Micro-capitalism vs. micro-communism

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7Wannabe5
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Micro-capitalism vs. micro-communism

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

I have been intermittently attempting to push the functioning of my brain to its limits through consideration of systems theory and how it applies to my lifestyle. My organically created reading list/stack is reflective of this. Somehow, I have recently landed on the intersection of the Venn diagram where frugality/conservation intersects with communism, because from different threads of my reading web, I came upon "Four Futures: Life After Capitalism" by Peter Frase, and "The Right to Be Lazy" by Paul Lafargue (Marx's son-in-law) 1907 (with 1975 Introduction by Fred Thompson which attempts to integrate then new science of Ecology with the theme of the original essay. )

I am going to start this discussion from the premise that the majority of the members of this forum would agree that personal liberty should or likely will somehow be held/kept in balance with personal responsibility. For instance, if my sister/housemate maintains the liberty to own 4 dogs but does not take personal responsibility if one of them pees in my bedroom then there will likely be consequences. I choose this example because it is inclusive of the expense of waste disposal in consumption/production cycle. This would be a better example for the purposes of this post if, as I have suggested, instead of allowing her dogs to be completely useless, she attached them to yokes and mill and made them earn their keep by grinding grain and/or at least producing enough electricity to charge her cell phone, and thereby assign them a productive function.

Most of us live in a culture of easy, mindless consumption. Becoming more mindful about consumption is the usual perspective of the art of frugality. For example, when I walk down to the corner and buy a package of cookies, it is like I am ordering the production of one more cardboard box, plastic insert, 8 oz. of Canadian wheat, 8 oz. of refined Brazilian sugar cane, .1 gallons of Oklahoma petroleum etc. etc. However, because I am also a small business owner and a gardener, I also concern myself directly, or intimately, with my means/methods/tools of production. For example, I need to decide to what extent I am going to use recycled materials to package a book I am shipping, and I need to decide to what extent I am going to use petroleum powered tools to till my asparagus bed.

After I started making some money through retail arbitrage, which is moving end-lot, clearance otherwise discounted goods from the brick and mortar retail market to the internet distribution market, it quickly became apparent to me that the way to increase efficiency along this path would be to either buy much larger lots of secondarily discounted goods (such as returned merchandise) at auction OR actually insert myself directly into the cycle of production of new goods for the market. For instance, I have a pretty good eye for the upscale toy market, so I almost purchased (caused the production) of a $3000 lot of charmingly painted, wooden play kitchen appliances from a Chinese factory. Some of the more sophisticated marketeers/producers of goods for export even include group pictures of their labor staff on their internet sites. So, you can sometimes even "know" the crew of smock wearing laborers who are painting the charming design and fastening the hinges on the wooden toys. Almost, but not quite like, how in these days of globalism you might know that a certain expensive brand of coffee is roasted by a college friend's Swedish ex-second-husband's brother.

My BF is a senior plant engineer, so he travels around the world overseeing the construction of giant houses for production robots. His best friend with whom we both stay quite frequently is a super-wealthy investor. They are both politically conservative. My sister-housemate is a true radical Bohemian artist, but also a law student. My two adult kids and my baby sister are cynical/liberal hipster nerds. So my current Circle-of-5 is fairly diverse, with the only common elements being appreciation for books, gardening/ecology, some flavor of frugality, so although I cast my vote for Jill Stein, I am not arguing in favor of some sort of party alliance or even simple pocket-book self-interest that might be surmised by reading my life-cycle 1040s. I am not currently deriving more than a smidgen of income from corporate stock investment, but I will be fed my dinner on this holiday evening at a not-inexpensive restaurant, from funds directly derived from profits of one such corporation, so my lifestyle loops are also overtly production inclusive of mega-tool/labor conglomerations. So, my question isn't by way of "holier than thou" signaling.

