UK Gas supply- Capitalists fuck up, everyone sufers

[Bernie Gunther]

Psst. Wrong thread

 

[Bernie Gunther]

What's so complicated? It's a case of optimising the level of production to maximise the benefits to society.

Or, to put it another way:

If there is a scenario whereby the world can be sustainable then there must be an efficient allocation of those resources that minimizes the cost to each person.

How about we try to think it through from the distribution of the most basic renewable resource, solar energy?

 

[citydreams]

Ok,

So Y units are produced. They are then shared out to X number of localities. Each one of these has a weighting depending on how close they are to maintaining their sustainability quotas (it is this part of the proceedings that requires the conditional opimisation mathematics that I suggested above). Necessarily, a % of their allocation has to be spent on achieving maintenance. What is left is a surplus and can be used to manufacture goods on top of what is most basically needed. A community that is able to offer the most efficient production of these goods will benefit and will draw in capital.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

OK, I think I see how you're approaching it. Here are some variables to play with. The amount of available solar energy per person is dependent on the amount of land per person, distance from the equator and efficiency of capturing that energy. In order to produce food and many other useful forms of biomass, you need to get plants capturing a lot of this energy, but that's also affected by factors like soil nutrients and water availability.

Taking the UK as an example, we have a high density of people, about 1 acre per human. We have heavy glacial soils that don't erode easily, generally pack a lot of nutrients and we also have plenty of water. By contrast, Australia has a low population density, but their soils are poor and water is pretty scarce. India and China have high population density, serious water and soil erosion problems. So too do most places in Africa.

 

[citydreams]

I understand your reasoning. But what you describe above is a boundary constraint and can be overcome by allocating resources according to the overall need/cost distribution.

It was the search for the efficient allocation of resources in the use of electrical substations that gave birth to optomisation theory.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

I understand your reasoning. But what you describe above is a boundary constraint and can be overcome by allocating resources according to the overall need/cost distribution.

It was the search for the efficient allocation of resources in the use of electrical substations that gave birth to optomisation theory.

Sure but here to move resources around takes energy. For example, the non-renewable energy cost of a tomato grown on my patio is negligable. A Kenyan mango from Sainsburys has a non-renewable energy cost of about 1,000 x (or maybe it's 10,000 x, can't remember) the food energy gain from eating it.

 

[citydreams]

Which is why a planned pricing mechanism can derive the most efficient allocation of resources!

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Which is why a planned pricing mechanism can derive the most efficient allocation of resources!

I don't see that. To me it looks like you create inefficiencies each time you move resources around.

 

[citydreams]

How can there be inefficiencies with a surplus?

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Let me be a bit more precise. Each time you move resources around there is an energy cost. If you are thinking in economic terms, the temptation is to say 'ah yes, but the price of energy is such that it's economic to do that'

I'm not thinking in economic terms, I'm taking sustainability as a criterion. So I'm starting from the assumption that you're trying to work within the available energy from solar flows, which is considerably less than that which is economic right now using fossil fuels. I recognise that what I'm describing is a limit case, because in practice we currently do have access to cheap fossil fuels, but a) we won't always have access to cheap fossil fuels and b) using those fossil fuels causes climate change and using them in agriculture is closely associated with more immediately problematic issues like soil erosion.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

How can there be inefficiencies with a surplus?

The inefficiencies arise because it costs energy to move that stuff around, and when you move food and other biomass products around, you move soil nutrients with them. I keep talking about the eco-village model because that allows for the effective recycling of soil nutrients and encourages the effective prevention of soil erosion. Commercial agriculture effectively strip-mines the soil using large amounts of fossil energy to do so, then wastes more fossil energy transporting the results around. It only makes sense economically, not in sustainability terms. Furthermore we're running out of places to strip-mine. The last places left are rain forests in places like Brazil, Malaysia and Indonesia and those rain forests play an essential role in damping out the effects of climate change. So let's not cut them down eh?

 

[citydreams]

But what you describe is not necessarily true. It is possible to transport goods within a sustainable scenario.

