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PeterMP

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  • Birthday 07/11/1972

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  1. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/03/oregon-drug-decriminalization-failed/677678/ "Measure 110 did not reduce Oregon’s drug problems. The drug-overdose-death rate increased by 43 percent in 2021, its first year of implementation—and then kept rising. The latest CDC data show that in the 12 months ending in September 2023, deaths by overdose grew by 41.6 percent, versus 2.1 percent nationwide. No other state saw a higher rise in deaths. Only one state, Vermont, ranks higher in its rate of illicit drug use." "Neither did decriminalization produce a flood of help-seeking. The replacement for criminal penalties, a $100 ticket for drug possession with the fine waived if the individual called a toll-free number for a health assessment, with the aim of encouraging treatment, failed completely. More than 95 percent of people ignored the ticket, for which—in keeping with the spirit of Measure 110—there was no consequence. The cost of the hotline worked out to about $7,000 per completed phone call, according to The Economist. These realities, as well as associated disorder such as open-air drug markets and a sharp rise in violent crime—while such crime was falling nationally—led Oregonians to rethink their drug policy." "We were not surprised that a trivial pressure to seek treatment was ineffective. Fentanyl and meth addiction are not like depression, chronic pain, or cancer, conditions for which people are typically motivated to seek treatment. Even as it destroys a person’s life, addictive drug use by definition feels good in the short term, and most addicted people resist or are ambivalent about giving that up. Withdrawal, meanwhile, is wrenchingly difficult. As a result, most addicted people who come to treatment do so not spontaneously but through pressure from family, friends, employers, health professionals, and, yes, the law." "Branding Measure 110 as a rebuke to the War on Drugs made no sense, because Oregon had never fought such a war. In 1973, it became the first state to decriminalize possession of marijuana. When federal and state mandatory-minimum sentences for drug crimes flowered in the ’80s and ’90s, Oregon went the other way, making it impossible for someone to go to prison for simple drug possession. Overall, the state had the country’s lowest rate of imprisonment for nonviolent crimes. Short local-jail sentences for drug possession were permitted, but diversion programs, including drug courts and community supervision with drug testing, were widely used. However, after Measure 110 was passed and the threat of jail time eliminated, the flow of people into these programs slowed." "But the lessons from Oregon’s troubles should not be overdrawn. One thing Measure 110 got right, at least in principle, is that Oregon’s addiction-treatment system was grossly underfunded, with access to care frequently ranking at the bottom of national indicators. The mechanism that the measure created to manage new spending was clumsy and didn’t work well, but the new law acknowledges the problem and provides extensive new funding for immediate needs, including detox facilities, sobering centers, treatment facilities, and the staff to support those services." (Complete legalization is likely to not solve problems and if anything lead to more problems. Complete legalization minimizes incentives for addicts to get help which minimally doesn't diminish the number of addicts and likely increases it. And then addicts bring a set of problems to society as they tend to make bad decisions when high and when they need to feed their addiction. The effort should be minimize addicts/addiction which likely will acquire some punishment for some users, especially non-addict users. And some sort of system to protect addicts and society from addicts that can't get and stay clean on their own. If you think about addiction has a mental health issue/disease if you have somebody with significant schizophrenia that can't be treated or won't stay on drugs that treat their schizophrenia, you can't just have them walking around. Some system has to be in place to make sure they are okay and not harming themselves or others.)
  2. I'm going to put this here. It ties into a conversation from another thread, but probably better suited for here. “We have to eliminate fossil fuel use, for 1.5°C, at a global level, we have to eliminate all fossil fuel use by 2040 at the very latest.” If you believe that (and I've got no reason to think it isn't true) and believe the 1.5 C limit is the key, then 2 things are clear: 1. There is no way we can electrify our economy fast enough to maintain what it currently is. We cannot build the infrastructure needed to generate and deliver electricity at the scope needed to keep our economy what it is by 2040. And even if we could, our methods of producing, storing, and delivering electricity aren't nearly efficient enough to support the same economy. 2. There is 0 reason to be putting any resources into developing new fossil fuel production. We should halt the opening of any new mines, drilling, and exploration immediately and put those resources into something else. And realistically, this was true before Biden was President. If there is going to be 0 use of fossil fuels by 2040, no new fossil fuel development methods that have happened while Biden has been President have been worth it.
