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A bunch of years ago, there was an article about Yellowstone tapping into the supervolcano, which would ease off of the pressure building up, while providing Wy

A bunch of years ago, there was an article about Yellowstone tapping into the supervolcano, which would ease off of the pressure building up, while providing Wyoming with electricity that is "too cheap too meter". If they succeeded, the demand would increase (by new uses people would find for cheap electricity, and by people who would move into Wyoming to take advantage of the price) which would affect production. And the State would use it as a source of income, not start giving it for free or at a fixed price.

Klaster_1 3y ago
Is there a framework that helps to reliably determine which side of the two extremes - too cheap to meter (internet access) or induced demand (roads) - the problem will fall into and how to nudge it in the desired direction? Is this even the right framing of the question? Seems like an important management and policy problem for the humanity to get a grip on, so we can prevent negative outcomes.
- AndrewDucker 3y ago
  The problem with inducing demand for roads is that they take up significant amounts of space and disrupt everything around them. We can provide everyone with terabit internet without taking up more than a tiny amount of surface space, so inducing demand on that front isn't a problem.
- icegreentea2 3y ago
  Induced demand for roads is a problem because road network improvements (especially in the form of road widenings) are typically marketed to the populace as reducing travel time at peak, but in practice all they can do is improve overall throughput (with the temporary decrease in travel time coming as a bonus). And I think road network improvements are actually quite good at achieving their throughput related goals. From that perspective, there isn't actually a problem at all. Internet traffic absolutely "suffers" from induced demand. It just happens that we've been able to keep ahead of the worst of the congestion problems. a) ISPs traffic shape. ISPs have more control over their traffic than cities/highways typically do. b) ISPs don't guarantee minimal speeds, or even give you a sense of their distribution. The inability to provide a minimal tells you that probably at peak traffic, there is significant contention (induced demand has kicked in). It just happens that... internet usage demand is probably less coupled than traffic on a highway. c) The largest traffic loads on the internet (streaming video) are majority provided by centralized corporations that can provide a 'parallel' service (through CDNs/edge caches... oh and I guess really degrading video quality) that minimize the load onto the 'main internet'. This is like taking the train or public transit or something.
bell-cot 3y ago
> ...electricity that is "too cheap to meter". One can write a nifty article by assuming that huge geothermal power plants are somehow free. Similar for assuming that FTL drives are easy to build, or ...

Klaster_1 3y ago

Is there a framework that helps to reliably determine which side of the two extremes - too cheap to meter (internet access) or induced demand (roads) - the problem will fall into and how to nudge it in the desired direction? Is this even the right framing of the question? Seems like an important management and policy problem for the humanity to get a grip on, so we can prevent negative outcomes.

AndrewDucker 3y ago
The problem with inducing demand for roads is that they take up significant amounts of space and disrupt everything around them. We can provide everyone with terabit internet without taking up more than a tiny amount of surface space, so inducing demand on that front isn't a problem.
icegreentea2 3y ago
Induced demand for roads is a problem because road network improvements (especially in the form of road widenings) are typically marketed to the populace as reducing travel time at peak, but in practice all they can do is improve overall throughput (with the temporary decrease in travel time coming as a bonus). And I think road network improvements are actually quite good at achieving their throughput related goals. From that perspective, there isn't actually a problem at all. Internet traffic absolutely "suffers" from induced demand. It just happens that we've been able to keep ahead of the worst of the congestion problems. a) ISPs traffic shape. ISPs have more control over their traffic than cities/highways typically do. b) ISPs don't guarantee minimal speeds, or even give you a sense of their distribution. The inability to provide a minimal tells you that probably at peak traffic, there is significant contention (induced demand has kicked in). It just happens that... internet usage demand is probably less coupled than traffic on a highway. c) The largest traffic loads on the internet (streaming video) are majority provided by centralized corporations that can provide a 'parallel' service (through CDNs/edge caches... oh and I guess really degrading video quality) that minimize the load onto the 'main internet'. This is like taking the train or public transit or something.

bell-cot 3y ago

> ...electricity that is "too cheap to meter". One can write a nifty article by assuming that huge geothermal power plants are somehow free. Similar for assuming that FTL drives are easy to build, or ...