Welcome to European Tribune. It's gone a bit quiet around here these days, but it's still going.

Sun Money

by gmoke Thu Jun 12th, 2014 at 08:53:48 PM EST

Solar is power and currency not only as energy, electricity, heat but also as politics,  economics, and sociology.  Solar energy is, by definition, local production, swadeshi, what Gandhi called the "heart of satyagraha," soul force, non-violent action.

Gandhi would spin for an hour each day, usually producing a hundred yards of thread, and helped develop a simple spinning wheel (charkha) that allowed many to do the same. He believed that spinning was the foundation of non-violence. I believe this type of practical labor has to be the core of any sustainable ecological action.

We need a solar swadeshi, an ecological practice on a daily basis that allows us to live within our solar income. Gandhi used the charkha, the spinning wheel. What would be an ecological charkha, a solar charkha?


from http://solarray.blogspot.com/2005/05/solar-swadeshi-hand-made-electricity.html

Could we do with electricity what Gandhi did with cloth, at least for emergencies and disasters? Can hand-made electricity, 21st century khadi cloth, provide real electrical power to the people and a survival level of energy independence and autonomy?
from http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/11/10/919251/-Personal-Power-Production-160-Solar-from-Civil-Defe nse-to-Swadeshi

Here are some examples where solar energy is building economies that are closer to the practices of a Gandhian economics, a non-violent economics, a solar swadeshi, a kind of sun money.


Grameen Shakti [Village Energy] of Bangladesh
http://www.gshakti.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=58&Itemid=62

GS [Grameen Shakti] is one of the largest and fastest growing rural based renewable energy companies in the world. GS is also promoting Small Solar Home System to reach low income rural households.

SHSs can be used to light up homes, shops, fishing boats etc. It can also be used to charge cellular phones, run televisions, radios and cassette players. SHSs have become increasingly popular among users because they present an attractive alternative to conventional electricity such as no monthly bills, no fuel cost, very little repair, maintenance costs, easy to install any where etc.

GS installed SHSs have made a positive impact on the rural people. GS has introduced micro-utility model in order to reach the poorer people who cannot afford a SHS individually. Another successful GS venture is Polli Phone which allows people is off grid areas the facilities of telecommunication through SHS powered mobile phones.

GS has developed an effective strategy for reaching people in remote and rural areas with solar PV technology. It involves:

Soft credit through installments which makes SHSs affordable
Advocacy and Promotion
Community involvement and social acceptance
Effective after sales service
Blending Technology with Market Forces

More on Grameen Shakti at
http://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com/2014/04/green-energy-for-billion-poor.html

-------

ReadyPay
http://www.fenixintl.com/products/

ReadyPay is our patent-pending financial platform that allows customers to pay-to-own Fenix solar energy systems over time. Engineered to integrate with any mobile money system, ReadyPay enables customers to make payments from a mobile phone and receive a secure code to unlock access to solar power until another payment is due.
"From payment history, we are building a massive dataset to create a next generation credit score for the 2.2 billion unbanked adults in emerging markets (Source: McKinsey).
"Launched in Uganda in partnership with Africa's largest telecom MTN, ReadyPay Solar is available now for as little $0.39 per day.

---------

SolarCoin
http://solarcoin.org

Solar currency.
SolarCoin is a digital currency incentivizing solar electricity. Spend it, trade it, exchange it.

Solar energy incentive.
SolarCoin represents one MWh of solar energy generated. SolarCoin rewards solar electricity generators both large and small.

A group effort.
Use Solarcoin. Join the solar power economy. SolarCoin holders help produce 97,500 TWh. 99% of SolarCoins to be distributed to solar energy generators over 40 years.

SolarCoin is an alternative digital currency. SolarCoin is backed by two forms of proof of work. One is the traditional cryptographic proof of work associated with digital currency.  Another proof of work is a 3rd party verified meter reading. SolarCoin is equitably distributed using both of these proofs of work as a means to reward solar energy generation.
Solar Coin Helps the Environment
Solar energy, unlike fossil fuels, does not place excess heat or carbon into the atmosphere. The long term intent is to provide an incentive to produce more solar electricity globally over the next 40 years by rewarding the generators of solar electricity.  SolarCoin is intended to shift the levelized cost of energy (LOCE). Source:solarcoin wiki

Technical details relating to SolarCoin are on Github.com/solarcoin

----------

Richard Komp has been seeding solar cottage industry around the world for over thirty years.  Here is news of his latest project in Liberia.
http://www.mainesolar.org/Komp.html

A group of Liberians living in the Boston area asked me to go to Liberia to give a three part course on solar energy. I have just finished the first part of the course at the Monrovian Vocational Training Center for the 27 students who will be part of a new solar corporation they are now planning. In the first part of the course, the students made small solar cell phone chargers, then graduated to bigger 15 watt PV modules that can be used to light up small squatter huts and rural grass huts. We ourselves used these modules to recharge a 12 volt deep=cycle battery so we would have continuous power to run our tools, since the Center rarely had electricity.

We spent the second week on solar thermal systems, making a solar box cooker big enough to "cook" the large PV modules we made next. We managed to cook both a 65 watt and a custom 75 watt module for a solar water pump we installed, at the same time in the solar oven (a first for cooking two at once).

-----------

Maasai Stoves and Solar (http://internationalcollaborative.org) installs locally made, more efficient cookstoves and chimneys in Maasai homes, reducing the time and material needed for cooking and providing profound health benefits for women and children.  

Maasai Stoves & Solar Project addresses profound international health challenges affecting millions.

Read about our work, reducing indoor smoke in the homes of pastoral people in the developing world, caused by the use of indoor cooking fires.

We replace the fires with our stove and chimney that produces ninety percent less smoke, benefitting families and the environment.

Help us achieve these goals
Healthier indoor air quality
Improved health
Women's empowerment
Locally-built solutions
Environmental conservation
Mitigating climate change

We are well on our way to completing the requirements for carbon credit certification. Part of the process includes baseline surveys and measurement of the wood savings of our stove directly and by efficiency studies, performed by an outside authority.

------------

There is a way you can look at the world that brings energy, money, and information into a single focus where energetic calories, cash and credit, bits and data all melt one into the other and back again.  All these  enterprises are explorations into that world.

Poll
More solar power and currency?
. yes 33%
. no 33%
. not yes 0%
. not no 0%
. neither yes nor no 0%
. both yes and no 33%
. don't understand the question? 0%
. none of the above 0%

Votes: 3
Results | Other Polls
Display:
More solar power and local energy production, but currency needs to be fully fiat.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon Jun 16th, 2014 at 05:24:07 AM EST
Sunlight is energy, energy is money.  Every square foot of the Earth on which the sun shines has some solar income.  It may not be fiat money but it's a fait accompli, one which we have generally ignored up till now.

Solar IS Civil Defense
by gmoke on Mon Jun 16th, 2014 at 05:39:22 PM EST
[ Parent ]
energy is money

No.

Money is not energy, and energy is not money. Money is power. And power is always - definitionally - fiat.