  3. Can you please point to the agreement in place that backed up this permanent cease fire? The Oslo accords was the last serious agreement and everybody agrees that prior to the Oct. attacks that they were dead as both sides had violated them, and Hamas wasn't even part of that agreement. Understanding something doesn't mean that it is right or that you defend it. Do you also understand Palestinian anger at Israeli for their continued expansion of settlements even when it means using violence to take land from Palestinians? Are you going to understand future Palestinian attacks because Israelis are preventing aid from reaching innocent Palestinians now? (Did Hamas really create the crisis or have Palestinians in Gaza been in a crisis for generations now? (That yes has gotten worse since Oct.))
  4. At some point in time practically, we have to "give up". If you have to get from a to b by some time, at some time you have to stop working on the best way to get to b and start moving to b. And resources and time put into the best way to get to b can/should be used to get to b. Reducing consumption is going to require time, money, and resources, including fossil fuels (e.g. building more green buildings is going to require things that require fossil fuels). Time, money, and fossil fuels spent on finding some new technology that allows us to just advance forward under the current socioeconomic system could be used to help in that transition. Mitigating is going to require time, money, and resources, including fossil fuels (e.g. @Corcaigh talked earlier in this thread about building reservoirs, which are likely going to require heavy machines that use fossil fuels). (I will admit that above I pointed out the two options as extremes and separate, but you can at least try to split the difference. Reduce consumption in some cases and mitigate in others (and even reduce production by electrifying and decarbonizing along the way).) We're to the point that we can't keep hoping something is coming along that sort of allows us to keep doing what we've been doing and fixes the problem. We have to select a path/plan and have to put time, money, and resources into it. (Realistically, what is going to happen is we aren't going to pick a plan/path. The GOP doesn't care and too many Dems are going to stick their heads in the sand and think that some how something will happen to fix the problem without hard choices and changes (which seems to be your case), and we'll more less end up with a mitigation process in a piecemeal manner. Which will be the worse and most costly (in terms of money and human lives) path. And many people will look back and say, ha climate change wasn't so bad without understanding the true costs that were/are being paid. We'll get to b but it will be too late, but many people will then look around and say, hey we made it. That wasn't too bad. Without realizing in actuality we paid huge costs for being too late and not doing enough soon enough in an organized manner to plan for being late.)
  5. It certainly seems in this case that the invention that has come from the necessity has not been sufficient.
  6. @Renegade7 No country in the world has the ability to maintain their economy based on their current electric grid or current ability to produce and distribute electricity. Improving grids and electrical production to the point they can will require huge amounts of raw materials, manufacturing, and work which all require fossil fuels. Before you get to the point in time that nuclear energy can prevent climate change, you will have used too many fossil fuels for it to matter. Building nuclear power plants generates a ton of fossil fuels. The only hope of ever doing anything about climate change without large socioeconomic changes required finding some sort of transitional fuel that could heavily use the existing fossil fuel infrastructure, and then could be used to build a more electric based economy (if necessary). And it is too late for that. I don't know if we could have ever found such a fuel/technology. But if there was something that could have been used, we didn't put enough money into finding it soon enough. In terms of climate change, today we have 2 options: 1. Deal with it by having a pretty massive reduction in our energy consumption and the associated socioeconomic changes that will have to come with it. Longer term, after electrification can be carried out, then maybe you can let it adjust back to something more resembling where we are now. But that's longer term. 2. Deal with it by letting it happen and do what we can to mitigate the effects of it. Nuclear never was or could be the solution to climate change without massive socioeconomic changes. It at best had to be the 2nd or 3rd thing after you transitioned to something else. **EDIT** And as @CousinsCowgirl84 graphic nicely points out nuclear is the most expensive way we currently generate electricity and that doesn't even include the long term costs of storage of waste and costs when there are melt downs. So even if you had some sort of magic way to electrify the global economy without using fossil fuels, the costs of energy would still have to go up which almost certainly then require socioeconomic changes.
  7. I wouldn't go as to say there is no pollution. Leaks of radioactivity from nuclear power plants do happen. They tend to be of low amounts of not very dangerous isotopes, but there have been cases where low amounts of them have leaked undetected for years. https://www.ap.org/press-releases/2012/part-ii-ap-impact-tritium-leaks-found-at-many-nuke-sites I don't know of any reported cases where tritium has made it into ground drinking water, but that certainly is a possibility and would be dangerous. And then you have cases where there's a melt down, and I'd certainly call leaked radioactivity in those cases pollution. Worrying about natural gas running out seems unnecessary to me. All of the plants we'd build any time soon would be decommissioned and aged out by the time that happens. In terms of climate change, unless we are committed to stopping the production of fossil fuels, including natural gas and having at least several other countries do the same, worrying about using it seems a bit ridiculous. When we can get ourselves, Canada, and the Nordic countries to talk about capping production of fossil fuels, then worrying about using it might make sense. But even Democrats are bragging about how fossil fuel production is up under Biden.