This all misses the point that any community has to work together as a unit. And no community can be cordoned by any clear definition. Consequentially, any solution has to be globally orientated.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

But what you describe is not necessarily true. It is possible to transport goods within a sustainable scenario.

This all misses the point that any community has to work together as a unit. And no community can be cordoned by any clear definition. Consequentially, any solution has to be globally orientated.

I don't disagree that it is possible to transport goods within a sustainable scenario, I'm just arguing that you want to minimise it as a matter of principle.

I don't understand the second paragraph.

 

[citydreams]

I don't want to minimise transport. I want to maximise potential outputs. Minimizing the environmental cost of transport I can deal with.

 

[citydreams]

I don't understand the second paragraph.

We have a global problem. The solution has to be global.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

I don't want to minimise transport. I want to maximise potential outputs. Minimizing the environmental cost of transport I can deal with.

How do you deal with it? Transport almost invariably involves using fossil fuel energy, rather than any kind that can be straightforwardly derived from solar energy. Significant evidence exists to show that the energy balance of biofuels is net negative, whatever the economics say. In addition, biofuels compete with food for the available land and we're very close to the limits of the Earth's capability to produce food already.

 

[citydreams]

we're very close to the limits of the Earth's capability to produce food already.

And we have 30 years to find a solution. I would suggest that a mathematical model has a better chance of allocating the resources needed to bring this about than would sitting on my patio growing tomatoes.

Within the 30 year time frame there is going to be huge migrations of peoples. I would say that transport is very much on the agenda.

 

[citydreams]

How do you deal with it?.

I'm thinking of using force. What about you?

 

[Bernie Gunther]

And we have 30 years to find a solution. I would suggest that a mathematical model has a better chance of allocating the resources needed to bring this about than would sitting on my patio growing tomatoes.

Within the 30 year time frame there is going to be huge migrations of peoples. I would say that transport is very much on the agenda.

One really bad grain harvest in China and the problem is here right now.

 

[poet]

And we have 30 years to find a solution. I would suggest that a mathematical model has a better chance of allocating the resources needed to bring this about than would sitting on my patio growing tomatoes.

Within the 30 year time frame there is going to be huge migrations of peoples. I would say that transport is very much on the agenda.

What does your hypothetical mathematical model actually achieve? Naff all in the forseeable future. Maybe you could gain a few percent of efficiency with data gathering and processing tools of such sophistication that they aren't even a dot on the horizon yet. Go and see what the state-of-the-art in economic modelling is, you'll find that we only have a fuzzy understanding of something as occamish as a free market, any real economist would laugh in your face if you proposed creating a worldwide centrally planned economy, especially in light of their consistent and utter failure. Go do some *actual research*, you'll find that your supposedly simple problem is roughly on a par with solving all seven CMI Millenium Prize problems in an evening with an abacus, an orange crayon and a cocktail napkin.

What does a planter full of toms achieve? Free food, carbon sinking, hundreds of thousands of food miles prevented and a sense of self-reliance and independence. Tomatoes 1, Trotskyite nonsense 0.

 

[citydreams]

any real economist would laugh in your face if you proposed creating a worldwide centrally planned economy

A real economist. Isn't that an oxymoron? What do they do then?

What does a planter full of toms achieve? Free food, carbon sinking, hundreds of thousands of food miles prevented and a sense of self-reliance and independence

Until your toms get diseased or don't harvest. Independence comes at a price.

I have no leanings towards Trotsky. I was merely pointing out that is was possible in communist Russia to be able to set the prices of two million goods using outdated methods of calculation. I could do it on my calculator in quicker time.

 

[snadge]

couldn't buy any bread though

 

[citydreams]

What does your hypothetical mathematical model actually achieve? Naff all in the forseeable future.

That's short-sited.

If you can agree that it is indeed a world problem that we are facing then there is an urgency to provide a global solution.

A model allows us to test for different scenarios and to provide definitive parameters.

It acts as a focal piece and provides a means of ensuring openess in a democratic process.

 

[citydreams]

couldn't buy any bread though

I think you'll find they were at war at the time and not able to import the grain they needed.

Additionally, you'll also find that Russia has historically been full of people starving.