What I am wondering, given the reality of a future where resources, including availability of resources in which waste products can be diluted/sequestered, are being depleted as technology is being improved, do you guys think we are or should be heading more towards making personal choices, or being more mindful about production, in alignment with more personal ownership or community sharing towards more resilient model of distribution of means of production (tools) or the more globalized mega-concentrated towards efficiency investment in means of production (tools?) Here is an example of what might be a possibility for small distributed production.

http://opensourceecology.org/about-overview/

BRUTE
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Re: Micro-capitalism vs. micro-communism

Post by BRUTE »

communism can work fairly well on the micro scale. in a sense, most families are communist. if all humans involved have their incentives aligned right, they can achieve their goals synergistically without requirement for the overhead of a market economy.

markets are a useful tool for distributing resources in a decentralized way. this is necessary if either the economy in question is too complex to be usefully managed by mom or dad, or if there are incentive traps that would tear the system apart - 'tragedy of the commons' comes to mind.

the scale at which micro-communism breaks down is surprisingly small, brute has experienced the complete disintegration of households of 5-10 humans several times, usually over trivial nonsense like who ate who's cereal and who didn't chip in for the cleaning lady or not clean up after themselves.

OSE in particular is not solving any actual problems - the big cost of civilization is not the techniques or building materials. housing is expensive because of land and building codes, not because wood, stone, or architects are expensive. of course building a brick shack in rural Missouri is going to be dirt cheap, but for how much does an equivalent house sell there? food is expensive because of shipping and space constraints, and because it's mostly a luxury in the 1st world. if it was about affordability, all humans would eat lentils like jacob.

OSE is also chronically suffering from incompetent-dictatorship-syndrome. the founder means well, but needs to control everything. he seems to go through waves of recruiting a bunch of enthusiastic humans that end up on his farm, work/volunteer for 1-3 months and do a "project", then get fed up with his micro-management and the living conditions, and leave. rinse, repeat. this is exactly the problem with communism - it doesn't work if complexity grows beyond what a single human can juggle.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Micro-capitalism vs. micro-communism

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

BRUTE said: communism can work fairly well on the micro scale. in a sense, most families are communist. if all humans involved have their incentives aligned right, they can achieve their goals synergistically without requirement for the overhead of a market economy.

markets are a useful tool for distributing resources in a decentralized way. this is necessary if either the economy in question is too complex to be usefully managed by mom or dad, or if there are incentive traps that would tear the system apart - 'tragedy of the commons' comes to mind.

the scale at which micro-communism breaks down is surprisingly small, brute has experienced the complete disintegration of households of 5-10 humans several times, usually over trivial nonsense like who ate who's cereal and who didn't chip in for the cleaning lady or not clean up after themselves.
Shared kitchen facilities and tools is a good micro-example of what I was "trying" to express. My solid opinion on this matter is that it never works unless one individual overtly takes on the responsibility of being the "Mom" and one individual takes on the authority of being the "Dad." If one individual holds authority as well as responsibility then they are the "Parent." The management of any complex system requires decisions about what will be encouraged to "grow" and "thrive" and what will be "killed" or banished to exile outside of the boundaries of the system. A kitchen that is managed by an individual who is more inclined to exert authority than take responsibility will likely more closely resemble a sterile Lysol poisoned, plastic coated kill zone and one that is managed by an individual who is more inclined to take responsibility than exert authority will likely include 3 homeless cats, a jungle of house plants, and a troop of ants carrying off homemade cookie crumbs from the not-recently-scrubbed floor. All the individuals who benefit from use or production of any given kitchen, but do not take any responsibility or authority within that realm, are "children" within the scope of that kitchen. Any individual who exchanges money or other goods for barter with the "parent" of the kitchen at the boundary of the system is an independent adult customer of the kitchen. Any individual who at will exchanges work within the kitchen, under the direction of the "parent" of the kitchen, for the produce of the kitchen or money is an employee of the system. Etc. etc. etc. IOW, I agree with you that "sibling" systems, where it is assumed that the standard of independent adult behavior will be maintained within a group of independent adults do not generally end up functioning well, and generally either end up falling apart or defaulting to one or two individuals taking on responsibility and authority. My personal rule of thumb is that to the extent that nobody else does it or takes it on, I will be the "Parent" and receive compensation from the kitchen system in proportion to my exertion, although I do sometimes end up a bit martyred since I tend to err on the side of being "fun Mom" rather than 'strict Dad." This is why I rarely pay much rent and am always welcomed as a house guest.

