Slaves2Darkness: DarwiOdrade: "Anyone who understands economics"? Doesn't that pretty much exclude anyone who writes for Townhall?

And about 85-90% of all Democrats and Republicans. I was shocked and appalled to discover that most people never had a basic Micro or Macro economics course in high school.

I had a basic micro/macro (I can't remember off the top of my head which) course in college, and it was COMPLETELY USELESS.

*Professor teaches about game theory and market equilibrium*
"But Professor, what would happen if a player with a large cash reserve artificially lowered prices until they drove their competitor out of the market, then raised prices above the previous equilibrium value?"
"Oh, that could never happen, game theory says so."
"What? But, I mean, it *has*-"
"No, that's an unstable equilibrium, so it can't stay that way."

And that's when I decided to stop paying much attention and do my physics homework instead.

Are those snakes sustainably harvested?

Wouldn't it just be a lot more truthful to look into your heart and call him a ni*bong, Townhall?

Anyone who understands politics blogs knows TownHall is a shiat sandwich.

Felgraf: Slaves2Darkness: DarwiOdrade: "Anyone who understands economics"? Doesn't that pretty much exclude anyone who writes for Townhall?

And about 85-90% of all Democrats and Republicans. I was shocked and appalled to discover that most people never had a basic Micro or Macro economics course in high school.

I had a basic micro/macro (I can't remember off the top of my head which) course in college, and it was COMPLETELY USELESS.

*Professor teaches about game theory and market equilibrium*
"But Professor, what would happen if a player with a large cash reserve artificially lowered prices until they drove their competitor out of the market, then raised prices above the previous equilibrium value?"
"Oh, that could never happen, game theory says so."
"What? But, I mean, it *has*-"
"No, that's an unstable equilibrium, so it can't stay that way."

And that's when I decided to stop paying much attention and do my physics homework instead.

Let me guess: the prof writes for Townhall?

Slaves2Darkness: DarwiOdrade: "Anyone who understands economics"? Doesn't that pretty much exclude anyone who writes for Townhall?

And about 85-90% of all Democrats and Republicans. I was shocked and appalled to discover that most people never had a basic Micro or Macro economics course in high school.

Just have to say, most micro and macro classes tend to give very wrong impressions of how economists actually think. It's a rather sad state of affairs, but unfortunately there's not much that can be done since you'd have to take quite a few more classes than the basics to really know what's going on. I've encountered so many people that have taken the intro micro and macro classes that think they know a lot about economics (myself would be included at the time that I was in them).

I am not suggesting that you fall in this category at all, just pointing out what I've observed.

Sssshhh, Townhall, grownups are talking.

He actually has some points here:

Of course, some who push "green jobs" want the price of energy to rise. Then we will live in smaller homes, drive less and burn fewer fossil fuels. But if the environmental lobby wants Americans to be poorer, it ought to come clean about that.

This is accurate, IMHO. Enivromentalists need to stop trying to get people to give up their standard of living. It's not going to work, and there will be a backlash.

However, that doesn't mean some little things can't be done. I'm in favor of the government subsidizing green technologies, to a certain extent.

This I disagree with:

Today, we put up with amazing intrusions in the name of environmentalism. A million petty regulations mandate surtaxes on gas, separation of garbage into multiple bins, special light bulbs, taxes on plastic bags and so on.

Yet these things are of so little ecological consequence that the Earth will never notice. For this, we must surrender our freedom?

Lots of these types of things help the enviroment on a local scale at a minimum.

Basically, regulations that can be done with a minimum of "pain" are good; those that have more than that are bad, IMHO.

Also, this article, and the comments here, make the mistake I see time and time again:

DON'T TALK ABOUT POWER GENERATION AND OIL IN THE SAME DISCUSSION!

They are seperate issues that are barely connected at all. Oil is not used in power plants in the continential United States (beyond diesel backup generators used during blackouts). Power in the US is generated by (in order) natural gas (domestically sourced, very, very cheap right now, relatively clean), coal (domestically sourced, cheap, very dirty), nuclear (domestically sourced, expensive to build but cheap to run, clean, if you exclude nuclear waste and accidents), hydroelectric (domestically sourced, cheap once built but no more real places to build more damns, clean, excluding changes to rivers), and then things like solar and wind (domestically sourced, more expensive that the alternatives but falling in cost, clean).