The functions of currency as medium of exchange and store of value are sideshows to the real story, which is the function of currency as a tool of social command and control.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Fri Jun 20th, 2014 at 06:52:06 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Money is not power, power is not money... why not? The fiat money is power because its value is skillfully maintained.
And power is always - definitionally - fiat.
Really?! Your power to wake up earlier in the morning is fiat? Russia's power in Crimea is fiat?
by das monde on Fri Jun 20th, 2014 at 07:11:07 PM EST
[ Parent ]
It's definitely not a conserved quantity in the physical sense like energy is.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Fri Jun 20th, 2014 at 07:28:49 PM EST
[ Parent ]
The energy applied to economy is not a constant entity it has been very variable so far. But when its flow will inevitably get more or less constant, how will that affect economic, monetary, technological, social activities? How much would monetary, statistical games matter with more immediate environment boundaries? Do we have much realistic idea?
by das monde on Sat Jun 21st, 2014 at 03:06:30 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Energy throughput is not constant, but it has to come from somewhere as energy is a physical conserved quantity (neither created nor destroyed).

Money, on the other hand, is not conserved and it doesn't have to come from anywhere (fiat money is not conserved - commodity money is, and that's why the gold standard is deflationary).

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sun Jun 22nd, 2014 at 08:39:17 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Up till now the physical distinction was not important. Humanity was coming up with new ever more effective energy sources and ways to "produce" them.

But now things change. If we talk in pure physics terms, what does the Second Law of Thermodynamics imply? Sure, it talks about zero energy throughput directly - but apparently a fixed finite value allows just limited valuable effects. Regardless of what money we may come up with. In other words:

There can be no perpetum mobile of a monetary (or social) kind!.

by das monde on Sun Jun 22nd, 2014 at 10:13:43 AM EST
[ Parent ]
That is the problem that inflation solves for you.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Sun Jun 22nd, 2014 at 10:44:10 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Not really, when resource limits are in sight.
by das monde on Sun Jun 22nd, 2014 at 11:02:18 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Yes really, you can have a monetary perpetual motion, so long as you do not insist on money being a viable vehicle for storing value over a greatly longer period than the production cycle.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Sun Jun 22nd, 2014 at 11:45:36 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Money is a license for productive activity. With too much license, production eats into resources. ("Storing value" actually helps to restrict production.)
by das monde on Sun Jun 22nd, 2014 at 12:00:06 PM EST
[ Parent ]
I guess you have no objection to mass unemployment, then?

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sun Jun 22nd, 2014 at 02:17:48 PM EST
[ Parent ]
If my preference would matter.
by das monde on Sun Jun 22nd, 2014 at 04:15:19 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Crashing the economy into permanent depression has a very poor track record as a way to improve the sustainability of your economic trajectory.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Sun Jun 22nd, 2014 at 02:26:21 PM EST
[ Parent ]
See, for instance, the worsening of pollution in Greece as people go back to burning whatever they can get their hands on. Os Spain's U-turn on renewable energy investment.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sun Jun 22nd, 2014 at 03:00:44 PM EST
[ Parent ]
By the way, you're aways going to find shills for austerity in any situation. Take the Daily Mail: Is the financial crisis good for the environment? Pollution falls by 40 per cent in Greece since 2008 (7 January 2013)
* Researchers record drop in nitrogen oxides and sulphur dioxide
  • Fewer people using cars as householders save money in austerity cuts
  • Reduction in industries of 30 per cent  causes lesser emissions
Just a month later on CBC: Air pollution in Athens escalates due to government's austerity measures (February 8, 2013)
If it smells like pine spirit in parts of Greece these days, they have the smoke from home heating fires to thank for it. And not in a good way. Air pollution is the latest fallout from the Greek austerity measures. People are burning trees from the parks, old furniture -- anything to avoid paying soaring new taxes on heating oil.
But hey, fewer cars and heavy industry!

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sun Jun 22nd, 2014 at 04:41:41 PM EST
[ Parent ]
And you can blame austerity, not resource scarcity: Greece's Economic Crisis Leads To Air Pollution, Study Finds (December 20 2013)
"People need to stay warm, but [they] face decreasing employment and rising fuel costs," explained Sioutas, senior author of the study in the journal Environmental Science & Technology. "The problem is, economic hardship has compelled residents to burn low-quality fuel, such as wood and waste materials, that pollutes the air."

Since 2008 Greece's economy has shrunk by 23 percent and it has since been dependent on rescue loans from other European Union countries and the International Monetary Fund. Making matters worse, oil prices have almost tripled over the past few years due to tax hikes.

In response to energy costs, Greeks have been turning to wood as a fuel source to heat their homes, which impacts air quality.

(My emphasis)

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sun Jun 22nd, 2014 at 04:44:02 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Cars and heavy industry= evil capitalist consumerism, large scale exploitation of resources, and ravaging of the environment

Burning whatever you can to stay warm= distributed independent local small-scale generation :)

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

by Starvid on Mon Jun 23rd, 2014 at 03:36:31 PM EST
[ Parent ]
You forgot living in caves by candlelight.
by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Mon Jun 23rd, 2014 at 03:43:37 PM EST
[ Parent ]
How romantic! Much better than these dreary fluorescent lights...

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
by Starvid on Mon Jun 23rd, 2014 at 03:54:00 PM EST
[ Parent ]
distributed independent local small-scale generation of wind and solar = heavy industry, because you need heavy industry to produce the solar panels and wind turbines.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon Jun 23rd, 2014 at 06:11:11 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Which means that while it may well be distributed and small-scale, it will be neither local nor independent.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Mon Jun 23rd, 2014 at 06:25:03 PM EST
[ Parent ]
While there's no disputing Mig's point (and I don't), yours seems to be a quibble.
by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Tue Jun 24th, 2014 at 12:58:50 AM EST
[ Parent ]
It really isn't, unless you accept as a matter of course that industrial society is not, primarily, governed bottom-up.

There are plenty of people who would dispute that proposition.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Tue Jun 24th, 2014 at 05:27:19 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Not sure I follow you there.

My point is that "local-ness" and "dependence" are not absolutes. Endeavours of different kinds may be more or less local, more or less autonomous.

If my municipality's electricity authority buys a turbine, it isn't buying local production and it isn't independent of non-local heavy industry. But that turbine installed on the river is local in the sense that the energy source is local, the finance is local, distribution is locally-owned, and the management is to some extent local. There's a degree of dependence and a degree of autonomy.

If I have a farm, that has distinct characteristics of "local-ness": the soil, the climate, the hydrography limit or potentiate my production. That production may also be locally sold. I cannot produce without the aid of industrial goods (tools), but the tools are useless without the other factors of production that I possess.

Why this matters to me is because, in my view, the richness and liveliness of a democracy are enabled by a degree of local autonomy, and depleted by the alienation of authoritarian top-down structures.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Wed Jun 25th, 2014 at 05:37:45 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Your definitions for local and dependence may work - for the scale you apply them: local autonomy.

They probably fall apart the moment you consider them, like I assume Jake is doing, at the system-wide, global scale.

It reminds me of structural geology: on the basis of local observations one can only assume the geological history of one local area as true, for as long you don't look at the area at a regional scale - which can show you that your assumptions were perfectly holding for the scale you were using, but perfectly wrong for applying them at a larger perspective.

by Bjinse on Wed Jun 25th, 2014 at 07:57:08 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Migeru:
distributed independent local small-scale generation of wind and solar = heavy industry, because you need heavy industry to produce the solar panels and wind turbines.

That postulate seems limited to our not building larger wind/sun farms, big enough to make themselves so to speak.

Industry heavy enough to create turbines and multi-GW solar arrays is no more energy-demanding than other industries that were localised a century ago. Before we chose location for ease-of-transport reasons more as the international highway and railway infrastructure was not as fortified as it is now, sticking and hubbing mainly around big waterways, the obvious 'freebie'* at that time.