25,000 people die of starvation every day. Hiding in your greenhouse achieves nothing.

 

[poet]

I have no leanings towards Trotsky. I was merely pointing out that is was possible in communist Russia to be able to set the prices of two million goods using outdated methods of calculation. I could do it on my calculator in quicker time.

The logic of soviet pricing mechanisms was essentially smoke and mirrors, an effort by bureocrats to make the arbritrary appear rational. Prices were supposedly set on a cost-plus basis, but of course the prices of raw materials had to be set with no real costs to go on, meaning that errors in the wholly arbritrary pricing of a raw material multiplied upwards to create gross distortions in pricing. While the formulae and methodology of soviet pricing were indeed very complex they served no real function other than to keep bureocrats busy and ensure a black-box effect in hiding the real mechanics of the economy from virtually everyone, creating learned helplessness amongst the populace in regards to economic management.

With a complete disconnect between supply, demand and pricing utter havoc ensued, creating the economic disaster that was the Soviet Union - 10 year waiting lists for Ladas, Lomo selling 18 million cameras at a real loss of $17 each, wild swings in the real value of currency, chronic and unresolved food and fuel shortages in spite of plentiful resources for production and all sorts of other horrors. Underpriced goods were in constant shortage and resold on the black market at sensible prices while overpriced goods sat on the shelves and rotted or rusted away, with of course no effective mechanism to decrease supply or pricing to deal with the surplus. With no mechanism to directly connect demand and supply shortages are inevitable unless of course you are arrogant enough to believe that a room full of bureocrats are more agile than the rest of the world in it's entirity (the market). If you think communist Russia is anything but an example of how not to manage an economy I suggest that you speak to someone who was actually there. A few business users who agreed to have an interruptible gas supply facing brief outages is nothing compared to the countless peasants who froze and starved to death thanks to the callous mismanagement of the communist regime.

Setting prices arbritrarily is in no way a difficult task, you just pick a price. Setting prices (and the countless other decisions the market causes to be made) in a more accurate and useful way than a free market is an astonishingly difficult task given the immense amounts of data required to make accurate decisions. That is of course ignoring the monumental task of getting everyone to play ball, something that has as yet proved impossible.

 

[poet]

I think you'll find they were at war at the time and not able to import the grain they needed.

So what about all the food shortages in peacetime? What about all the peasants that died in the inter-war period because the grain they were supposed to sew next year had been taken from them to make bread for the city-dwellers? How can a country with the sixteenth lowest population density in the world and the second highest arable land per capita ratio be naturally prone to starvation?

Don't you even dare talk to me about hiding in my greenhouse doing nothing. When you're feeding 2000 mouths and bankrolling an agricultural college, then we'll talk.

 

[tom k&e]

Right! Only everybody's backed away from them (even to the extent of the Frogs abandoning one midway through construction in the early 90s) because they can't get them to work properly.
Kalkar (the only fast breeder successfully constructed in Germany) didn't even manage to get on the net before it, too, was abandoned.
One of the main problems is the highly voaltile coolant used, but nobody to date has come up with a better solution (excuse the pun).

MsG

No, the problem is that they aren't currently economicly viable. They used to be because you could make plutonium and sell it to the government to make bombs. And they will be again when the price of gas increases long term, or if coal is made expensive by a carbon tax.

 

[citydreams]

How can a country with the sixteenth lowest population density in the world and the second highest arable land per capita ratio be naturally prone to starvation?.

Where do you get that from?

Russia, at 12%, has one of the lowest % of agricultural land in Europe

The country is huge and so has low population density but to define it as arable is laughable.

 

[citydreams]

When you're feeding 2000 mouths and bankrolling an agricultural college, then we'll talk.

That's very gracious of you. How do you manage to do that? 2000 mouths would need around $2,000 a day, or, almost a million $ a year. Are you going to be able to stop OAPs from dying of cold this winter too?

 

[tom k&e]

Where do you get that from?

Russia, at 12%, has one of the lowest % of agricultural land in Europe

The country is huge and so has low population density but to define it as arable is laughable.

But 12% of 17,000,000 km^2 is a fuck of a lot