ItWillNeverWork
Messy Crimbobs, fellow humans.
What about nuclear?
After Neo-Liberalism?
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What about nuclear?
Nuclear is a fiction.
There are about 60 years of uranium ore rich enough to give a theoretical energy balance. Ore grades are falling - 60 years looks optimistic.
The nuclear process is itself incredibly energy intensive. That energy has historically been supplied by hydrocarbon, masking internal nuclear demand.
Deduct the energy required for the mining, milling and construction of front end processes - about 25 percent of gross output - 15 years of supply.
Deduct the energy required for cooling, clearing up, container construction, dismantling, and burial (back-end processes) - about 25 percent of gross output - 15 years of supply.
Now recall, if the industry has 60 years ahead of it, it has 60 years behind it, during which it has been steadily producing waste, none of which has been cleared. Deduct another 15 years.
So about 45 years of the remaining 60 year supply is already accounted for by front end production processes and back end waste disposal.
In 15 years time, the industry will have to direct the whole of its output to the task of clearing up.
The alternative is to leave waste dumps in the landscape indefinitely. They require a constant supply of energy to circulate cooling water, otherwise they leak and spontaneously catch fire.
There is no nuclear.
JimW
支那暗杀团
This (and the rest of your post) doesn't fit with history - read e.g. Meiksins-Woods Agrarian Origins of Capitalism and you'll see that capitalisms' mode of social organisation predates the significant-scale extraction and exploitation of fossil fuels (or major technological advances, as opposed to improved techniques) and didn't 'co-evolve' with industrialism. It was the demands brought by that the emergence of this new type of mode of social organisation that drove the need for more energy, more productivity and so on (of course after a period of time it becomes more self-enforcing), not the other way round as you would have it.
It's true those energy demands are so deeply embedded in the social structure now that a failure to satisfy them may be traumatic enough to break the whole social system, but it's also the case that it could possibly (however unlikely) be handled in such a way as to preserve the current mode, as that demand is not intrinsic to its existence.
Edited for a mangled sentence.
Gmart
Well-Known Member
It is certain that there will still be demand in markets and demand for energy. Which still asks the question as to where the cheap energy is going to come from. No one seems interested in stopping the environmental problems we face. People will adapt and compromise. Our ability to control the climate is impressive and there are many benefits to be gained from more efficient eco-friendly living which adds to the square metrage of solar panels.
In the longer run expect solar farms of increasing efficiency to spring up at the equator and in deserts.
The price will go up until it becomes a reality. It will be part of the solution because even if not efficient enough for large scale farming, there is still a place for a decentralised energy source, with all houses having solar panels wherever possible, and wind turbines, wave harvesters in rivers and the sea etc. They will want to persist in charging astronomical prices for energy as well, so we would need an authority to ensure the rights are not trampled on.
In the longer run expect solar farms of increasing efficiency to spring up at the equator and in deserts.
The price will go up until it becomes a reality. It will be part of the solution because even if not efficient enough for large scale farming, there is still a place for a decentralised energy source, with all houses having solar panels wherever possible, and wind turbines, wave harvesters in rivers and the sea etc. They will want to persist in charging astronomical prices for energy as well, so we would need an authority to ensure the rights are not trampled on.
Capitalism's mode of social organisation predates the significant-scale extraction and exploitation of fossil fuels. But that social organisation took place at a time when the population (< 2 billion) was in balance with the resource base, specifically the energy resource base, and a modest energy surplus existed to sustain the positive feedback mechanisms underpinning the development of capitalism.
The social reorganisation that will take place in the time period envisaged by the question will take place when the population (> 7 billion) is grossly out of balance with the resource base, as a consequence of that significant-scale extraction and exploitation of temporary fossil fuel stocks.
Specifically, we will be in gross energy deficit, not in modest energy surplus which characterised the period described by Meiksins-Wood.
Capitalism can flourish under conditions of energy surplus. It cannot under conditions of energy deficit.
As in many things, history offers no guide to the future.
JimW
支那暗杀团
This is the part I dispute (well, not so much the flourishing as the existence). It required that surplus to create the enormous expansion of productive forces we saw historically in the capitalist era, but the energy surplus wasn't intrinsic to the social mode-i.e. I think you're conflating that expansion of productivity with capitalism itself, when it's an epiphenomenon.
It may well be that absent that surplus, other types of exploitative relationship develop/are preferred or we return to earlier types, but I don't think you can rule out this particular type of social relationship continuing in essentially the same mode. Even if there is no overall social surplus in a time of resource scarcity, given sectors will likely still generate some surplus to be captured and that might well be done through "economic" means rather than by force etc. At the same time that could leave an enormous number of people essentially abandoned by the social system as surplus/ a drain, and they would be left to subsist as best they could. Might sound far-fetched, but that's what happened to large populations on the periphery of the capitalist world order in the past. What will make it so much worse is their brief inclusion in the global system destroyed pre-existing means of subsistence and they likely won't be possible to re-create if needed again.
That's all speculative of course; my key point is in the first paragraph.
ETA Using surplus in two different sense for added incoherence!
My assumptions are that local communities will not have access to government funding for any of their needs; and that they will not have an income that enables them to buy in the goods and services they need from outside the local economy. I also assume that maintaining law order, using only the resources of the informal economy, will be impossible, eroding the enforcement of property rights necessary for capitalism. And I imagine that, while states will have fewer distant interests to defend, intra-state tension over competition for land and food will be intense, further eroding stability and property rights.