With electricity abundance at low cost these industrial products (panels and turbines) are surely not more labour and resource hogs than building out the Nazi war machine for example in the 30's.

And even if my analysis is wrong, it seems a no-brainer to use dwindling supplies of eco-expensive fossil fuels to build a bridge to the land where we would need less of them. Can't think of a better one in fact!

Throw in bioplastics such as Henry Ford used for the Model T (hempseed easily, quickly and cheaply grown), nanotech and 3D printing and you have the perfect mix of techologies and low footprint energy needs to belie this myth that turbines and panels are advanced rocket science only appropriate to be made in behemoth Ruhr-like industrial centres using oil and/or gas as fuels. From Rurhal to rural!

* Plastic is now being made from orange peels, egg shells, wood 'flour' and pretty much any organic matter, So you would have the knockon effect of safely recycling a lot of 'waste' as well.

The sooner this myth is dismantled the better, imo, as it is really holding us back, especially the biggest is bestest mentality that's baked into it. Surely you don't have to be a Schumacher to understand that.

There's a lot of continuum being skipped over between the poles of Krupp-Thyssen-sized Leviathans and candles in caves.

We may yet avoid the "Black Mirror" scenario of millions of unemployed manning stationary bikes to generate society's juice paid in 'credits' (scrips), but even that would be better than looking out your window at a new nuke plant and wondering if some series of trivial 'oopses' are going to cascade that day, as happened at Three Mile Island.

Or that some combo of earthquake and Climate Chaos-whipped Superstorm is going to make a very ocean-souring joke of our engineering hubris.

There's going to be a lot of re-tooling to do, by leaving it all to the last innings we are just upping the costs and killing ourselves with pollution while doing so.

** Wind and solar are the ultimate freebies, and ever so slightly less predictably dangerous than swollen rivers can be, cf Serbia recently, Somerset last summer etc etc. But that's another discussion more about transport, though it is intimately connected as the sooner we phase out FFs the less extreme our weather will be.

(Pace Bjinse) :)

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Tue Jun 24th, 2014 at 03:32:12 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Industry heavy enough to create turbines and multi-GW solar arrays is no more energy-demanding than other industries that were localised a century ago.
It's not the energy demands that make me call it heavy industry. It's the fact that we're talking about rotor blades the size of large aircraft wings, and of advanced materials in the case of photovoltaics. Both of those require large, complex facilities.

But your point on energy is important also in another respect: modern industrial technology is way more efficient in its use of energy and material resources than "traditional" production methods. That's what technological progress is about. It's not only improvements in final products but in every intermediate step of production.

And that, my friends, is why rolling industrialization back is definitely not the answer to resource constraints.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Jun 24th, 2014 at 04:20:15 AM EST
[ Parent ]
modern industrial technology is way more efficient in its use of energy and material resources than "traditional" production methods.

I'm not convinced this is true if you consider the resource cycle as a whole.

You can cherry pick items like electronics which look small and cheap, but the complete cycle includes ripping stuff out of the ground and shipping it around the world.

And you not only have to refine the stuff you're shipping, you also have to refine the stuff to build the things you're shipping it in. And fuel them.

And then there are the various levels of repetition and recursion involved in putting it all together.

A truly efficient technology would do this with no mess. We're a long way from anything like that - so far away that on a planetary scale, it's not obvious we've moved on from the 19th century.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Tue Jun 24th, 2014 at 05:12:01 PM EST
[ Parent ]
A truly efficient technology would do this with no mess.

That's not an argument for returning back to "traditional" production methods, nor an argument that these would be more efficient, but only an argument that the current state of industrial process and the intermediate steps of production can be further optimised.

by Bjinse on Wed Jun 25th, 2014 at 04:58:46 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Migeru:
rolling industrialization back is definitely not the answer to resource constraints.

Who says it is, the straw man with his candle-lit romantic atmosphere?

It's about en -rolling industry into maxing out negative entropy

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Wed Jun 25th, 2014 at 12:00:47 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Migeru:
"traditional" production methods.

What are these, and who is advocating them?

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Wed Jun 25th, 2014 at 05:09:57 AM EST
[ Parent ]
OK. Since light snark against your caricature seems misunderstood:

"cars and heavy industry" have a rap sheet as long as your arm in terms of ravaging the environment. They are going to have to change, and don't tell us they will do so voluntarily, the evidence up to now is to the contrary.

The second part of your remark is not far off trolling.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Tue Jun 24th, 2014 at 12:55:45 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Yet, the crashing course is begin repeated verbantim as it happened before, or even with improvements. This time it is going so smoothly, without any political opposition whatsoever. There must be a reason for that.  
by das monde on Sun Jun 22nd, 2014 at 04:14:31 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Yes, politics. Of which the last is:By ascribing austerity to the laws of physics or of human nature or whatever, you become a fellow traveller of the plutocrats, just like Greg Mankiw uses faux-microeconomics to justify hoarding and dynasties.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sun Jun 22nd, 2014 at 04:23:19 PM EST
[ Parent ]
I would love to test non-austerity. But all I can do now, is to guess how much evil appears to be necessary in THEIR eyes.

By the way, did not notice particularly bad air pollution in Athens. The usual car stink in summer heat is still most prevalent.

by das monde on Sun Jun 22nd, 2014 at 04:53:07 PM EST
[ Parent ]
There Is No Alternative™, energy accounting edition.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon Jun 23rd, 2014 at 07:12:34 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Fiat money does not promise resources on demand, or that they'll be cheap.

It does promise that it will always be possible to mobilize existing idle resources, and that it will be impossible for people to issue mnetary claims in excess of available money.

That's more than any commodity money can deliver.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sun Jun 22nd, 2014 at 02:16:36 PM EST
[ Parent ]
If some resource (say, energy or water) would become an obvious bottleneck for "civilized" living, "indespensible" technology, or just survival, wouldn't that resourse become de facto hard currency? How long would that bottleneck be masked by monetary overflow or scarcity?
by das monde on Thu Jun 26th, 2014 at 01:45:04 PM EST
[ Parent ]
If some resource (say, energy or water) would become an obvious bottleneck for "civilized" living, "indespensible" technology, or just survival, wouldn't that resourse become de facto hard currency?

That is the Austrian position (Misean regression).

The Austrian position is wrong.

What makes currency currency is that contracts and tax liabilities are enforced in terms of the currency.

Money is not a store of value. Money is a tool of contract enforcement. The state of scarcity or abundance has the next best thing to nothing to do with the rules for contract enforcement.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Thu Jun 26th, 2014 at 06:13:41 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Contracts do not exist in an abstract paradise. If their implementation is the unconditional priority regardless of real world limits (particularly, in resources) you soon have some austerity, factual opression in whatever dressing. Thus, what's your prefered endgame when the contracts, exponential obligations meet definite limits of the physical reality?
by das monde on Fri Jun 27th, 2014 at 09:00:47 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Bankruptcy is a beautiful alternative to debtors prison. In the US they have an even more helpful solution, called Chapter 11.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
by Starvid on Fri Jun 27th, 2014 at 10:12:46 AM EST
[ Parent ]
This is the problem that inflation solves for you.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Fri Jun 27th, 2014 at 06:07:15 PM EST
[ Parent ]
..wouldn't that resourse become de facto hard currency?

