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1) Nuclear is not renewable. 2) Reddit arguably produces value by facilitating information exchange and dialog. (The quality of that value varies highly by com
by dbingham 5y ago
1) Nuclear is not renewable.
2) Reddit arguably produces value by facilitating information exchange and dialog. (The quality of that value varies highly by community and it's fair to argue about whether Reddit as a whole is a net negative or net positive.)
3) Bitcoin produces nothing. It's a place for rich people to gamble, and for poorer people to get screwed trying to gamble. If people want to gamble, they can play poker and it costs zero energy.
We need to stop pretending energy is limitless. It's not. And we need to start factoring that in to our decisions about what technologies/businesses/activities are affordable/worthwhile and what aren't.
- oceanplexian 5y agoI mean nuclear isn’t renewable but neither is the sun and thus solar, wind, and hydroelectric power on a long enough time horizon. The reality is that there is enough nuclear fuel in the oceans alone to provide for thousands of years of clean energy. And after that plenty of nuclear fuel on the moon and other planets to keep us going.
- landemva 5y agoMalthus lost this argument a long time ago. 'We need to stop pretending energy is limitless.' Human ingenuity applied to the abundant energy available from both short and long term effects of the sun give me great hope. The barrier is basically politics.
- dbingham 5y agoMalthus didn't lose this argument - malthusian assessment of scarcity ultimately lives at the heart of capitalism and free markets. If it didn't, we'd all have access to whatever we wanted. Instead, we use markets as the best tool to distribute scarce resources. And in many countries we include the basic necessities of life (food, housing, clothing, etc) as those scarce resources. Energy is limited and production of energy has costs and side effects. Sure, over time we can increase our production of energy, but again - with costs and side effects depending on how we choose to do it. And at any point in time our access to energy is limited and we need to make choices about how that access is distributed. Right now we use markets to do that. But we've clearly seen that markets, with out intentional, ethical and moral guidance will often make insane choices. And note, I say this as someone who believes post-scarcity (with in wise limits) for many of the basics is more or less with in our technological reach. IE. We can reach a point of post-scarcity for food, housing, clothing, energy where everyone has what they need and a good chunk of what they want as long as we don't let anyone hoard and insane amount of these resources or burn them away in frivilous uses.
- SpelingBeeChamp 5y agoRegarding #3, Bitcoin has enormous value: it facilitates black markets. Beyond that, I'm not sure.