housing is expensive because of land and building codes, not because wood, stone, or architects are expensive.
True. Of course, it is exceedingly rare to actually own land rather than a collection of rights associated with a piece of land. Also, the true economic function of regulations and codes which can be enforced by variety of officers of the law is saving society the expense of having the court system resolve a bajillion different civil suits. If two kids are seen fighting on the playground, they are both instantly suspended, and the principal does not have to waste time determining relative guilt.

Anyways, I think the question I was really trying to ask with my initial post was "How close do you think we are to the end of the global industrial age?", which might just be another way of asking "When do you think that the price of petroleum will make transportation of finished goods from 3rd world more expensive than local labor in 1st world given possibility of more technologically advanced small tools?"

vexed87
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Re: Micro-capitalism vs. micro-communism

Post by vexed87 »

@7WB, I think the degree to which you would take one approach over the other would depend on the relative complexity and degree of specialisation within civic society. Modularity/open source is a fascinating topic, but as a solution to our problems, it won't matter much if our complex society collapses because we don't have the resources to maintain and manufacture our high tech gadgets and hyper-specialised way of life.

Given complexity of society and it's means of production are largely dictated by the available energy (resources) available to society, (don't forget this also varies dramatically by region and community...) it's hard to say which communities could implement modular/open source production before it's too late. It probably comes down to how well connected and organised your community is. Open source ecology would work well in your local community if you had the relationships and trust established, but for the majority who don't know what community means outside of their immediate family, housemates and circle of close friends, it ain't going to work...

Across the board, there's a real danger community might not get a strong foothold before industrial civilisation finishes circling the drain, and at that point if your locale has no sense of community, the odds are stacked against you for constructing a meaningful response to decline. So I guess it's up to us to do our damned best to get out there and focus on rebuilding community to the sort of condition it was in before the markets dominated nearly every productive thing we do. Ian Flemming's great work, Lean Logic basically addresses this whole concept, I strongly recommend it, it's a system thinker's wet dream!
"How close do you think we are to the end of the global industrial age?"
Jacob did a great job in this post: viewtopic.php?p=135713#p135713

EDIT: I read this back to myself and it could come across as misrepresenting jacob's views, I'm not saying here that the end of petroleum necessarily equates to the end of industrial civilisations, that my personal view, and probably not jacobs, but rather the decline of petroleum and its inevitable collapse of the market economy is a good starting point for measuring when the tide turns against industrial civilisation, I guess the end has only arrived when the last grid powered factories shut down, but then again, that depends how exactly you define the end of an epoch, what percentage of the population need to stop benefiting from the industrial production techniques to consider it the end of the epoch, 90, 95, 99.99%?
When do you think that the price of petroleum will make transportation of finished goods from 3rd world more expensive than local labor in 1st world given possibility of more technologically advanced small tools?"
Cost of local production of production < imported solution + cost of transportation, or in other words probably about the same time, or shortly before your income equalises with the earnings of the factory workers in the 3rd world economy, and that depends on when your particular streams of income are crushed by wider macroeconomics. With every day that passes, more people in the west are falling into this camp, hence we see events like Brexit/Trump.