  8. We can build a small natural gas power plant designed to be run during peak demand (they are called peakers) on preexisting sites in 2 years or even less after approval. A new full sized natural gas called Guernsey Power Station was built on a new site in OH in 7 years (approved in 2016 came online in 2023), and they even had issues where they didn't build for a year and the pandemic. I think that's generally considered a bad case scenario today for such a thing. Some of the newer ones that are hybrid natural gas/alternative energy take longer, but even then I think they expect to go from approval to functional in less than 10 years. I don't think there really is such a thing as a cookie cutter nuclear plant. They don't get built often enough, and they depend on the site (where is the water coming from). Also the newer ones are supposed to be safer and last longer which if you are going to be waiting and are talking about nuclear makes sense to wait. Putting up because it is faster that isn't as safe could be a costly decision with nuclear power.
  9. And index funds generally cost less. Even if you are in a managed asset and they are beating the market, are they doing by enough to off set the fees you are paying them?
  10. Your post plays directly into what I was saying about ignoring things. No where and nothing I've said can be concluded to say I'm against infrastructure spending. No where have I said I want to send jobs away. But not every job is worth any costs. I've not said that companies can't/won't grow more efficient. I said that wasn't their fundamental objective and there are things that we can do to make it more likely and less likely and subsidizing their true energy costs makes it less likely. Only by going to ridiculous extremes that aren't relevant to my posts do your posts have any validity. And that's right out of the good old fashioned GOP handbook. We should consider the true costs and full societal benefits of infrastructure projects. I've specifically said nuclear is part of the future. It just has to be put into context, we have to understand the costs, think about how to recoup those costs, and think about managing the near and mid-term energy needs too that building more nuclear makes harder. The ability to make CEOs pay for higher taxes based on their energy needs vs. investing to increase efficiency and saving money long term depends directly on how much of a functional free market we have. If we don't have a functional free market but instead our markets have a high monopolistic component to them, then those costs can/will more likely be largely passed onto consumers and not impact CEO pay. If we do, then that will happen less. Things like patent laws/enforcement will also matter (e.g. who benefits and for how long from new technology that increases efficiency). Those are all things that we should consider too. However, even if the costs are passed onto the consumer, the money from the tax can be redistributed to the larger population with minimal impact to the average and lower income consumer. What built the middle class was mostly investing in people. Going back far enough requiring a high school education and building schools for people to go to. More recently, things like the GI bill and affordable college. We have some of the lowest electricity prices in the world and the countries that are lower than us (e.g. India) don't have a robust middle class. And over the last 60 years or so in the US inflation adjusted electricity prices have actually come down. When adjusted for inflation, electricity in the US easily costs less today than it did through the 1920-1960s when the middle class was actually being built. Yet, that hasn't supported continued growth of the middle class. What it has supported is more class stratification. The idea that there is a relationship between a robust middle class and low energy prices just isn't supported by the data. The data supports that what low energy prices actually support is class stratification with large gaps between the very wealthy and the very poor. But let's not let actual facts and numbers get in the way of a good story. Countries like Germany do pretty much what I've been saying. They charge a lot for electricity, and they use subsidies/tax breaks to lower it for individuals and certain industries that actually employ a lot of people (and I'll note industry in Germany has been complaining for decades about their energy costs and threatening it would cause deindustrialization of Germany, and they've been wrong. They've been doing the same fear mongering you are in this thread. And it hasn't happened. twa used to make posts about how German industry was going to go under because of high energy costs. And while the German middle class has shrunk some, it hasn't shrunk to the extent that ours has. Because Germany historically has invested in people and not things for companies. .(Though, note I am not advocating the German energy policy of decarbonization and denuclearization at the same time. That would be a mistake IMO. I don't support denuclearization or decarbonization given the current situation. I also don't really like Germany's tax/subsidy schemes, but it would be better than what we do.)) Long term, companies will be where there are high quality and productive workers because those workers will build companies (as long as there are also reasonable natural resources in the area which we don't have a problem with). Investing in people has larger societal benefits and benefits a broad spectrum of industries and companies and not just energy hungry ones. You want to see a robust middle class, every kid in this country should be able to go to a school without having to worry about what is in the walls (asbestos) and drink the water (not have lead in it). We should have a robust GED program. And people that want to go to college and actually work at it should be able to do so. But you won't get for money for those things. Those things are "local". Because those things mean little Johnny (or today Hunter) might get passed over by a Hassan or Manuel. But you will get money to build huge infrastructure projects that mostly benefit the wealthy and the status quo. It isn't about