I'm in favor of banning new coal power plants and phasing out existing ones. Clean coal is bullshiat and basically doesn't exist; the number of people killed or injured by coal power plants is a thousand times the number killed or injured by every nuclear power plant incident ever. But the main alternative I would switch to would be natural gas, not wind or solar (or nuclear). Natural gas is about as clean as you can get from a fossil fuel, and we currently have more of it than we know what to do with. The only issue is the dangers from "fracking", but I think those are mostly overblown (but should be investigated and regulated properly to keep it that way).

These "intellectual" conservative political articles have this really interesting stylized kind of rhetorical structure where they start off with all these super broad, plausible sounding statements about human nature and what-not, then they make this crazy and completely non-sequitur jump into, well, pretty much whatever they want to argue.

"The human brain is torn..."
"Wouldn't it be nice if we could have our cake and eat it too, but alas..."
"0bama is fartbongo socialism takin yer rights!"

You see this all the time, even with guys like David Brooks who write in super legit forums. I guess people pay a lot of attention in the first few paragraphs to judge the credibility of a source and after you establish some kind of reasonable sounding voice you can pretty much say whatever you want and people just nod and agree "ok yeah okay this is a reasonable guy".

It's great.

The "free" nature of renewable "fuels," solar, wind and geothermal, terrifies the fossil fuel industry because sustainable energy sources are also free from inflation -- something Exxon/Mobil is counting on for its future profits. Once the life-cycle cost is calculated, renewables win every time against the uncertainties of future fossil supplies.
The oil industry is now shutting refineries right and left and blaming it on the EPA, but what they're really doing is tightening future supplies for refined products to maximize their profits. With China, India and Brazil adding thousands of first-time car buyers to the mix every week, demand will continue to exceed world supply and prices will inevitably climb upward.
Americans being Americans, we'll come up with a better idea. For example, my savings from those "Commie plot" energy-efficient light bulbs now provide my monthly beer budget.

Civilization doesn't work when central planners treat each tree as if its value is infinite.


This definitely looks legit.

Countries are cutting these programs because they realize they aren't sustainable and they are obscenely expensive,

And I am sure John "doucheface" Stossel is using numbers from pre global recession and post global recession to prove his idiotic point.

Wow, all right wing trash on Fark sure are throwing a lot of poo at Obama today, hoping it sticks.

Death throes?

Wicked Chinchilla: You guys do realize that the pipeline was delayed before not because Obama "won" but because the company already agreed to change the route away from the most important areas of the aquifer. As a result the new route wasn't finalized yet when the Republicans tried to politicize the issue and force construction on something...with no plan. The whole effort was damned stupid on its face before you even look at the reality of the economics involved (which make it even less smart..for the US).

And the pipeline route was changed because the area it traversed over the aquifer did in fact NOT have any pipelines at the time.

/jobs are maybe 5000, and temporary at best
//will increase gas prices in the midwest when the local supply glut gets moved after completion
///The oil is going to China anyway, whats the rush to make that even easier again?

Oil shipping today(the pipeline will be used as a justification to tap our own oil sands and shales), coal shipping tomorrow. In other words, it's not just oil companies trying to get their stuff to China, endangering the lives of everyday American citizens.

Greedy coal companies in Montana and Wyoming want to ship coal to China using Pacific Northwest ports, transporting that coal over hundreds of miles of already over-stressed rail lines.

It seems that companies are in love with with packing up and shipping out our countries vital energy resources elsewhere (yes, I know, it's a global marketplace), especially to countries that don't utilize any sort of pollution control mechanisms, all for a few extra bucks.

Why conservatives have such a permissive attitude towards lowering our countries ability to keep itself energized, I'll never know.

Stopped in to see whether the Fark Liberal Circle Jerk Clique was in full effect to begin this thread...leaving fulfilled.

Can someone explain why geothermal is renewable? From a thermodynamics perspective, I mean. Like obviously we can't just exploit the heat difference forever unless some outside energy is keeping it going. Is the potential energy just so huge that we can never make a dent in depleting it? I get that it's clean, but renewable/infinite? Serious question.