In a post-industrial society, an open-source society would stand a better chance of re-building, because our main resources would be our labour and knowledge, keeping human capital to ourselves (knowledge/experience), might make us wealthy if we have other's to extract rents from... but that won't be possible if the whole of society around us has been laid to waste. So a greater degree of cooperation will be necessary, and certainly would act as a buffer as industrial civilisation dies its death, so it certainly makes sense to implement this strategy while there is time, but I guess that would come at the cost of accepting that your can no longer make a quick buck and possibly accept your place in the camp of have nots and your time participating in the spoils of the free market industrial capitalistic society is over.
Last edited by vexed87 on Thu Feb 16, 2017 4:15 am, edited 2 times in total.

classical_Liberal
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Re: Micro-capitalism vs. micro-communism

Post by classical_Liberal »

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BRUTE
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Re: Micro-capitalism vs. micro-communism

Post by BRUTE »

7Wannabe5 wrote:How close do you think we are to the end of the global industrial age?
brute thinks not very close. this might be a typical techno-libertarian view, but brute thinks humans will just use something else once the oil runs out. will it be exactly the same? no. is there enough energy dense mass, or can it be constructed, to pretty much pick up oil's job? yes.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Micro-capitalism vs. micro-communism

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

vexed87 said: Modularity/open source is a fascinating topic, but as a solution to our problems, it won't matter much if our complex society collapses because we don't have the resources to maintain and manufacture our high tech gadgets and hyper-specialised way of life.
I agree that there is some level of trade-off, but I don't think it is absolutely insurmountable. For instance, for a routine task not requiring creative thought, it is more efficient to use solar energy processed by PVC to power a robot/machine, such as a modern tractor, to do the work than solar energy processed into potatoes to power a human to do the work. A draft animal such as a horse would fall somewhere in between. However, this obviously requires some high-tech factory somewhere producing new PVC to replace the old PVC when it wears out. But, there does exist a less efficient solution in which lenses are used to concentrate solar energy in order to heat water to run turbine, and the re-creation of this technology does not necessitate a high-tech factory. I think there are many such examples of ways in which maintenance of 21st scientific knowledge combined with pre-high-tech-industrial tool production could prove useful post-peak.
Ian Flemming's great work, Lean Logic basically addresses this whole concept, I strongly recommend it, it's a system thinker's wet dream!
Yes, it is definitely on my list. I am thinking that it would be a good companion to "A Pattern Language" by Christopher Alexander, which is one of my all time favorites. I am currently in the process of having all the rare books I own on the topic of lost arts and crafts shipped back to me from Amazon's warehouses, so the post-peak future may find me holed up in some abandoned urban store-front sleeping in a cot in the corner, warming my fingers over some bio-fuel grate, surrounded by stacks of such works as "Garden-Craft: Old and New" (1890), "Metal Sculpture with a Torch" (1968), "Handbook of Textile Fibres" (1964), "Curiosities of Clocks and Watches from the Earliest Times" (1866), and "Art and the City: A History of the Arts and Crafts Society of Detroit" (1956) etc. etc. etc. Then I will trudge over to my garden plot where I will be endeavoring to maintain such varieties as Yukon Gold potatoes, Potawatomi flint corn, Bengali long beans, Iranian squash, Mortgage Lifter tomatoes and Peonies that were popular in the gardens of my region in the 1950s. My sister also intends to warehouse some pianos and sheet music for safe-keeping.
Confronted with this double madness of the laborers killing themselves with over-production and vegetating in abstinence, the great problem of capitalist production is no longer to find producers and to multiply their powers but to discover consumers, to excite their appetites and create in them fictitious needs. Since the European laborers, shivering with cold and hunger, refuse to wear the stuffs they weave, to drink the wines from the vineyards they tend, the poor manufacturers in their goodness of heart must run to the ends of the earth to find people to wear the clothes and drink the wines: Europe exports every year goods amounting to billions of dollars to the four corner of the earth, to nations that have no need of them.
-"The Right to Be Lazy", Paul Lafargue- 1907
classical_Liberal said: I have been able to achieve, what I feel, is a good balance between micro-capitalism (along with associated personal liberties) & micro-communism in my personal life in the form of the shared micro-capitalism.
Yes. I think micro-capitalism is a relevant concept. The quote I posted above from a 1907 work by Marx's son-in-law with a few updates of geography and verbiage could be a paragraph from any modern simple living ,frugality or retire-early blog. So, it is kind of like ERE combines a traditionally communistic sentiment with a micro-capitalistic solution. European peasants prior to the age of enclosure and industrialization were more self-sufficient. Some members of European nobility maintained the right/freedom to ride their horses across all the lands into the early 20th century. So, there is some level on which we still retain these values in our culture. And this is reflected in the dichotomy of the two distinct types of micro-capital sought by those in the ERE and like communities. The first form being personal ownership and maintenance of small tools and holdings of resources and the skills necessary to make use of them. The second form of micro-capital obviously being the ownership of small shares of stock in large productive corporate collections of tools.