No. Money is not some natural product of human society. If the monetary economy breaks down and can't deliver live essentials it won't necessarily be replaced with a new one of the same kind. It's just as likely that money would loose all meaning in face of rationing. Or in the face of collapse of society.

by generic on Fri Jun 27th, 2014 at 10:28:00 AM EST
[ Parent ]
At least until some kind of state would re-emerge, even if it is, say, crude warlordism. As soon as the rulers want the taxes paid with money, and starts issuing money, the monetary economy returns.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
by Starvid on Fri Jun 27th, 2014 at 10:48:07 AM EST
[ Parent ]
But once the value of bottleneck resources exceeds the practical value of monetary debts, the investor class will change their preference. That's perhaps the super-Minsky moment of hyper-inflations, narowly monopolized resources, society (as we know it) collapse.
by das monde on Tue Jul 1st, 2014 at 06:20:35 AM EST
[ Parent ]
That's what we had in the 1970s (stagflation). Now we're having deflation because hard-money ideology has solidified.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Jul 1st, 2014 at 06:33:06 AM EST
[ Parent ]
I rather believe that stagflation was there to discredit Keynes - rather than an example of a resource wall.

By now, the ideology evolved to "a systematically organized body of knowledge" of how to keep the monetary control dominant (for as long as possible, at least).

by das monde on Tue Jul 1st, 2014 at 07:07:14 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Stagflation was a real economic phenomenon, it wasn't "made to happen". And it was indeed seized upon by monetarists to discredit Keynes. And Austriand and Ordoliberals latched on to monetarism because they agreed with the policy prescription of the monetarists (in the 1970s environment, monetary contraction). And then what had happened was rationalised and blended with pre-Keynesian economic thought, and since 2007 monetarists have found to their horror that the actual political power rests with the Austrians. Now the policy prescription on which Keynesians and monetarists agree is one of monetary expansion, with disagreement on whether fiscal stimulus in necessary or just not harmful. But the common-sense conservative hard-money view hasn't been discredited yet. Austerity is just being tweaked around the edges. And here we are.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Jul 1st, 2014 at 07:22:09 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Forcing a rentier portfolio shift to production and distribution of a bottleneck resource cannot (in and of itself) cause hyperinflation.

And having rentier portfolios shift toward actually useful work would be a good thing.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Tue Jul 1st, 2014 at 06:35:40 AM EST
[ Parent ]
We would talk then of resource capture by the same rentiers, rather than useful investment.
by das monde on Tue Jul 1st, 2014 at 06:43:56 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Contrary to what you seem to believe, the real world contains very few Bond-villains with white cats in volcano islands who habitually crash major industrial supply chains for shit and giggles.

Usually, they do it for money, and there's no percentage in cornering the market unless you plan to actually sell the product at some point.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Tue Jul 1st, 2014 at 06:51:01 AM EST
[ Parent ]
We are not in the tight resources hold yet (even in the 70s). For James Bond to have the same lifestyle then, the good guys would be resource "protectors".
by das monde on Tue Jul 1st, 2014 at 06:58:40 AM EST
[ Parent ]
If some resource (say, energy or water) would become an obvious bottleneck for "civilized" living, "indespensible" technology, or just survival, wouldn't that resourse become de facto hard currency?
No, it would become very expensive, and subject to rationing.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sat Jun 28th, 2014 at 02:23:38 PM EST
[ Parent ]
The fiat money is power because its value is skillfully maintained.

No, fiat money has value because men with guns will come to your place of business or residence and take your stuff if you do not present the appropriate amount of fiat money in tribute to them.

The power is casually prior to the value.

Russia's power in Crimea is fiat?

Yes. "Fiat" is a nice way of saying "men with guns will come to your place of business or residence, hurt you and take your stuff if you do not do what we say." Russia's power in Crimea is as close to a textbook example of that as you can get.

What did you think "fiat" means?

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Sat Jun 21st, 2014 at 10:34:33 AM EST
[ Parent ]
JakeS:
The power is casually prior to the value.

Never seen 'casually' used that way. Could that be 'causally'?

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Sat Jun 21st, 2014 at 04:19:39 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Your definition of fiat does not distinguish from other kinds of money. "Men with guns" were always used to take tribune, enforce contracts - whatever scarcity damned.

Russia's power in Crimea is as close to a textbook example of that as you can get.

The Kremlin will be spending much more on Crimea than collecting from it. Russia's power in Crimea is a reflection of the absence of Ukraine's power, and has nothing to do with "taking your stuff".

by das monde on Sun Jun 22nd, 2014 at 03:58:24 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Your definition of fiat does not distinguish from other kinds of money.

Because there aren't any other kinds of money. In extremis, what makes money money is that it is a token representing political power - the ability to send men with guns to make your life more difficult than it needs to be.

You can dance various sorts of kabuki around that, by tying money to commodities, inflation targets, bond markets, or whatever. But the fact that money trades at a seigniorage premium is due to money being a get-out-of-jail token.

"Men with guns" were always used to take tribune, enforce contracts - whatever scarcity damned.

Yes. And it is this institution that the modern institutions of trade and commercial exchange piggyback on.

Commercial exchange value is an afterthought to tribute collection, because commercial exchange is an afterthought to tribute collection.

The Kremlin will be spending much more on Crimea than collecting from it.

That depends entirely on how you value territory, population and major deep water naval ports.

Evidence suggests that the ruling powers that be in Russia place quite high value on at least one of those.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Sun Jun 22nd, 2014 at 04:49:06 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Do you pay an electricity bill?  If you have a solar electric panel on your roof, does your utility pay you when it provides more electricity than you can use?

Energy costs money.  If you produce energy, you can sell it and it becomes money.

Seems logical to me.

Solar IS Civil Defense

by gmoke on Sat Jun 21st, 2014 at 05:27:42 PM EST
[ Parent ]
... gold money is a bad idea.

I'll explain the reasoning in some detail below, but those who don't care about the arcana can just accept it as an empirical reality: All attempts in the recorded history of monetary economies to tie money to "real output" have ended in catastrophe of greater or lesser calamity (up to and including genocide and global war). And there is no compelling reason to think that Solar Is Different.

Long version:
Money has four functions:

  1. Money is the unit of account for the settlement of taxes and contractual disputes.

  2. Money is the standard of deferred payment, the unit in which debt is denominated.

  3. Money is the primary medium of exchange, the unit in which commerce is transacted.

  4. Money is a store of value, a means to hold discretionary purchasing power through the production cycle.

And money is those things in that order of both causality and importance.

You are focusing on money as a medium of exchange and store of value. But that's the tail. The dog is the function as unit of account and standard of deferred payment.

The function as unit of account requires that the government, which sets the rules and settles disputes in the economy, should never "run out" of money, in the same way the referee at a football match should not "run out" of goals, and the cashier at the supermarket should never run out of kilogram.

The function as standard of deferred payment means that the government must be able to inject money, in unlimited (but not infinite) amounts, into (particular parts of) the private sector, in order to prevent cascading defaults, in which bankruptcies daisy-chain around your economy, putting all productive work on pause for months while the legal implications get sorted out.

The tail (store of value and medium of exchange) should not get to wag the dog (tool of social organization).

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Sun Jun 22nd, 2014 at 01:05:28 AM EST
[ Parent ]
The function as standard of deferred payment means that the government must be able to inject money, in unlimited (but not infinite) amounts, into (particular parts of) the private sector, in order to prevent cascading defaults...
Thus, some parts of the private sector are more particular than other. Who decides where to cut cascading defaults - that is where the power lies. The "savers" upstream then become the real tribute collectors (no matter the cost, pain, ability, justice for those cut down) with the government just lending its force to them.