Geotpf: This is accurate, IMHO. Enivromentalists need to stop trying to get people to give up their standard of living. It's not going to work, and there will be a backlash.

Apart from the conservative strawman that Al Gore wants us all to live in mud huts and do subsistence farming when has this really been an issue?

Friction8r: Stopped in to see whether the Fark Liberal Circle Jerk Clique was in full effect to begin this thread...leaving fulfilled.

When did you first find yourself fulfilled watching circle jerks?

Friction8r: Stopped in to see whether the Fark Liberal Circle Jerk Clique was in full effect to begin this thread...leaving fulfilled.

Why don't you just stop into your local gunstore and end it all if it bothers you so much?

Friction8r: Stopped in to see whether the Fark Liberal Circle Jerk Clique was in full effect to begin this thread...leaving fulfilled.

Sorry, the men's room at this airport is THAT way, Mr. Craig. ------------->

PlatinumDragon: Felgraf: Slaves2Darkness: DarwiOdrade: "Anyone who understands economics"? Doesn't that pretty much exclude anyone who writes for Townhall?

And about 85-90% of all Democrats and Republicans. I was shocked and appalled to discover that most people never had a basic Micro or Macro economics course in high school.

I had a basic micro/macro (I can't remember off the top of my head which) course in college, and it was COMPLETELY USELESS.

*Professor teaches about game theory and market equilibrium*
"But Professor, what would happen if a player with a large cash reserve artificially lowered prices until they drove their competitor out of the market, then raised prices above the previous equilibrium value?"
"Oh, that could never happen, game theory says so."
"What? But, I mean, it *has*-"
"No, that's an unstable equilibrium, so it can't stay that way."

And that's when I decided to stop paying much attention and do my physics homework instead.

Let me guess: the prof writes for Townhall?

I have no idea, it was about damn. At least six years ago? More?

Graduate school physics has sorta been frying my brain. He did seem to feel regulations were somewhat unecessary...

To be fair, looking back, english was not his first language, and there may have been some nuance lost. He may very well have simlpy meant that *According to this theory*, the situation I outlined was impossible, but going beyond the theory was beyond the scope of the class...

But he did a poor job of explaining that if that was the case.

Friction8r: Stopped in to see whether the Fark Liberal Circle Jerk Clique was in full effect to begin this thread...leaving fulfilled.

Heh, did the same thing.

Mearen: Friction8r: Stopped in to see whether the Fark Liberal Circle Jerk Clique was in full effect to begin this thread...leaving fulfilled.

Heh, did the same thing.

Maybe you guys should fellate each other now and join in rather than being voyeurs.

Felgraf: Slaves2Darkness: DarwiOdrade: "Anyone who understands economics"? Doesn't that pretty much exclude anyone who writes for Townhall?

And about 85-90% of all Democrats and Republicans. I was shocked and appalled to discover that most people never had a basic Micro or Macro economics course in high school.

I had a basic micro/macro (I can't remember off the top of my head which) course in college, and it was COMPLETELY USELESS.

*Professor teaches about game theory and market equilibrium*
"But Professor, what would happen if a player with a large cash reserve artificially lowered prices until they drove their competitor out of the market, then raised prices above the previous equilibrium value?"
"Oh, that could never happen, game theory says so."
"What? But, I mean, it *has*-"
"No, that's an unstable equilibrium, so it can't stay that way."

And that's when I decided to stop paying much attention and do my physics homework instead.

Give a real world example where this actually happened. You won't be able to, because, in the real world, such a thing almost never happens. The amount of money you have to spend to drive the competitor out of business (by lowering the price of your products) is almost always greater than the amount of money you would gain by driving them out of business.

Basically, your professor is right.

I'll just leave this here.

Link

Where have we been hearing about this "plan"?

mainstreet62: Wow, all right wing trash on Fark sure are throwing a lot of poo at Obama today, hoping it sticks.

Death throes?

More like throwing rocks at a bee's nest. People are bored, and want to be annoying.

coeyagi: Mearen: Friction8r: Stopped in to see whether the Fark Liberal Circle Jerk Clique was in full effect to begin this thread...leaving fulfilled.