Your example of one method for expanding the benefits of micro-capitalism through sharing, the thread on this forum on the topic of creating joint ERE community, corporate facilitated micro-capitalistic opportunities such as Uber, the community garden resource group to which I belong, and the open source ecology group can all be seen as attempts to bridge the gap between the first form of micro-capitalism and the second form of micro-capitalism.
brute thinks not very close. this might be a typical techno-libertarian view, but brute thinks humans will just use something else once the oil runs out. will it be exactly the same? no. is there enough energy dense mass, or can it be constructed, to pretty much pick up oil's job? yes.
Show me the math.

Farm_or
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Re: Micro-capitalism vs. micro-communism

Post by Farm_or »

During a brainstorm session at a seminar years ago, I suggested to my group of farmers the idea of bartering equipment. Seems to me that if your neighbor has an under utilized disc, but doesn't own a drill, you would both be well served if you bought a way cool grain drill. You could both stretch your capital.

My idea was not anything new. There's way too much variable in our culture to be effective. Too many "world owes me a living" types that abuse borrowed machines and bring it back busted or they don't bring it back at all. It only takes one offense to ditch the whole project.

One case in point, I borrowed my neighbor's drill once. It was in usable condition, with a few holes patched with duct tape and card board. I thought I would express my appreciation by spending a few hours on it with my wire feed, patching those holes properly. I did a real professional job other than not having the matching paint color. I primered it though so it would not rust. It was all metal again and nice and smooth- good as new!

Not only that the owner was oblivious of the painstaking repair I did, but he billed me for the use at a rate that that I could have custom hired the job!

Nevertheless, there are a few relationships that I have established where sharing seems to work. Worse part is it took several years to figure out who's who

7Wannabe5
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Re: Micro-capitalism vs. micro-communism

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Farm_or said: During a brainstorm session at a seminar years ago, I suggested to my group of farmers the idea of bartering equipment. Seems to me that if your neighbor has an under utilized disc, but doesn't own a drill, you would both be well served if you bought a way cool grain drill. You could both stretch your capital.
Right. I think co-operatives of independent farmers would be a key example since community grain mills are probably the hallmark of human civilization. Even at my level of urban gardening, the benefits of sharing resources quickly becomes apparent. Seeds, cuttings, tools, labor-parties to raise the hoop-house etc. etc. I just broke down and purchased a 42 inch wrecking bar because I need to take apart some pallets for garden fencing and book shelf construction, but only after determining that nobody in my circle had one they weren't using and there wasn't one available at the junk store. I try to be a good sharer, but scavenging for a wrecking bar caused me to remember (oops!) that I still had a friend's post-hole digger in my possession, so I hastened to return it.

This is probably too micro to fit your purposes, but I have been contemplating how I could make use of a variety of such devices in my situation once I finish my robotics course-work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9E4jpGoyakc

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Ego
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Re: Micro-capitalism vs. micro-communism

Post by Ego »

At last count I have 56 tenants sharing the important systems of a building. Collectively we have a smaller actual footprint than a regular suburban home. It is an old building so everything is metered collectively. Last month we spent:

Gas: $1160
Electric: $1750
Sewer and Water $1025

Gas & electric were higher than normal this month because I ran the boiler for several days and some tenants were using portable electric heaters to make up the slack. In the summer we see a similar surge in electricity usage because we've been looking the other way regarding window air conditioners. If I had my druthers we'd install ceiling fans in every apartment and eliminate the use of air conditioners.