How much would you make of this anti-Marxism?

by das monde on Sun Jun 22nd, 2014 at 04:08:32 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Yes, politics is important.

Obviously, the institutions of government make poor governance possible.

However, for poor governance to be merely possible is a vast improvement over the certainty of poor governance in the absence of government institutions.

Removing the ability of government to intervene fiscally in a default cascade will obviously remove the ability of government to interfere in favour of the rentiers. It will equally, however, remove the ability of government to interfere in favour of the productive economy.

This is a net loss, since from the perspective of the productive economy it matters very little whether government interferes in favour of the rentier or not at all.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Sun Jun 22nd, 2014 at 04:58:21 AM EST
[ Parent ]
JakeS:
And there is no compelling reason to think that Solar Is Different.

Well it is different, in that it's for all extents and purposes the opposite of scarce. All these other commodity pegged valuings were purposely based on scarcity.

What is Different is the ability of this sea change to turn current Economics on its bald little pointy head!

Bring it on...

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Tue Jun 24th, 2014 at 03:42:07 AM EST
[ Parent ]
But it is scarce, otherwise everyone would use it. It is as of yet limited to a small subsection of the wealthy, except in places where there are massive government subsidies.

Even with 10 or 20 years of continued cost reductions, I doubt solar power will become non-scarce, ie, "too cheap to meter"...

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

by Starvid on Tue Jun 24th, 2014 at 09:35:04 AM EST
[ Parent ]
No. It appears scarce because access to the investment needed to make it non-scarce has been carefully rationed.

The energy itself is not scarce at all. Even somewhere with crappy weather like the UK has the potential to be totally self-sufficient in renewable energy with a combination of wind, solar, tidal, and off-peak storage.

The sunny, unpopulated parts of the world have a huge potential energy surplus.

If the political will existed to make it work globally, it might not be too cheap to meter, but it would be much cheaper than it is now.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Tue Jun 24th, 2014 at 05:25:24 PM EST
[ Parent ]
"Energy" is useless if it is expensive. Solar power is not expensive because of some malign conspiracy to starve it of capital, but because the manufacturing process is currently inherently expensive.

The world is full of wind and wave energy too. But it is expensive to extract it.

Uranium is very common, and it's full of free energy. But extracting that energy is not free.

And so on.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

by Starvid on Tue Jun 24th, 2014 at 07:05:41 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Starvid:
But it is scarce, otherwise everyone would use it

I suggest that it is less of a quantum leap than designing the first sail power was to catch some of the 'free' wind was.

'Too cheap to meter' is possibly the most singularly stupid phrase ever invented by man. (Especially considering its origin).

Starvid:

It is as of yet limited to a small subsection of the wealthy, except in places where there are massive government subsidies.

Come on, what about the military money that spawned nuke research, that's a huge subsidy, then add all the subsidies granted the FF industries, (direct and indirect such as road building), tax breaks etc, athen compare the scrawny subsidies grudging eked out in the most recalcitrant stop-go way specifically to undermine the growth of renewables and it's no contest.

What do you think made Jerome's work so difficult at the beginning?

Count in the cost of all the oil wars and the big picture emerges clearly, ditto the costs of 'cleaning up' yer Chernobyls and Fukushimas.

Game over... all but the dying :(

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Tue Jun 24th, 2014 at 11:40:15 PM EST
[ Parent ]
gmoke:

Energy Spinach costs money.  If you produce energy spinach, you can sell it and it becomes money.

Seems logical to me.

What "seems logical" is not necessarily true.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Sun Jun 22nd, 2014 at 01:50:39 AM EST
[ Parent ]
You can't grow spinach without light.  The plant is a store of energy.  

Money is what people involved in the exchange says it is.  Spinach or energy or bubble gum cards can by a medium of exchange and a store of value.

Would be good if more people studied Ralph Borsodi and the Constant.

Solar IS Civil Defense

by gmoke on Sun Jun 22nd, 2014 at 04:24:14 PM EST
[ Parent ]
You know what? I'm aware that spinach is a store of energy.

But are you still saying that anything I can produce and sell becomes money?

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Sun Jun 22nd, 2014 at 04:25:34 PM EST
[ Parent ]
It's hopeless. At heart all that these people want to do is abolish credit. The environmental/thermodynamics arguments are an excuse.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sun Jun 22nd, 2014 at 04:36:07 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Migeru:
At heart all that these people want to do is abolish credit.

Nice one! Credit has brought untold riches to creditors and misery to debtors, as well as providing the basis for huge growth, (Real bringing huge benefits lifting out of poverty into better standards of living, and Phantom triggering crashes and crooked casino banking, austerity).

We wouldn't have modernity if those 'letters of credit' hadn't financed the spice trade and thus the discovery of the New World. $3 a day was the average person's income for centuries. Credit shot that up to huge multiples.

But now we have it -modernity- and who wouldn't prefer a world in which there were no further need for credit, all corporations self-financing like Apple, and the masses living within our copious means. (Guaranteed basic income).

This may be Utopian, but it seems a worthy aim at the least. FF 100 years and you really see us tolerating the GS/Libor rigging/drug money-laundering shenanigans that we do now, stupified as we currently are reeling from shock doctrine chimpanzee economics.

With information spreading as fast as it is? I think not.

{Therefore I exist ;) }

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Tue Jun 24th, 2014 at 04:02:34 AM EST
[ Parent ]
If you take David Graeber's Debt seriously, credit not only pre-dates money but is part of the glue that holds societies together. (Credit, not debt - subtle but important difference).

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Jun 24th, 2014 at 04:11:40 AM EST
[ Parent ]
If you take David Graeber's Debt seriously, credit not only pre-dates money but is part of the glue that holds societies together.

Trust is the glue, credit just a fancy name for it.

I'll lend you seed and you pay me back when you can.

Share in my early harvest and I'll share your late one.

The interest there was your reputation for generosity and forgiveness of others' well-intentioned failure through no personal fault. What better glue can there be?

Oh yes CD swaps! <slaps frontal lobe>

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Tue Jun 24th, 2014 at 11:47:57 PM EST
[ Parent ]
There is a faint whiff of Austrianism in most monetary reform proposals, by the way, including in ecological economics.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Jun 24th, 2014 at 04:12:46 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Modernity joys, complex society are thus so much dependent on credit that it is increasingly ready to give a royal pass to creditor whims. Increasing desperation for credit flow is not a good sign that modernity wonders will continue for long. How fast would smartphones, tablets progress without neo-slave labor in China?

Poverty is not just having less than $3 for a day. Indebted poverty is the price Africa, banana republics and increasingly most of the rest must pay - for progressively frivolous benefit for shrinking few. Negative "income" on this scale is just as new as Apple products.

by das monde on Tue Jun 24th, 2014 at 04:35:29 AM EST
[ Parent ]
It would be less dependent on credit if the political conventional wisdom were not so fixated on real money to enforce monetary contraction through restrictive fiscal policies.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Jun 24th, 2014 at 05:00:22 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Logical dependence it is still there. Real money, contraction policies are just rationalizations for some unspoken purposes.

The political conventional wisdom was very different 10-15 years ago. Is it normal for a wisdom to change in a decade?

by das monde on Tue Jun 24th, 2014 at 03:08:53 PM EST
[ Parent ]
The political conventional wisdom was very different 10-15 years ago.