Heh, did the same thing.

Maybe you guys should fellate each other now and join in rather than being voyeurs.

Indeed, it appears they have spun off their own two person circle jerk.

Bhasayate: mainstreet62: Wow, all right wing trash on Fark sure are throwing a lot of poo at Obama today, hoping it sticks.

Death throes?

More like throwing rocks at a bee's nest. People are bored, and want to be annoying.

I guess we can dream, right?

I understand that we're going to run out of oil, probably in my lifetime.

I understand that good alternative energy sources will take years, even decades, and a lot of money to develop.

I understand that if we put off development of those alternatives until the oil is gone we'll be in for some rough times.

I would not like to have to try to live through those times.

So-called "conservatives" apparently would like that.

Why do conservatives hate America?

Obama's Green Jobs Initiative has been an absurdly expensive failure. Why be afraid to admit that?

There are other nice things you can say about the president. You need to put this one behind you, folks.

gtp123: Can someone explain why geothermal is renewable? From a thermodynamics perspective, I mean. Like obviously we can't just exploit the heat difference forever unless some outside energy is keeping it going. Is the potential energy just so huge that we can never make a dent in depleting it? I get that it's clean, but renewable/infinite? Serious question.

I think it's that, effectively, it would be nigh impossible for us to wear it out. Simillar to how solar is considered 'renewable': Eventually, yeah, the sun's gonna enter it's red giant phase, but that's kinda 6 billion years from now.

Damn, though, now you have me wanting to try to do a rough calculation of the ammount of heat stored in the earth vs. the ammount of energy used up yearly by geothermal... maybe I can look them up.

Aha! So according to wikipedia, the earth has approximately 10^31 joules of thermal energy.

Not sure how much is used in a year, though.

The earth is *slightly* replenishing it's geothermal energy in a sense: Some of it stems from radioactive decay deeeeep in the earth, apparently.

Dr Dreidel: That must be what conservatives mean when they deride college students as reactionary idealistic know-it-alls with more anger than brains. I mean, to believe in the absolute certainty of all parts of an abstracted theory would be folly!

Mebbe. It is possible he was also having a hard time explaining himself in english, or that he didn't want to get side-tracked by things that were beyond the scope of the class, but if so, he did not convey that well.

Friction8r: Stopped in to see whether the Fark Liberal Circle Jerk Clique was in full effect to begin this thread...leaving fulfilled.

Defriended on Facebook by Kip Drordy again.

Geotpf: I have never taken an econ class. Let me give my opinion anyways.

Hah, cool! Things totally work the way you imagine it!

Geotpf: Give a real world example where this actually happened. You won't be able to, because, in the real world, such a thing almost never happens. The amount of money you have to spend to drive the competitor out of business (by lowering the price of your products) is almost always greater than the amount of money you would gain by driving them out of business.

Basically, your professor is right.

Perhaps not by lowering prices, but by utilizing vertical integration, yeah, one could lower prices enough that no one else can compete.

Rockefeller Standard Oil, for instance.

Or are you alleging that things such as predatory pricing are a myth, and that a company cannot be driven from a location due to a competitor artificially lowering prices on some of its goods?

Friction8r: Stopped in to see whether the Fark Liberal Circle Jerk Clique was in full effect to begin this thread...leaving fulfilled.

I've noticed a lot more of you "hurr durr libs" posters on the politics tab lately. Did a bunch of you guys just start internships/volunteer with the Romney campaign doing social/online media outreach?

meat0918: Anyone who understands economics knows that President Roosevelt's rural electrification job's initiative is snake oil

I want my TVA back.

vpb: How would someone who takes Townhall seriously have any idea what people who understand economics how to think?

FIFY

gtp123: Can someone explain why geothermal is renewable? From a thermodynamics perspective, I mean. Like obviously we can't just exploit the heat difference forever unless some outside energy is keeping it going. Is the potential energy just so huge that we can never make a dent in depleting it? I get that it's clean, but renewable/infinite? Serious question.