This is a purely capitalist solution. We "share" the equipment and I am the "parent" who relies mostly on well oiled systems to take care of disruptions.

Yesterday I wheeled out six trash cans (once a week) and four recycle cans (once every two weeks) and found a perfectly working microwave oven which I will recycle in my own way. Relative to people in the developing world, we create a lot of trash waste per person. Relative to people in the suburbs/xburbs, we create a minuscule amount of trash waste per person.

The city is working on a major water recycling project which will minimize our water inputs. Our electric is 35% solar and a little bit of wind with the rest being natural gas. There is a goal of 100% by 2030 and they are ahead of schedule to reach it.

We share a nearby park for recreation. We share bike lanes and many tenants use uber/lyft rather than own a personal car. Uber killed the Car2Go car sharing service. A few tenants use public transportation every day. Several walk to work.

A lot of our food comes from local farms 40-60 miles, but most of it travels 300 miles from the central valley.

Gilberto de Piento
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Re: Micro-capitalism vs. micro-communism

Post by Gilberto de Piento »

I didn't read all of the above (sorry) but you might like the book Sacred Economics. It's slow and dense but deals with possibilities beyond capitalism and involves ecology.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Micro-capitalism vs. micro-communism

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Ego said: Collectively we have a smaller actual footprint than a regular suburban home.
I'm sure this is true. A number of years ago I read a very good book (title escapes me) that explained how individuals who live in Manhattan have the smallest footprint in the U.S. However, I would note that in the era when suburban housing was first constructed, the occupancy rate of these houses was much higher. I would be curious to learn how the square footage/occupant of your complex compares to the 1958 overall average of 350 square ft. /person. Current new constructed suburban houses average almost 1000 square feet/occupant.

The problem with urban living in terms of system theory is not carbon footprint, but sustainability. If you included the central valley within the boundary of your system then you might have a potentially resilient closed-loop system. The urban realm where I share an 800 sq/ft lower flat with my sister and 3 dogs and own 3 vacant garden lots and a camper is the most densely populated area in the state of Michigan, with 22,000 residents in around 2 square miles. It would be impossible to grow enough food to feed this community within the community.

My BF, who once submitted an engineering design for better integrating their cooking/heating/cooling/refrigeration/ventilation systems to McDonald's, and has overseen many such mega-projects, thinks that the ideal solution would be to convince middle-class Americans that it is okay to live in upscale high-rise apartment complexes which could share efficient central geothermal pump facilities and surrounding green-spaces. In the area where we reside nothing remotely resembling this exists, and it is cheaper to buy than rent, and he likes to garden, so he is shopping for a 1950s/60s era brick ranch around 1200 square ft. to share part-time with his 12 year old son and possibly me if I fall weak in my resolve to occupy my urban camper and subject to persuasion. I vowed to never again live upon land over which I did not hold dominance, but it is not very easy to find an attractive man of my age/level-of-educational-attainment who is willing to live in a camper parked on a vacant lot garden within a situation of urban decay (sigh.)

Riggerjack
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Re: Micro-capitalism vs. micro-communism

Post by Riggerjack »

Show me the math.
E=mc2

I know it has been decided here that once oil runs low, the world at large will embrace frugality, and peace will reign on earth. Or, we won't, and there will be a post Apocalyptic world where we fight over the scraps until there are no more scraps, or nature, etc. The bacteria will inherit the earth, and all that.

Or... We could use nuke power plants. Since we are currently using nukes, it seems pretty likely to me, that we will just do it more. There's no shortage of material, and once my generation dies off, the kids of the future are just likely to make the obvious choice, with less preprogrammed fear of radiation.

Or, we will continue to pump the engines of fear here. In other areas, they will embrace a nuke powered future. Then dump the waste here, where the economy died, land is cheap, and nobody cares what happens to those foolish Americans, anyway. Maybe we can have it all, a bright shining future on Earth, and a post Apocalyptic America...

