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    PowerStruggle: The Invisible Hand

    what place does capitalism have in this world? isn't the market the biggest superstruct of all?

    Started by: Crake Raves:0

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    When I saw the "Power Struggle" video and read the analogy with the ants, I thought, what's the problem with having more than one energy technology? it seems the "superthreat" is a less than homogenous energy infrastructure... how is that a bad thing? and if there is something to be gained from increasing the compatibility between the various technologies (but they all make electricity to the national grid, so how are they not compatible?), wouldn't someone see an opportunity to make a buck, by creating some possibilities for conversion between them?

    No, the superthreat is moving into an era of energy availability that is reducing year-on-year, rather than the era of rapid increase we saw over the past couple of centuries. The problem is that in a time of energy surplus we could afford all manner of wasteful incompatibility between competing technologies - now we can't. Diversity and modularity are strengths for sure, but simply not having energy available in a form you can use is very definitely not. Take a look at Part 2 of this old document (from p.15) http://www.darkoptimism.org/PeakOilIntro.pdf to have a depressing reminder that some people saw all our modern problems coming. As you say diverse electricity generation in areas with a functional grid is fine, but it's transportation infrastructure and fuel that's suffering most from the real incompatiblity problems.

    To answer the question, I'd say capitalism has a place in that it spurs competition. However, unregulated competition often imbalances the system within which the market operates. As already stated, that's fine when there's a buffer to prevent systemic collapse. We simply no longer have that buffer.




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