thow-58d4e8b

To expand a bit - Ricardian comparative advantage argument relies on the following assumptions:

- no transportation costs

- no unemployment

- barter economy

- 100% fungible labor - farmer, teacher, chemical engineer, doctor - they're all the same and can switch between jobs instantly, and immediately attain the level of productivity within that sector

- prices are 100% determined by labor costs

- demand for various types of items is static, and never changes

- the demand structure is the same across all countries - i.e. if British prefer tea to coffee, we assume all countries prefer tea to coffee

It's not just a "spherical cow" theory, it's more akin to "if a spherical cow rolls frictionlessly down a valley described by a parabola, then it will oscillate forever". True, but useless.

Keynes, as usual, is ahead of the pack - calling out the theory's unrealistic assumptions, and predicting (in 1930s) that not the production, but the interest rates will do the adjustments - leading to persistent trade imbalances and move the economy further from full employment. Which is exactly what happened

It's a different kind of stress, and some people prefer one over another.

I experienced both a megacorp and one-man-army setups, and I find fighting bureaucratic inertia, office politics, endless stream of status updates, ever-changing organization chart and product rebrands - all way more tiring than shipping out features at frantic pace.

Same in Finland, Baltics or central/eastern Europe. Almost everything is within walkable/bike-able distance. Public transportation has good coverage, is affordable and safe. Taking taxis is just not something people normally do. From here, Uber feels like a quintessentially American solution for a quintessentially American problem.

Real world example - taking Uber to my workplace would cost me one-two hours of net pay, and I'm in the top 5% earners. Another one-two hours of net pay to go back home.

For comparison - public transportation costs 3€/day regardless of usage, and only takes about 15% longer to get there.

> Apple makes 100x more margin per device than Foxxcon

It's important to note that it's not necessarily labor-vs-capital. Capital-vs-capital also exhibits the same dynamics.

One might argue that Foxcon's business model is providing low margin manufacturing manpower; and that the real value-added is in an design and R&D of an always-connected device that fits into the pocket.

But there's a counterpoint - mobile connectivity requires radio networks. There's no a-priori reason why Apple should make 60% margins, while Nokia and Ericsson barely break even. Radio networks also require a lot of R&D, are designed in Western countries and their business model is not about exporting cheap labor.

The key difference is the power disparity. Nokia/Ericsson are facing powerful network operators, some of them close to an order of magnitude larger than the vendors themselves. The operators dictate the terms of the deal, the vendors have to adapt. With Apple - they're facing customers. Apple dictates the terms, customers have to adapt.

In fact, 6 out 7 largest corporations by market cap (the odd one out is Saudi Aramco) are all in the same position as Apple - power dynamics heavily tilted their way.

> Wherever there is great property there is great inequality. For one very rich man there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many [...] Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all

-- Adam Smith

Not even close.

Global energy use is around 170,000 TWh/year (1). This includes electricity generation, as well as fuel for transport, burning wood for heat, etc.

Heat flow from mantle is 403,000 TWh/year (2)

Solar irradiance is ~1200W/m2, which adds up to massive 5B TWh/year.

Extra radiative forcing from greenhouse gases in IPCC scenarios is ~3W/m2, or around 12.5M TWh/year.

The radiative forcing is two orders of magnitude larger than our energy use.

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_supply_and_consum...

(2) https://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo.2007.44

> first $25k mass produced electric car

That ship has sailed a few years ago: Volkswagen e-Up, Seat Mii, Renault Twingo, several models from BYD, Dacia Spring, Smart EQ, Fiat 500e, and even Renault Zoe or MG ZS in some markets. All under 25k€, including value added tax

To steel-man parent's post, usually it's not that civilization per se collapses, the collapse is better characterized as a loss of state capacity. The important distinction being - technology wasn't lost.

This framing is also relevant to present-day conversations. Claiming that our civilization is collapsing makes people eyes roll. Claim that we're losing state capacity is a message people are more receptive to.

Even if we assume Facebook's leadership makes perfectly rational decisions, the reasons behind their unyielding behavior could very well be non-financial - saving face, internal office politics, standing ground hoping the push from the regulators will fizzle out, waiting for legal loopholes to be discovered, or simply feeling of "we know better"

Battery storage can, and most likely will, be the solution for day-night fluctuations in energy use. However, for the amounts of energy that seasonal energy storage would require, it's not really a viable solution.

Regarding clean seasonal energy storage - UK, French and German authorities all independently came with studies(1) that arrived to the same conclusion - synthetic methane is the only viable option. Very expensive, but the engineering is doable. Gas plants are here to stay.

(1) https://english.bdi.eu/media/presse/presse/downloads/2018030...

https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC1...

Likely hundreds of thousands of people. The burden of proof ought to be on him/his proponents. From the rather scant publicly available material, I've never heard the man say anything profound, original, nor any other sign of exceptional competence. That's not bad in and of itself, not everyone has to be a controversial thinker, especially not a CEO of an established company that's minting gold every day. But we have no evidence that his level of ability is somehow beyond the reach of mere mortals.

Yes, Apple has ballooned in valuation. The question is how much of this is attributable to Tim Cook, how much to other Apple employees, how much to external factors (e.g. tech bubble) and how much of it is just sheer inertia.

Energy engineering nerd here - naturally I've heard about it.

Question that Vaclav Smil had raised as a potentially fatal obstacle to large scale carbon capture. All is nice and well when we're trying to sequester 1000 tons of CO2 per year as a pilot project. But once we scale up to ~100Mtons or even ~Gton per year - we'll very quickly run out of places to safely store it. How much is this a real physical constraint vs. Smil's skepticism being cranked up to 11/10?

125 would be sufficient to replace one 1200MW reactor. A nuclear power plant usually consists of more than a single reactor.

In addition to electricity, nuclear power plants also produce a lot of heat, which can be used for district heating purposes (called co-generation), as is done frequently in northern and eastern Europe. Heating is the dominant component of the final energy consumption, accounting for close to half of all energy use. This is apparent when driving around in an electric car - keeping the cabin warm easily accounts for ~30% of the consumption. Wind turbines obviously produce no surplus heat to extract

Strained analogies are bad enough, but a special award for teaching anti-patterns should go to analogies to some local features - e.g. to a sport that's popular only in some countries, or a local geographic feature or corporation.

To someone reading in Europe, explaining something by analogy to baseball innings, bases and pitchers reads: "think of it like dipping your youtiao in chashaojiang instead of haoyou"