7Wannabe5
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Re: Micro-capitalism vs. micro-communism

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

gilberto de Piento said: you might like the book Sacred Economics
Thanks for the recommendation. I will add it to my list.


riggerjack said: Or... We could use nuke power plants. Since we are currently using nukes, it seems pretty likely to me, that we will just do it more. There's no shortage of material
It is my understanding that this is debatable. Uranium and copper supplies are limited. Obviously, the problem with nuclear energy is the opposite of the problem with solar because it can only be centrally produced and then distributed over a network. The entire transportation industry would have to be converted to electric in order to make use of nuclear generated energy.

OTOH, I believe that it is already the case that the UN has prepared report indicating that food supply shortages are near-term inevitable in India if that region does not quickly expand nuclear generation. I don't think there is necessarily any one solution that makes best sense for all regions.

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Ego
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Re: Micro-capitalism vs. micro-communism

Post by Ego »

7Wannabe5 wrote: I would be curious to learn how the square footage/occupant of your complex compares to the 1958 overall average of 350 square ft. /person. Current new constructed suburban houses average almost 1000 square feet/occupant.
288.21 square feet of living space per occupant not including the laundries and common area which allow for a cat to be swung just barely. The building was built in 1912 so the 1950s numbers seem decadent in comparison.
7Wannabe5 wrote:The problem with urban living in terms of system theory is not carbon footprint, but sustainability. If you included the central valley within the boundary of your system then you might have a potentially resilient closed-loop system.


Agreed. We have some ag in the county but not enough to sustain the population.

Gilberto de Piento
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Re: Micro-capitalism vs. micro-communism

Post by Gilberto de Piento »

gilberto de Piento said: you might like the book Sacred Economics


Thanks for the recommendation. I will add it to my list.
I forgot to mention, it is available free online (not stolen, from the author): http://sacred-economics.com/read-online/. I don't think it would be much fun to read on a computer but people can try it out there.

BRUTE
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Re: Micro-capitalism vs. micro-communism

Post by BRUTE »

7Wannabe5 wrote:Show me the math.
no

Riggerjack
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Re: Micro-capitalism vs. micro-communism

Post by Riggerjack »

It is my understanding that this is debatable. Uranium and copper supplies are limited. Obviously, the problem with nuclear energy is the opposite of the problem with solar because it can only be centrally produced and then distributed over a network.
I love solar, it even works here in drizzleville. However, there isn't enough photons hitting skyscrapers to power the elevators, let alone these super efficient urban dweller's iPhones. Solar, and density don't mix well. Urbanites will demand nukes, eventually.

From Wikipedia:
Uranium is more plentiful than antimony, tin, cadmium, mercury, or silver, and it is about as abundant as arsenic or molybdenum.[9][19] Uranium is found in hundreds of minerals, including uraninite (the most common uranium ore), carnotite, autunite, uranophane, torbernite, and coffinite.[9] Significant concentrations of uranium occur in some substances such as phosphate rock deposits, and minerals such as lignite, and monazite sands in uranium-rich ores[9] (it is recovered commercially from sources with as little as 0.1% uranium[14]).
And since it is so dense, it is relatively easy to isolate.

No, the real problem with nuke power is spectacularly mismanaged waste, plus the love and attention if the US government in the 40-60's spawning the hatred and fear of progressives in the 60-80's, resulting in the neglect from both the government and public for 45 years, while the rest of the world is moving forward.

