myrmidon

14 ms·

271.
by myrmidon 8mo ago
Looking back, people had the exact same kinds of reactions (regarded as cheap trash => cutting edge) to the Japanese electronics industry 40 years ago, with the eact same takes (overstated rationalizations focussing on process, organiza
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by myrmidon 8mo ago
That whole approach has a bad historical track record-- people tought WW1 "impossible" for the exact same reason. Not only that, but the only way to do this is to stack the risk against yourself in the case it ever fails. Just l
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by myrmidon 8mo ago
> europes coal powerplants are in china, its polution is in china, the products of china are in europe and the producers from china live in europe and the us. This is generally overstated. Emissions imported or exported via trade are sig
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by myrmidon 8mo ago
To me, company town implies that the thing hosts whole families and provides a wider spectrum of infrastructure (roads, stores, entertainment). I'd classify man camps as worse (even more bleak and dystopian than a company town).
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by myrmidon 8mo ago
Again, I'm not arguing that China is doing extremely well regarding CO2 intensity of their electricity. My point is that they perform pretty on par with most comparable countries. Looking at CO2 per kWh (a much better metric if you w
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by myrmidon 8mo ago
My point isnt that gas is just as bad as coal. My point is that coal (in China) fills the same role that gas has for electricity in other countries. Saying "China is >50% coal while the US is only 15%" misses half the picture,
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by myrmidon 8mo ago
All those countries grew relatively wealthy much earlier than China, so simply buying ressources like gas is much more feasible for them. If you want a fair comparison, I would suggest looking at countries in similar economical positions (g
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by myrmidon 8mo ago
Come on. This is bullshit and you know it. There's >10M light trucks sold each year and <3M passenger cars. This is not because most of those trucks are used by some business, this is because people like to drive around in them.
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by myrmidon 8mo ago
... so if you are some poor rice farmer, you should be forbidden from even heating in winter, but if you're rich enough, flying around the globe all day is a-ok? I'm not sure exactly how this sounds like a good argument to you, bu
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by myrmidon 8mo ago
> it’s not fair that the upper class should have to shoulder the majority of the tax burden. I don't know what the definition of "upper class" is to you, but from my view anyone that earns most of his income not by worki
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by myrmidon 8mo ago
China needs some form of dispatchable power and is basically using coal instead of gas because they have none. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47276338 for numbers/more detail.
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by myrmidon 8mo ago
The difference in coal power for china is basically purely from them using coal instead of gas, see comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47276338 Despite higher carbon intensity (for now), they still emit less
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by myrmidon 8mo ago
> Why do 90% of Americans have AC while only 20% of Europeans do? Maybe because the majority of Europe is closer to Canada, latitude-wise, than to Phoenix, AZ, and there is simply less demand? Less wealth is certainly a factor, too, espe
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by myrmidon 8mo ago
What do you even mean by "arguing at scale"? I have a point and numbers to back it up, I don't see either on your side.
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by myrmidon 8mo ago
Even for a giant country like India you control <20% of global population, and you are responsible for much less than 20% of the effect (climate change). So why would India take more expensive and painful steps than say, the US or EU, or
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by myrmidon 8mo ago
> It's all China, but I guess it's cool to blame things on developed countries. This is just a naive take. You'd obviously expect chinese emissions to be higher (than the US) assuming similar industrialization, because you
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by myrmidon 8mo ago
> India and China are continuing to build fossil fuel power generation Power plants are not built for specific national governments, they are built because individual people need and use the energy. More people => more powerplants (nu
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by myrmidon 8mo ago
Western efforts matter because they allow less wealthy nations to follow along a proven path towards sustainability. Nnobody is going to follow a hypocrite, and no one in east asia is gonna cut back on consumption/growth/lifestyle
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by myrmidon 8mo ago
There is literally no charitable interpretation of this point. How much of a problem any individuals CO2 emissions are is completely decoupled from what nation they live in, or how many people live in that nation specifically. If you hypoth
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by myrmidon 8mo ago
It is deceptive to compare coal % of power generation, because China specifically substitutes coal for gas because they have none of that (and no reliable source). This also means those coal plants run at lower/decreasing utilization b
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by myrmidon 8mo ago
Disagree with this perspective entirely. Not only is it factually wrong (US emissions are much higher than Indian ones despite India being like 4x as many people), it also ignores second order effects of sane environmental policy complete
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by myrmidon 8mo ago
Looking at seasonally adjusted somewhat longer term trends, unemployment appears to be rising somehwat continuously for two years now: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UNRATE/ I'd say the article overstates
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by myrmidon 8mo ago
> Nuclear bombs appear as uniquely horrifying and requiring special justification only in hindsight. Back then, it was just another type of bomb. I disagree slightly with that take. Decisionmakers knew that those singular bombs were go
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by myrmidon 8mo ago
If you want to shift tax burden from very wealthy Americans onto average citizens, what do you hope to achieve with that? What is the purpose of taxation then, in your view? > I don’t think that wealth inequality is a problem I have a
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by myrmidon 8mo ago
This is a false dichotomy. In the words of the post-war US strategic bombing survey: "Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey'
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by myrmidon 8mo ago
I'd argue that ressource consumption/pollution are on the contrary pretty strongly correlated with wealth. But I don't see the primary justification for taxes as "keeping consumption in check" (whatever that would m
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by myrmidon 8mo ago
> What partially non-public information did he have? Be specific. How would I know? I'm neither Lutnick nor his son. My point is that there is an extremely obvious conflict of interest here. If your family business is directly affec
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by myrmidon 8mo ago
Yes? I frankly do not understand your argument: "Some policymakers are sleazy (yes?), so it should be fine for all of them to leverage influence/access into personal gain" (?!) This does not make sense to me.
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by myrmidon 8mo ago
Better for whom? Wealthy people? If your argument is that taxation at sale is harder to dogdge than with income, and thus an obviously regressive scheme would still be advantageous for the average American, then I'm not buying it at al
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by myrmidon 8mo ago
I'll turn this around: Do you think it is acceptable for policymakers, lawmakers or people involved in such a process to reap profits more or less directly with (partially non-public) knowledge they've acquired? Because I think no

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