No, I don't think so. It's really been like this since the Social Democrats capitulated to the third way or pensée unique around 1990.

Is it normal for a wisdom to change in a decade?

Transitions happen very quickly because they consist in the replacement of one ideology for another already fully formed competing ideology. The transition really took place in the 1970s and 80s and it did take about a decade. When Keynesianism lost its appeal Monetarism was already fully formed waiting in the wings, so the switchover could be very quick. In addition, all the Austrians and Ordoliberals came on board as faux-monetarists because they liked the policy prescription.

What the current crisis has revealed is that the winner of the switchover were actually the Austrians and not the Monetarists, since a straight market monetarist would have agreed with the Keynesian policy prescription this time around, and that's not what happened.

Also, Social Democrats are as much into "hard money" as the right-wing Libertarians. This is perhaps counterintuitive because one would expect Social Democrats to be Keynesians, but they're more about being "responsible" than anything else. In 1945-75 the "responsible" thing was to worry about unemployment. Since stagflation, the "responsible" thing is to worry about inflation.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Jun 24th, 2014 at 05:56:42 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Two huge scandals have erupted in Italy these last weeks (conveniently just after the election). One is the Expo and the other is the Mose.

Both riddled with corruption. Keynes would have approved both as tax-funded public works creating mucho employment, n'est-ce pas?

I glumly conclude that corruption defeats any plan, so... until we have transparency of bids, and strict conflict of interest laws, we remain fu**ed.

Go MV5

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Tue Jun 24th, 2014 at 11:28:29 PM EST
[ Parent ]
I think Keynes would have approved of most ways to spend public money that hires anyone in this depression, if we compare it to not spending any at all. However he approved more of doing something useful for society with that labor.

Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se
by A swedish kind of death on Wed Jun 25th, 2014 at 02:06:09 AM EST
[ Parent ]
das monde:
Modernity joys, complex society are thus so much dependent on credit that it is increasingly ready to give a royal pass to creditor whims

That's why we need to bypass the middlemen and let the Sun be the Infinite * Creditor Source it is.

* Well good as...

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Wed Jun 25th, 2014 at 12:03:13 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Money is what people involved in the exchange says it is.

That is the Austrian position.

It is wrong.

Spinach or energy or bubble gum cards can by a medium of exchange and a store of value.

Store of value and medium of exchange are the tail. You are asking the tail to wag the dog.

Would be good if more people studied Ralph Borsodi and the Constant.

You will, I trust, excuse me for seeing nothing appealing about rural romanticism and village-council localism.

I rather like having electricity.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Sun Jun 22nd, 2014 at 05:49:48 PM EST
[ Parent ]
"Sun Money" is my attempt to wrap my head around Georgescu-Roegen's work (which probably makes me more of a Rumanian than Austrian) and some of the ideas of Second Law Economics.  Had the pleasure, and it was a pleasure, of hearing him lecture once and have read his book on energy and economics although I have yet to go back and work through my notes.  

I am fairly well-read on Gandhian economics as well and all my notes on those readings are available online at http://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com

But I don't think this conversation is interested in either of those topics.  Too bad.

We are a solar economy.  We have always been a solar economy.  We just don't count solar income (and it is real income) as part of our formal economy.

Solar IS Civil Defense

by gmoke on Tue Jun 24th, 2014 at 05:51:25 PM EST
[ Parent ]
"Sun Money" is my attempt to wrap my head around Georgescu-Roegen's work

Then either that work is crap or you have not understood it.

We just don't count solar income (and it is real income) as part of our formal economy.

That is because economics is about people - specifically how to get people to get together and perform useful work in a coordinated manner.

Managing your raw materials "budget" is what you have engineers for.

Managing your human resource "budget" is what you have economists for.

The rules for making humans comply with your design are not the same as the rules for making nature comply with your design. Which is why it is almost always either tragic or hilarious when engineers try to pontificate on economics, or economists try to pontificate on natural resource allocation.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Tue Jun 24th, 2014 at 06:02:15 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Whew, glad I'm neither.


Solar IS Civil Defense
by gmoke on Thu Jun 26th, 2014 at 03:15:42 PM EST
[ Parent ]
You mean it's not hilarious when economists try to pontificate on economics?
by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Thu Jun 26th, 2014 at 03:43:17 PM EST
[ Parent ]
That rather depends on the economist in question.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Thu Jun 26th, 2014 at 06:21:38 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Georgescu-Roegen has been on my to-read list for a long time...

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Jun 25th, 2014 at 09:44:34 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Energy costs money.  If you produce energy, you can sell it and it becomes money.

Actually, you're just saying that money is a medium of exchange. Just because anything you can make and sell can be exchanged for money, does not mean that every saleable product is money.

Cars are not money. Milk is not money. Energy is not money.

Money is money. And money is always intimately connected to tax collection, and thus to state power and force.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

by Starvid on Mon Jun 23rd, 2014 at 03:54:55 PM EST
[ Parent ]
as the discussion below got a bit fixated on what money is etc.. How about this view of approaching the issue: energy is power, or conversely, wiithout energy you cannot produce power (be it feeding troops, producing tanks, guns, etc...) or project power (ie move your mode of power somewhere where you want to use that power.

Just my two cents.

But I do agree with gmoke that solar energy is a very money-like equivalent for a lot of purposes, e.g. emPOWERing poor parts of the world to connect to the rest of the world and the information of the internet as well as preparing food more healthy and in general raising the standards of living.

by crankykarsten (cranky (where?) gmx dot organisation) on Tue Jun 24th, 2014 at 05:30:44 PM EST
[ Parent ]
How about this view of approaching the issue: energy is power

You know what does equal power?

Power. Power equals power. Crazy, huh?

But the type of power? Doesn't matter as much as you'd think.

- Xykon, to Varsuvius

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Tue Jun 24th, 2014 at 05:51:48 PM EST
[ Parent ]
"Power is a curious thing... Three great men, a king, a priest, and a rich man. Between them stands a common sellsword. Each great man bids the sellsword kill the other two. Who lives, who dies? ... Power resides where men believe it resides; it's a trick, a shadow on the wall, and a very small man can cast a very large shadow."

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
by Starvid on Tue Jun 24th, 2014 at 07:09:25 PM EST
[ Parent ]
In that example, power clearly resides with the swordsman: He is the only one with any effective agency.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Wed Jun 25th, 2014 at 03:28:13 AM EST
[ Parent ]
That's the point of the riddle - if power resides with the sellsword, how come he isn't the one in charge? :)

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
by Starvid on Wed Jun 25th, 2014 at 04:01:26 AM EST
[ Parent ]
In that riddle he is, assuming he realizes that he has a fourth option from the ones presented to him.

In the real world he does not, because he is embedded in a large organization of sell-swords, and the individual swordsman is dispensable so long as they are unable to effectively communicate and coordinate action.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Wed Jun 25th, 2014 at 05:05:05 AM EST
[ Parent ]
You said all power is "fiat".

In a game theory sense, power distribution is determined by a Nash equilibrium. Do not like the equilibrium you are in? You are generally free to work for reaching another equilibrium.

by das monde on Wed Jun 25th, 2014 at 03:34:58 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Why?

"The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson
by ChrisCook (cojockathotmaildotcom) on Fri Jun 20th, 2014 at 03:24:12 PM EST
[ Parent ]
The vast majority of energy we use, the energy that grows our food and produces the oxygen we breathe, daylight, comes from solar energy.  We don't account for it because it's free.  We've always been a solar powered economy.  We will always be a solar powered economy.  Just imagine what would happen if the sun went out.  We'd all be dead within a couple of minutes.