I think the chances of capitalism of being the form of exploitative relationship that emerges under those conditions is remote.
petee
no gods, no malarkey
compounded by the increasing prevalence of internships in place of paid first jobs
Gmart
Well-Known Member
Interesting article. I noticed that at the end it states that:
As it says on page 52, the state does not force the rural areas and county-towns to enforce the labour statutes that exist.
Is this still the case now 18 years later?
JimW
支那暗杀团
Enforcement of labour regulations is still lax to non-existent. There was a bit of panic in the business community a couple fo years ago when a new labour contract law was brought in, but that turned out to be a dead letter too. In the sense Chan and Unger mention exclusion from corporatist benefits, there has been some extension of pension provision etc beyond the old state sector, but still not by any means universal.
Uranium isn't the only nuclear fuel. There's also Thorium.
Thorium can't power a reactor - it doesn't contain enough fissile material to initiate a nuclear chain reaction. So you bombard it to create uranium-233. That's worse than U-235 used conventionally because it creates U-232 with a half-life of 160,000 years, as well as the usual technetium-99 (300,000 years), iodine-129 (15.7 million years) etc.
Thorium is 4 times more abundant - say, 60 years of net supply. You still need some kind of energy supply for many multiples of that to prevent the waste spontaneously catching fire and irradiating the environment.
There's no Thorium.
Really? I think you may be mistaken.
Anyway, we need something. And uranium-fuelled nuclear power's good enough for the moment and will give us another century or so to find a longer-term replacement, especially if we use breeder reactors.
A point which would be more convincing if you stated why. A link to a thread that doesn't address how a resource expected to last decades can service the energy requirements of the thousands of years of storage and safety processes it necessitates doesn't really do it.
As I think I pointed out, it gives us about 15 years, optimistically. And I believe the "good enough" to which you refer is the "good enough" of someone who tosses his garbage out of the car window and assumes someone else will relieve him of the bother of dealing with it. So what most civilised people would regard as not good enough.
And the fact that we need something does not constitute evidence that we've got something. That's just an illusion that a 100 year surplus of energy has encouraged us to believe. A temporary surplus of energy (which we have not invented) has afforded the temporary ability to invent stuff. It has not afforded us the ability to invent surplus energy.
I'll confess: I find the "Oh we'll think of something, and if we don't we can always saddle our great great great grandchildren with the festering waste of our lifestyle" mindset morally repugnant. But that's me.
Gmart
Well-Known Member
Good article here on Economic justice and innovation, although the costs of Nuclear Power are not adjusted to reflect the costs of extraction and disposal.
We need to decentralise energy production, get every new building to be covered with solar panels and with wind turbines on the roof. That with solar farms in the ever increasing deserts will help to alleviate the greater part of that problem.
We need to decentralise energy production, get every new building to be covered with solar panels and with wind turbines on the roof. That with solar farms in the ever increasing deserts will help to alleviate the greater part of that problem.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
What is the thread about?
An enquiry into the political forms that may be viable or necessary after the collapse of the assumptions (resource abundance, globalism, monotonic growth) under which the current paradigm has arisen.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Or, your old bollocks hidden under the veil of technical necessity.
Gmart
Well-Known Member
What did you think of the article?
http://www.firstthings.com/article/2009/10/economic-justice-and-the-spirit-of-innovation
I imagine a mode of thinking that regards itself unencumbered by necessity must be great fun. At least until necessity asserts itself.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
What did you think of the thread?
Gmart
Well-Known Member
I think that article improved it...
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
In what way?
Gmart
Well-Known Member
You would know if you were able to open your mind to reading something which you might have to think about, rather than re-reading/rewriting stuff you already decided you agreed with
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
I have read it. What does it offer the thread or the question which it asks? Please, tell us.
butchers, having shot yourself in the foot again with your instinctive incivility, you shouldn't be surprised if people don't fall over themselves to engage with you
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
You mean I shouldn't be surprised if he can't say how and why. Cheers dad.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
In all honesty, he's a fucking knob-head who your strain of utopianism does not need.
JimW
支那暗杀团
I have just read it. I thought when he started talking about morality as related to economics he might actually be about to say something worthwhile but it turned out to be a pile of comical libertarian wank ("Capitalism is the only economic system thus far discovered that allows human beings to realize their nature to innovate, discover, and take risks"; "The contribution of the Austrian economist Friedrich von Hayek was to take adventurous, risk-taking entrepreneurs and situate them in the context of a modern kind of economy"; " Well-functioning capitalism, where it is attainable, is of undimmed value because it allows human beings to realize their true nature as creators and innovators").You would know if you were able to open your mind to reading something which you might have to think about, rather than re-reading/rewriting stuff you already decided you agreed with
Gmart
Well-Known Member
You don't particularly comment apart from to name call the author followed by a quote...
Innovation and freedom have to be part of a post-neoliberal world. People want to invest in starting businesses to meet demand, he is simply stating this clearly as being part of the future. People will value things in the future the same as they did in the past. Building up assets for one's old age seems also fine.
He is stating that the future will have the market in it too. His assessment that governments are not able to control a global market is also on the button. Governments can provide a no frills service to ensure that survival products are not controlled by monopolies, but the two are not mutually exclusive.
I don't see anything too difficult to assimilate into a progressive economic theory.
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