tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-335099311343753542.post6317219462819786731..comments2023-04-07T06:24:34.068-07:00Comments on Der Blick aus der Ferne: AW auf: TINSTAAFL and the Welfare Statealien observerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08968815713994755959noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-335099311343753542.post-57120413492539277232012-04-26T00:25:30.516-07:002012-04-26T00:25:30.516-07:00"Obviously, you think oil (and the cheap or f..."Obviously, you think oil (and the cheap or free nature of it) is at the bottom of all of this. Maybe yes, maybe no. Certainly your generation should find out whether or not oil can be replaced with “limitless” energies and then civilization will have a moment of truth."<br /><br />Oil could be replaced by investing into technologies we have at our hands today. the problem is, that to do so we will need all the virtues that capitalism is lacking. <br /><br />Foresight, (meaning we should have started 20 years ago to do so) solidarity (meaning we should all commit to it) and the acceptance of losses. <br /><br />As captilaism is lacking all these traits it has not and never will be able to solve these problems.<br /><br />Also, limitless energy is not an option. there are simple physical (thermodynamic) constraints on the amount of energy we can use.<br /><br />We would be able with an effort of a scale unsurpassed in the history of mankind to come close to sustainably provide the same amount of energy that is needed to replace oil. <br /><br />Note, that to replace oil as a ressource for production of goods, transportation etc. we will have to produce at least twice the amount of energy we get by burning it.<br /><br />As we burn 86 million barrel oil every day this will require a lot of energy. As of now, even if we would pool all ressources into it, we would not be able to achieve this soon enough to stop the collapse of this civilisation.alien observerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08968815713994755959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-335099311343753542.post-55953287393129575692012-04-25T11:44:48.197-07:002012-04-25T11:44:48.197-07:00"I have never thought about the fact that liv..."I have never thought about the fact that living off one’s capital may have been abhorrent in all other ages and I will need to think about this"<br /><br />If you want to look into that i suggest another anthropologist I mentioned before. <br /><br />David Graeber has recently published a phenomenal book called "debt the first 5000 years"<br /><br />http://www.amazon.de/Debt-The-First-000-Years/dp/1933633867/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1335379469&sr=8-1alien observerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08968815713994755959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-335099311343753542.post-66647997048569118722012-04-25T11:41:13.976-07:002012-04-25T11:41:13.976-07:00The thesis that political conomy as founded by Ada...The thesis that political conomy as founded by Adam Smith and the exploitation of oil are intertwined is my own. Maybe somebody else has formulated this, but not to my knowledge.<br /><br />It is in strict adherence to cultural materialism as an heuristic though. Cultural materialism has been largely dismissed by todays social sciences and has been incorporated into more evolutionary theories of culture/macrosociology.<br /><br />I hold to the believe that developing a theory of culturs, be it in economy or anthropology is impossible. As I myself have started out with physics in the past and I feel that cultural materialism serves well for an analysis of culture.<br /><br />As in physics, where "unsolvable" or chaotic is usually the answer when studying many-body problems an energy relation helps understanding the problems without knowing much about the boundary conditions.<br /><br />It also is not that easy to untangle the many ways energy plays into our culture. I feel most social scientists without having a natural sciences background do not get the importance of energy.alien observerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08968815713994755959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-335099311343753542.post-16064037141979821142012-04-25T10:57:51.790-07:002012-04-25T10:57:51.790-07:00thank you very much for your answer.
I have alre...thank you very much for your answer. <br /><br />I have already prepared a second part where I aksed my self the question I aked in the first part. Why is the future grim. <br /><br />This secod part will be on the premises that Peak Oil has already been reached. There is sadly only one real authority, the IEA, international energy agency, founded by the oecd. <br /><br />Fatih Birol, director of the IEA, admitted the peak of crude oil production has happened 2006. <br /><br />the IEA has a history of being usualy "very creful" with these prognosis and has been accused by the guardian to have intentionaly overestimated the ressources still avilable in the past. <br /><br />So you might believe it or not. My informations show otherwise and I have delved into this problems for years now. <br /><br />So I will assume Peak oil has been reached and in my next post I will state how I see the future.alien observerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08968815713994755959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-335099311343753542.post-35580007874609687022012-04-25T10:31:33.568-07:002012-04-25T10:31:33.568-07:001 or 2
Since your blog is in German, I leave it up...1 or 2<br />Since your blog is in German, I leave it up to you whether you want to exchange in English or German. Right now I will stick to English.<br /><br />Upfront, the subject of my paper were the unintended consequences of the welfare state, if there are any, and not TINSTAAFL per se. I argued that the welfare state as lived in many European countries (my paper was written in 1996) tended to slow down the 2 forces which have historically driven the betterment of society – the reasonable competition of thought and performance – and that the most unintended consequence of the welfare state was a deterioration in the quality of society as exemplified primarily by a reduction in fairness.<br /><br />Now back to TINSTAAFL. Your arguments have opened new perspectives for me but I see them as “as well as” instead of “either/or”.<br /><br />I have spent about 20 years with Americans of Mid-Western mentality. Those are pretty common-sense down-to-earth people (see Warren Buffett). Their analogies may not meet the test of sophisticated economists but, at least to me, they always made a lot of sense. It has always helped me to try to reduce complicated matters to simple things (like the “primitive society”; sorry, I did not know that social sciences had discarded this premise). That’s not to say that all things are simple but simplicity can clear one’s perspective.<br /><br />So we both agree that there is no such thing as a free lunch except you argue that, so far, the world has gotten away with not paying for the oil-lunch; or at least not a fair price. Correct? I could live with your argument except I don’t see it as dramatic as you do. <br /><br />I agree that without energy, our modern standard of living would go out the window but even though we are addicted to oil today, I am not sure that oil cannot be replaced. First, I think the news of the world’s running out of oil is greatly exaggerated. That has been predicted for decades and yet we seem to have more proven reserves today than ever before (depending on whom you ask). However, d’accord that at some point the oil will be gone. The other question is whether the cost of oil has been “right” in the past. Probably not. In 100 years from now, people may say that our oil should have been a lot more expensive (or even rationed).<br /><br />But my major point is technology. Even though I am pretty ignorant as far as technology is concerned, I do know that technology develops exponentially. When I was young, nuclear energy was the answer to all energy needs. Today, we know differently. However, I remember reading so many articles over the years (which I obviously am in no position to recite) how alternative sources of apparently “limitless” energy are being developed (nuclear fusion for one) that I have the blind confidence in human ingenuity that energy will be available “forever” (or at least as long as the sun shines). You may believe differently but we should be able to agree that neither of us knows for sure.kleinguthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12491174042954678023noreply@blogger.com