Solar IS Civil Defense
by gmoke on Fri Jun 20th, 2014 at 04:50:48 PM EST
[ Parent ]
I don't disagree.

I was asking migeru why currency must be fiat.

"The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson

by ChrisCook (cojockathotmaildotcom) on Fri Jun 20th, 2014 at 05:01:12 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Financial stability and macroeconomic stability.

In other words, to prevent cascading default crises, and to smooth out the business cycle.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Fri Jun 20th, 2014 at 06:00:58 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Also, if you tie it to anything which is a part of the real, physical economy people will start to treat whatever you tied it to as money or money-trees rather than their actual function. In this particular instance, it is predictable that solar power would get immensely overproduced, and likely with no particular care for how to make use of it. Bad, bad idea.
by Thomas on Sat Jun 21st, 2014 at 04:07:30 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Thomas:
In this particular instance, it is predictable that solar power would get immensely overproduced, and likely with no particular care for how to make use of it. Bad, bad idea.

What's the problem with greater supply lowering prices?

If there is one, surely it could be legislated away by insisting that it be put to good use.

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Sat Jun 21st, 2014 at 04:22:41 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Malallocation of resources, misuse of the land..

..

No, really, this is too obvious. Market mechanisms of production halt production when noone is willing to pay enough for more product.
Planning halts production when a the target decided on is reached.

Making production directly equal the creation of money means production does not stop until your currency system is destroyed or further production is an actual physical and practical impossibility.

Bad is not a sufficient descriptor. This is a country-killer.

by Thomas on Sat Jun 21st, 2014 at 04:30:51 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Thomas:
This is a country-killer.

It may well be a Utility-killer, but it won't leak Cesium.

Thomas:

misuse of the land..

I agree it's not advisable to dedicate agrarian acres, but there's no downside to creating shade areas and using available all S-facing rooves.

I just don't see any logic in your above statements. I know from many comments you make you're no raving lunatic, but the logical path you use to get to vilification of PV seems errant to my comprehension and equally seems to entirely miss gmoke's points in this diary, (with which I am in complete agreement).

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Sat Jun 21st, 2014 at 08:27:54 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Our economic system demands expansion to work at full capacity. If you tie money to a commodity you don't change that, you just make sure that the saying about perpetual expansion on a limited earth gets more real.

So if solar is money, when every good place has solar panels, you still need to build more, because the alternative is financial austerity. And then you will either put solar panels at bad places (like prime agricultural land) or accept that some people must be unemployed because we are out of solar panels.

Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se

by A swedish kind of death on Sun Jun 22nd, 2014 at 05:23:32 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Sigh... It's always so hard to know how far posters' tongues are into their cheeks...

A swedish kind of death:

the alternative is financial austerity.

Sounds more like a steady-state economy!

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Sun Jun 22nd, 2014 at 06:14:30 PM EST
[ Parent ]
...as a steady state economy.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sun Jun 22nd, 2014 at 09:14:06 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Definition « Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy
Sustainable Scale and Degrowth

Sustainable scale is the key characteristic of a steady state economy. Scale is simply a measure of the size of one object relative to another. In this case, we are concerned with the size of the human economy relative to the ecosystems that contain it. Sustainability is achieved when the human economy fits within the capacity provided by Earth's ecosystems. Economic activity degrades ecosystems, interfering with natural processes that are critical to various life support services. In the past, the amount of economic activity was small enough that the degree of interference with ecosystems was negligible. The unprecedented growth of economic activity, however, has significantly shifted the balance with potentially disastrous consequences. This is why getting the scale of the economy right (technically the point at which the marginal costs of growth equal the marginal benefits) is the highest priority for a steady state economy.

Finding the Goldilocks scale of the economy, the size that's not too small and not too large, but just right, is no easy feat. In cases where the benefits of growth outweigh the costs (for example, where people are not consuming enough to meet their needs), growth or redistribution of resources may be required. In cases where the size of the economy has surpassed the carrying capacity of the ecosystems that contain it (a condition known as overshoot), degrowth may be required before establishing a steady state economy that can be maintained over the long term. Adjusting the scale of the economy through accurate measurement of benefits and costs, through trial and error, through regulation of markets, and through political will to achieve sustainability is the great challenge of our times.

Well maybe there should/will be!

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Mon Jun 23rd, 2014 at 03:01:21 AM EST
[ Parent ]
There is no steady state economy because there is no economic activity without innovation and productivity improvement. Unless you stifle progress by means of a backwards culture. In other words, people being people they will find a way to do their work ever so slightly better, faster or creaper and that will upset the "steady state".

This doesn't mean the energy throuput needs to increase with time. It does not. The economy is the way the throughput is structured, and that has more to do with complex systems and less with the second law of thermodynamics.

Of course, energy accounting is one perfectly fine "cultural" way to stifle economic evolution.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon Jun 23rd, 2014 at 07:11:17 AM EST
[ Parent ]
I would argue that the labor market is in a bad steady state now. Innovation, productivity improvement is only for big guys with resources and unforced choices.
by das monde on Mon Jun 23rd, 2014 at 08:06:02 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Unless you stifle progress by means of a backwards culture. In other words, people being people they will find a way to do their work ever so slightly better, faster or creaper and that will upset the "steady state".

Huh? What does this have to do with the real world?

If it were even remotely true we'd have no austerity because people would simply innovate their way out of it.

Do you see anything like that happening?

Even if it were true, in a steady-state economy people would simply spend less time working.

The evidence is that in your and Jake's idea of a forwards culture, people actually spend more and more time working, no matter how much innovation happens, because it's never possible for the time and money tribute paid to the 1% to become big enough.

The real problem is the 1% of rentiers. And the definition of a steady state economy is that there's is no pressure to pay ever-increasing tribute to them - just as the definition of 'economic growth' is that their tribute increases steadily, because they demand it should.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Tue Jun 24th, 2014 at 05:34:37 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Yes, industrial society is based on foundational institutions which evolved from, and retain strong elements of, predatory tribute collection.

This does not mean that you get to jettison industrial society, until and unless you provide an alternative solution for making sure that the light turns on when you hit the switch.

That problem happens to be highly non-trivial, and until and unless it is solved the industrial state needs to be kept around and in good working order.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Tue Jun 24th, 2014 at 05:53:15 PM EST
[ Parent ]
ThatBritGuy:
The evidence is that in your and Jake's idea of a forwards culture, people actually spend more and more time working, no matter how much innovation happens, because it's never possible for the time and money tribute paid to the 1% to become big enough.

It's like they think the economy is the only reason people do things that are interesting and innovative.

Similar to those who point to the de Medicis as being responsible for the great art of the Renaissance, because they paid for much of it.

What bankers create is tokens of confidence. That's not art, it's finance.  Aka abacus fiddling.

 Dig bifference.

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Wed Jun 25th, 2014 at 12:13:42 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Definition « Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy

Herman Daly, one of the founders of the field of ecological economics and a leading critic of neoclassical growth theory, defines a steady state economy as:

An economy with constant stocks of people and artifacts, maintained at some desired, sufficient levels by low rates of maintenance `throughput', that is, by the lowest feasible flows of matter and energy from the first stage of production to the last stage of consumption.

Daly, Herman. 1991. Steady-State Economics, 2nd edition. Island Press, Washington, DC. p.17.

