago
Yes. The demand for low background steel and lead is in the few dozen tons per year max, not millions of tons per year. Salvaging it is probably at least an order of magnitude cheaper than making new low background steel once you realize the amount of hassle involved. Furthermore, it's fairly easily recycled if you're not launching it into space (which is a common use case for the stuff, since building space probes to study the cosmic background is all the rage these days).

So salvage it from sunken ships is cheaper then?

by nix23 6y ago

So salvage it from sunken ships is cheaper then?

Just cheaper for whoever salvages the ship -- somebody else had to pay for the sunken cost of building and sinking the ship.

rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago
> sunken cost Nice.
nix23 6y ago
> somebody else had to pay for the sunken cost of building and sinking the ship Na remember it was war, so all the money went back to the economy :/
- fennecfoxen 6y ago
  Money-oriented thinking is a road to economic misunderstanding. The economy is about stuff. In practice one often measures all the stuff using money, yes, because what else would one use? but as a proxy measure for its value; it's never actually about the money itself. (stuff = "final goods and services" to be technical)
  - nix23 6y ago
    > because what else would one use? Energy witch can be food, oil, gas, the energy transformator is a human (or his brain) a maschine or a animal, and the exchange between energie to the endresult is often money. So money/exchangemedium has just the worth both partys agreed on.
    - fennecfoxen 6y ago
      Now you are measuring electricity instead of the light you read by, and fuel instead of the vacation trip you take with it. You have worsened the problem I refer to.
      - nix23 6y ago
        Energy IS electricity, and to create a Lightbulp you NEED energy, it's exactly the same. For your vacation trip you NEED energie in form of food an fuel, the vehicle you travel in, is made by food and fuel...exacly the same. If the transport company accept your fuel (or workforce witch again is fulled by energie (your food)) as payment, you exchanged energie to energie, probably they dont and thats why you use a exchangemedium called money. EDIT: You dont have to messure anything, if you need light exchange energy to light, travel exchange fuel to distance, working body food to (body)-energy. To make stuff you calculate the sum of the energie needed for, and thats the price of the product, sure exeptions like apple exists ;)
        fennecfoxen 6y ago
        the fundamentally inescapable problem is your approach measures an input instead of output, and thus makes technology improvements look like an economic crash consider the 'light' market: https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2013/12/Trends-in-the-Prices-of-Energy-for-Lighting-and-of-Lighting-Services-1300-2000-Fouquet-and-Pearson-20120.png https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2013/12/Trends-in-the-Pri...
      - doukdouk 6y ago
        Surely energy input is the right metric. If I use a gallon of gas to power a life-saving ambulance or if I burn it just for fun, those two actions should have the same importance.

awalton 6y ago

Yes. The demand for low background steel and lead is in the few dozen tons per year max, not millions of tons per year. Salvaging it is probably at least an order of magnitude cheaper than making new low background steel once you realize the amount of hassle involved. Furthermore, it's fairly easily recycled if you're not launching it into space (which is a common use case for the stuff, since building space probes to study the cosmic background is all the rage these days).