The fear mongering is so great that when Fukushima happened, many people were afraid the plants would explode, and most people still don't understand what a meltdown means (hint: think ruined power plant, not China Syndrome). My favorite part of that mess was videos of hippies with Geiger counters on the beach announcing "Fukushima radiation is here!" While replicating 7th grade science class, showing that seawater is radioactive... :roll:

Riggerjack
Posts: 3182
Joined: Thu Jul 14, 2011 3:09 am

Re: Micro-capitalism vs. micro-communism

Post by Riggerjack »

My BF, who once submitted an engineering design for better integrating their cooking/heating/cooling/refrigeration/ventilation systems to McDonald's, and has overseen many such mega-projects, thinks that the ideal solution would be to convince middle-class Americans that it is okay to live in upscale high-rise apartment complexes which could share efficient central geothermal pump facilities and surrounding green-spaces. In the area where we reside nothing remotely resembling this exists,
This must be the guy who thinks flat roofs are a great idea. I like geothermal, too. But it doesn't work well with density. You are moving heat with a heat pump. So, in a closed loop system, you pull heat from a huge area, and move it into your house. If you have a small yard, you can pull heat from wells, substituting depth for breadth. But this is more difficult/expensive, and only works if your neighbors don't do the same thing. Because the heat you are pulling from the earth, would have radiated out in your, and their, lots. If everybody does it, it becomes a literal race to the bottom.

In an open loop system, you pump ground water up, remove heat, pump it back down. Again, it doesn't work if everyone does it.

So unless the idea is to build an independent archology, in isolation, put this in the flat roof file.

vexed87
Posts: 1521
Joined: Fri Feb 20, 2015 8:02 am
Location: Yorkshire, UK

Re: Micro-capitalism vs. micro-communism

Post by vexed87 »

Riggerjack wrote: The fear mongering is so great that when Fukushima happened, many people were afraid the plants would explode, and most people still don't understand what a meltdown means (hint: think ruined power plant, not China Syndrome).
Sorry I dont mean to derail the thread, but I wonder what the EROEI ratio on the Fukushima plant looks like? Probably a decimal figure considering the financial and economical losses incurred since the tsunami, not sure when Fukushima was planned to be decommissioned, but I assume early termination resulted in steep financial losses and significant reduction on the EROEI ratio figure. The cost of management of the crisis and lost energy production no doubt made the whole affair a huge liability on Japanese society, even if the commercial company was culpable, it's society, both present and future that bears the brunt, nuclear plants are 'too serious to fail', inevitably some do, as the world becomes more unstable politically and economically, I think the chances of that happening are on the up, whether or not that affects the viability of the industry is beyond me.

Nuclear probably makes sense if you ignore the cost of waste management, decommissioning etc, but also the stuff you can't put a cost on like health of future generations and damage to local ecology. Despite our wonderful advances in health, tech etc, I'm not sure industrial civilisation is worth saving if it means dumping radioactive waste into the environment an a massive scale, (one way or another, some waste is going to escape containment and create major dead zones. Maybe it's fearmongering to suggest it, but Murphy law applies given the half-life of waste and the subsequent time scales we are going to have to manage the waste. As a species, we don't have a great track record for safety and environmental protection.

Of course, the industry shrugs this off or plays it down. I'll stick my neck out and make the bet these costs are purposely ignored in business cases presented to nation states, primarily damaging their EROEI calcs. Like any other industry, nuclear will be happy to gobble government subsidies and cheap loans, and gaurenteed market prices for energy, but it's local people who will bear the costs long into the future. Nuclear is simply not financially viable without government backing, for the same reasons that $100 oil cannot be tolerated for long. We can't get our new plants off the ground in the UK, I'd be surprised if we managed a roll out a new generation of nuclear plants at all before the markets start to collapse as a result of declining petroleum production.

The UK at least, (though I suspect that the USA is no different in this respect) would do better to focus attention on locally available sources of energy which we can control ourselves, domestically, without dependence on fuel, tech or infrastructure imports, resilience over efficiency is key going forwards. To cobble together an analogy, nuclear (and to be fair, grid scale renewables are in a similar category) is like the concrete boots we strap on the feet of society as it grapples with the consequences of peak EROEI, which acts as constant distraction from the obvious answer, to take off the boots, or organise society around the idea that the sun gives out a particular amount of energy in a given day, and stop sinking, or chasing 'unlimited' energy in the name of economic growth.

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