A steady state economy, therefore, aims for stable or mildly fluctuating levels in population and consumption of energy and materials. Birth rates equal death rates, and production rates equal depreciation rates.

Lets call what they describe a steady-state physical economy. The steady-state physical economy is possible with the ever expanding money economy (ever growing GDP) as long as inflation is allowed to eat away the value of money. Then the current market economy can be used to allocate production resources in changing proportions while the total use of resources remains fairly constant.

Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se

by A swedish kind of death on Mon Jun 23rd, 2014 at 08:57:05 AM EST
[ Parent ]
The steady-state physical economy is possible with the ever expanding money economy (ever growing GDP) as long as inflation is allowed to eat away the value of money. Then the current market economy can be used to allocate production resources in changing proportions while the total use of resources remains fairly constant.
Yes, and that's how structure formation in nonequilibrium systems at constant throughput works...

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon Jun 23rd, 2014 at 09:34:32 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Herman Daly:
An economy with constant stocks of people and artifacts
Constant stocks of artifacts? No cultural or technological evolution? Uh, what!?

#environmentalEconomicsFAIL

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon Jun 23rd, 2014 at 09:36:04 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Tongue not much in cheek, except the last lines parody of the "we have run out of money"-argument.

Steady-state economy is an option outside of the current market economy, while choice of currency is very much an option within it. If the argument is that solar would work as currency in a steady-state economy, then that depends on how that steady-state economy is built. Which is a much larger question than choice of currency.

Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se

by A swedish kind of death on Mon Jun 23rd, 2014 at 08:47:17 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Steady state is an illusion brought about by the enormity and slowness of goelogical (and ecological) time measured in human lifetimes. And maybe before the industrial revolution social evolution was also slow. But then you go back and see the scientific revolution, the axial age, the iron age, bronze age, chalcolythic, neolythic, agricultural revolution, paleoythic... When was human society ever in an steady state?

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon Jun 23rd, 2014 at 09:33:00 AM EST
[ Parent ]
When was human society ever in an steady state?
Most of the time - in punctuated equilibria - I would guess. We just live in interesting times.
by das monde on Mon Jun 23rd, 2014 at 09:51:30 AM EST
[ Parent ]
I see your punctuated equilibria and raise you a multifractal-spectrum/power-law of intensity of change. Meaning you never know when the next punctuation is going to strike and there are punctuations at all scales of time and magnitude.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon Jun 23rd, 2014 at 10:29:42 AM EST
[ Parent ]
How do those Fractal, Power Spectrum chocolates formalize Novelty, Energy Throughput, if I may ask so?
by das monde on Mon Jun 23rd, 2014 at 12:31:19 PM EST
[ Parent ]
I take it you're unfamiliar with self-organised criticality in the stick-slip earthquake model?

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon Jun 23rd, 2014 at 12:42:41 PM EST
[ Parent ]
That surely relates novelty and everything else.
by das monde on Mon Jun 23rd, 2014 at 12:48:21 PM EST
[ Parent ]
I'll take that as a no.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Jun 24th, 2014 at 04:21:46 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Not impressed by the "self-organized criticality" yet.
by das monde on Tue Jun 24th, 2014 at 03:36:18 PM EST
[ Parent ]
If you force stick-slip in a violin string you get a steady cyclical tone.

Just thought I'd throw that in for the would-be alchemists.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Tue Jun 24th, 2014 at 05:38:48 PM EST
[ Parent ]
You brought up punctuated equilibria.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Jun 24th, 2014 at 05:47:44 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Sticking to closed regular models is far from informative about bio-complex systems. Novelty secrets probably lie in perturbations of the boundary conditions of any model or equilibrium. Life is the art of dealing with perturbations.

The industrial revolution was certainly a significant perturbation of human civilization. In particular, it allowed to build upon new energy sources. With a lot of financial, political masking, the potential of the industrial innovation is running out - and who knows when a new real jolt will follow, which stick slips to follow.

by das monde on Wed Jun 25th, 2014 at 03:28:37 AM EST
[ Parent ]
The energy production eventually will not meat the exponential demands of "savers" - but by that frantic energy "production" would wreak environmental havoc indeed. "Mining" for bitcoins was just a child's play.

In that respect, tying the energy to money will indeed be a disaster. However...

with no particular care for how to make use of it
That's a problem with hoarding of any kind of money. So far this hoarding is even more valuable that life necessities. But when that changes, people will be hoarding energy and other resources anyway, no?
by das monde on Sun Jun 22nd, 2014 at 04:21:49 AM EST
[ Parent ]
by das monde on Wed Jun 25th, 2014 at 03:18:03 AM EST
This is really quite nonsensical. Would it matter at all if the are was twice as big, or half as big? Does it matter that enough nuclear stations to supply the world would require one millionth of that space?

Of course not, because empty desert is clearly not the scarce resource here.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

by Starvid on Wed Jun 25th, 2014 at 04:04:09 AM EST
[ Parent ]
It would matter for building, transporting solar panels and their materials.
by das monde on Wed Jun 25th, 2014 at 04:23:43 AM EST
[ Parent ]
No, it wouldn't. Transporting solar panels is a non-problem. Building them is also a non-problem. The problem is that they are still pretty expensive.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
by Starvid on Wed Jun 25th, 2014 at 04:32:19 AM EST
[ Parent ]
I haven't looked at it in several years but I'm guessing the EROEI on solar is going to pass the average for fossil fuels in the next few decades. I think wind is already in the neighborhood.

you are the media you consume.

by MillMan (millguy at gmail) on Fri Jun 27th, 2014 at 06:34:43 PM EST
[ Parent ]
energy return is the most useless concept to ever surface. Economic Return is what people base their decisions on and it is the one that matters. If this wasn't true, the world entire would long since have transitioned to an economy based on fast-neutron fission breeders.
by Thomas on Sat Jun 28th, 2014 at 02:19:31 PM EST
[ Parent ]
When EROEI becomes less than 1 it does mean something...

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sat Jun 28th, 2014 at 02:21:42 PM EST
[ Parent ]
No, it doesn't. Any process that converts one form of energy to another has sub-unity return on energy. Lots of them make sense both practically and economically anyway.
by Thomas on Sat Jun 28th, 2014 at 03:44:35 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Any process that converts one form of energy to another has sub-unity return on energy.
That's the second law of thermodynamics, but The second law of thermodynamics has nothing to do with EROEI because you can't include into EROEI the energy content of "raw materials".

The point is that you have some energy in usable form, and some "raw material" and you want to use the usable energy to power some process that will transform the energy content of the raw material into usable form.

If you end up with less usable energy than you had to begin with, you're destroying the raw material for no good reason.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sat Jun 28th, 2014 at 05:07:01 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Except that noone is in the business of producing "Energy". People are in the business of producing specific fuels or in the business of producing electricity, or heat. If one form of "energy" is sufficiently cheap, and another sufficiently scarce, you can expend lots of one to produce the other and make money.  

To clarify: I do not believe anyone will ever expend more electricity producing say oil than the oil contains in bound chemical energy, but this is not because that would herald the end of industrial civilization or because it inherently would be nonsensical to do. It wont happen because we would transition to other motive fuels or batteries before it became necessary to exploit oil resources that marginal. For economic reasons. Eroei adds no fresh insight to this judgement.

by Thomas on Sun Jun 29th, 2014 at 02:10:15 AM EST
[ Parent ]


Display:
Go to: [ European Tribune Homepage : Top of page : Top of comments ]