building the middle class or supporting the middle class. The wealthy will support money going to build things that support industry because they primarily benefit. They won't support money going to things that are actually investments in people. If it was about building a middle class, getting money for early childhood development, to build schools, fund tech programs, help people get to college, etc would be easier. If you think building nuclear power plants and keeping energy costs low for industries that don't employ many people but use a lot of energy is about building a middle class, you either are deluding yourself or have been deluded. It is looking like to me that you've bought into some good old fashioned GOP talking points. We've got limited money (unless you're a believer in MMT). We have to put some money into electricity, but we should try to ensure it is being used as efficiently as possible and taxing entities that use a lot of electricity for their use helps do that. Most money should be put into investing in people. (I do agree with capital gains taxes, raising the top tax bracket, and the IRS. But I'll also note those things don't directly impact CEO pay. They're easily less likely to impact CEO pay then higher taxes on energy for companies that use a lot of energy. At least in the case of taxes based on energy consumption, I can imagine ways they would impact CEO pay. The things give you are talking about can't. What they do is give you money to do other things. And I agree about unions, but unions fundamentally are about investing in people/workers. So you won't see industry/money lining up behind that either.) (And now we are way OT.)
  11. Odd to see you call yourself an old fashioned Democrat because that is some first class, let's ignore facts, data, and what the other person is actually saying, Republican fear mongering there. OMG if we don't subsidize the billionaires companies so they can become trillionaires, they'll take all the jobs, we'll hurt small businesses, and we'll be left with nothing. (And there's nothing we can do about the billionaires becoming trillionaires anyway.) Fundamentally, companies don't strive to be efficient. They strive to make money for stock holders and management (and given the current situation in a lot of cases in the short term). If you supply them with cheap energy, you reduce their incentive to be efficient, and if you are subsidizing energy production you are subsidizing their energy inefficiency. As we have been building them, nuclear power plants don't get off the ground without huge government subsidizes. Which actually hurts the building of other types of energy companies and makes it more likely in the near to mid-term we'll have problems. Those facts are indisputable.
  12. Increasing efficiency doesn't allow one to instantly decrease costs and save money in most cases. Increases in efficiency almost always require some up front costs and money is saved in the long run. And R&D to make new technology to increase efficiency is an even more extreme in that costs are paid up front in hope of saving/making money much later. And then the amount you are paying for something like electricity matters in terms of how long it takes to make back the original investment and so whether it makes sense to do make the initial investment. Completely making up some numbers, let's say I'm buying a million units of power a year (whatever measure you want to use), and I'm pay 0.35 per a unit of power. I can install some new equipment that is going to cost up front $10,000,000 dollars that will cut my energy use in (so 500,000 units). Well the pay out there is going to be 50+ years. No company is making that investment. Now, take the same scenario and say I'm paying $3.5 per a unit of energy. That same piece of equipment now pays out in under 6 years. There is a much better chance that companies will make that investment. And because the time scale matters the focus on long term savings vs. short term profit making for CEOs and stock holders matters. If you're primary focus is short term pay outs, then you aren't going to make the investments needed to be reasonably maximally efficient over the long term. So yes, CEO salaries and stock buy backs do matter. Those are taking money that could be put into equipment and R&D that could increase efficiency but only pay out over the long term. Companies that are interested in short term maximizing CEO profits and stock prices are almost certainly not investing in equipment, infrastructure, and R&D to maximize efficiency and long term saving/profits. And there is a feed forward effect because if companies using things are more aggressive about buying equipment/tools that is more efficient, then companies that are developing things will be more aggressive about doing R&D to make things that are more efficient. It isn't a sin tax. It is here is the true costs of running your business tax. If your data center is going to require building a new nuclear power plant that is going to be tied to billions of dollar of US government subsidies and then more costs to store the waste indefinitely, then you aren't really paying the true costs of running your business. We don't need every good job at any costs. Spending billions of dollars to create a handful of new good jobs doesn't make sense. Even for jobs, there has to be a cost/benefit analysis. How much are we really paying to create that job vs. how many jobs and to what benefit are we as the larger public getting. We will need more energy in the future. That doesn't mean that it makes sense to build (many) more nuclear power plants given the costs and how they will impact the building of other types of energy producing plants. I'm not arguing that we won't need more energy. I'm arguing we should try to ensure that companies that are using energy are doing so efficiently and take into account the company's societal value to try to minimize how much energy we need in the future and so how much we have to pay to build the power plants that we'll need in the future. And not just say, hay let's spend billions and billions of dollars to throw up some nuclear power plants so that people/companies can waste money/energy in the future.