Most of the geothermal heat is generated by radioactive decay of isotopes in the crust and mantle (there's some from the cooling core and some from friction, but that only amounts to about 5% of the total); while the Earth will eventually cool, current predictions have that point billions of years in the future, after the Sun has become a red giant and destroyed the planet.

The difference between this and something like oil is that geothermal energy is not extractable or scalable; we can't remove it or speed up our consumption of it.

thomps: Today, we put up with amazing intrusions in the name of environmentalism. A million petty regulations mandate surtaxes on gas, separation of garbage into multiple bins, special light bulbs, taxes on plastic bags and so on.
Yet these things are of so little ecological consequence that the Earth will never notice. For this, we must surrender our freedom?
yes, the environment was doing so well before environmental regulation. burning rivers and acid rain are all part of the natural cycle.

It is impossible that 300+ million people with the highest standard of living on earth could be impacting anything. I'm pretty pissed that I'm having my freedom to live in a polluted trash heap removed, based on some pie-in-the sky fables about "energy independence" and "using less energy" and shiat like that.

Dr Dreidel: Felgraf: Dr Dreidel: That must be what conservatives mean when they deride college students as reactionary idealistic know-it-alls with more anger than brains. I mean, to believe in the absolute certainty of all parts of an abstracted theory would be folly!

Mebbe. It is possible he was also having a hard time explaining himself in english, or that he didn't want to get side-tracked by things that were beyond the scope of the class, but if so, he did not convey that well.

You missed the Invisible Hand of Humor.

Well, I'm a physicist, but I never said I was smart!
/i blame lack of sleep.

Anyone who understands economics knows better than to pay attention to TownHall, American Thinker, StormFront, GOP.com, or any of the other wingnut egg sacks.

Felgraf: gtp123: Can someone explain why geothermal is renewable? From a thermodynamics perspective, I mean. Like obviously we can't just exploit the heat difference forever unless some outside energy is keeping it going. Is the potential energy just so huge that we can never make a dent in depleting it? I get that it's clean, but renewable/infinite? Serious question.

I think it's that, effectively, it would be nigh impossible for us to wear it out. Simillar to how solar is considered 'renewable': Eventually, yeah, the sun's gonna enter it's red giant phase, but that's kinda 6 billion years from now.

Damn, though, now you have me wanting to try to do a rough calculation of the ammount of heat stored in the earth vs. the ammount of energy used up yearly by geothermal... maybe I can look them up.

Aha! So according to wikipedia, the earth has approximately 10^31 joules of thermal energy.

Not sure how much is used in a year, though.

The earth is *slightly* replenishing it's geothermal energy in a sense: Some of it stems from radioactive decay deeeeep in the earth, apparently.

Dr Dreidel: That must be what conservatives mean when they deride college students as reactionary idealistic know-it-alls with more anger than brains. I mean, to believe in the absolute certainty of all parts of an abstracted theory would be folly!

Mebbe. It is possible he was also having a hard time explaining himself in english, or that he didn't want to get side-tracked by things that were beyond the scope of the class, but if so, he did not convey that well.

Geothermal is also different from solar in that the Solar energy is bombarding us regardless of whether we harvest it. Until the sun dies out it will continue to pour radiation all over us in a cosmic golden shower. Solar power isn't so much "consuming" the sun (as geothermal would consume the Earths heat), as it is simply harvesting whats already getting thrown at us.

Felgraf: Geotpf: Give a real world example where this actually happened. You won't be able to, because, in the real world, such a thing almost never happens. The amount of money you have to spend to drive the competitor out of business (by lowering the price of your products) is almost always greater than the amount of money you would gain by driving them out of business.

Basically, your professor is right.

Perhaps not by lowering prices, but by utilizing vertical integration, yeah, one could lower prices enough that no one else can compete.

Rockefeller Standard Oil, for instance.

Or are you alleging that things such as predatory pricing are a myth, and that a company cannot be driven from a location due to a competitor artificially lowering prices on some of its goods?

It's pretty clear he has never taken an econ course, didn't bother googling before posting and has no idea what a monopoly is and why its bad. What's more, he's somewhere around 17 years old, so he was a mere toddler when Microsoft's Monopoly power was in full swing doing exactly what he said would never exist.