  13. I'm not at all sure the tech industry is already driven towards increases in efficiency. Certainly, their CEO pay doesn't seem to be consistent with that. It seems to me that Reddit could have afforded to pay more in taxes for the electricity to support their servers/data, or put more money into research driving long-term increases in efficiency, and paid their CEO a little less. II'll bet Reddit's budget on R&D on how to make a more efficient server or store data more efficiently last year was 0. (I think essentially every industry today is driven by making sure upper management and stock holders make money.) The article mentioned bit coining mining. The bit coin mining doesn't seem to be driven to increase efficiency. If you think somebody like Sam Bankman was about driving things to be more efficient long term and making the investments and doing the research required, I think you're wrong. In terms of taxing anything into oblivion, that wouldn't be the objective. The objective would be to make sure they are working to be efficient. Let's not be ridiculous and take points to the extreme. Even smoking hasn't been taxed into oblivion. But I'm also not sure of the actual economic advantage to having the computers here in terms of data centers. In some cases, there are advantages to being close to the computers, but those tend to be pretty small and in rare cases. The number of workers directly employed by them I suspect is going to be small. From my perspective, I don't think massive subsidies to the energy industry that can be used to support data centers, especially if there are essentially no controls on how much and how they use energy, make much sense. Money is money. Spending money to subsidize energy inefficiency is money spent.
  14. Yes, it makes sense to plan for the future. But planning for the future rarely means building things that are essentially the last centuries technology, especially when they take decades to build, take decades more to pay off, and you also have a need in the short term that they aren't going to be able to fill. People saying building more nuclear power plants are ignoring that. We also only have so much money to put to energy production. Every dollar you put into a nuclear power plant is a dollar that you aren't putting into something that can be used in 5 years, and thinking about building nuclear power plants makes it harder to get investment for other things. You can't ignore the costs that are making it questionable current nuclear power plants are ever going to actually pay off, and if they do it is going to take 50 years or so. But if you've put the money into build them, they are going to run. People looking at investing in other types of energy are going to see the investment (which is going to take huge amounts of federal money in terms of things like loan guarantees) and that's going to make it less likely they will invest in things that we can use to get more electricity in the nearer future. SMR development appears as if it is close to the point where we could build them and bring them on the grid. But the long term economics of SMR are still very much unclear. Acting like SMR is a real solution is just making things up. At some point, inefficient energy production is as costly as to little energy production. Especially when there are other solutions. For example, tax data centers based on the amount of power they use, and force them to be more efficient in their energy consumption. There's no reason that a greater number of data centers in 50 years or so can't use less power than current ones if we put effort, research, and money into making them more efficient. If we simply let them run and do what they want, they will remain inefficient and will consume all of the power put out by as many nuclear power plants as you can build. Same things with cars. We know how to make cars that are much more efficient than the average car on the road today. People just chose not to buy them. We are never going to out build people's/companies' willingness to be energy inefficient. Putting money into building nuclear power plants so that people/company can be energy inefficient doesn't make sense. (This isn't to say that we shouldn't consider building more nuclear power. But looking at where we are and saying well just build more nuclear doesn't address the short term problem and actually might be making it worse. Nuclear needs to be part of the mix for at least the foreseeable future. And we made a mistake through the 1980s and 1990s of doing no building of nuclear power plants. But that mistake has been made. It isn't at all clear if the correction for that mistake is to now try to make up for it.)
  15. We have to recognize that energy is not like other commodities/resources. Not matter how much we produce, demand will just increase as people will just build bigger/less efficient things. Yes, you have to have incentives to keep supply high, but there is no way to generate a supply that will out compete demand (given our current system) and generate low prices. The key is to price as a function of the amount of demand and not per a unit price and maybe as a matter of function. Energy prices likely should include a societal value judgement.
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