2k17 /pol/

[XSI]

Bottom post of the previous page:

Pretty much that
One of many factors

Fuck inflation the hardest though. Inflation fucks up everything

[Luke Cox]

Bubbles are called bubbles because they're unsustainable in the long-derm; they will inevitably pop. They get worse the bigger you let them grow too. China is going to have a very, very bad time in the near-ish future.

[Professor Hangar]

They're tricky to predict though. Key words for people trying to time bubbles: The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.

We're gonna have one hell of an economic crisis cascade, I bet.

[ColonicAcid]

lets employ the neoliberal classic of "keep the bubble afloat until my generation dies"



it'll be great to finally be on the other end of that shit for once.

[FantasticFwoosh]

Bubbles are called bubbles because they're unsustainable in the long-derm; they will inevitably pop. They get worse the bigger you let them grow too. China is going to have a very, very bad time in the near-ish future.

Japan learned that the hard way.

[Grazyn]

lets employ the neoliberal classic of "keep the bubble afloat until my generation dies"



it'll be great to finally be on the other end of that shit for once.

I'm surprised that everyone, not just neoliberals, don't employ this kind of reasoning. There is literally nothing to gain from sacrificing your current wealth for people who will benefit for it when you will be dead. As a wise man once said: "Resources exist to be consumed. And consumed they will be, if not by this generation then by some future. By what right does this forgotten future seek to deny us our birthright? None I say! Let us take what is ours, chew and eat our fill."

[DemonFiren]

As German I guess it behoves me to lecture you on ethics and sustainability.

[DemonFiren]

Well, mostly they're going down.

[Professor Hangar]

lets employ the neoliberal classic of "keep the bubble afloat until my generation dies"



it'll be great to finally be on the other end of that shit for once.

I'm surprised that everyone, not just neoliberals, don't employ this kind of reasoning. There is literally nothing to gain from sacrificing your current wealth for people who will benefit for it when you will be dead. As a wise man once said: "Resources exist to be consumed. And consumed they will be, if not by this generation then by some future. By what right does this forgotten future seek to deny us our birthright? None I say! Let us take what is ours, chew and eat our fill."

Then it turns out your parents used up all the resources, there's not enough left to go around,and your children rise up to take what's left and leave you to rot in the nursing homes whose funding you voted to cut to the bone.

[Ikarrus]

As a wise man once said: "Resources exist to be consumed. And consumed they will be, if not by this generation then by some future. By what right does this forgotten future seek to deny us our birthright? None I say! Let us take what is ours, chew and eat our fill."

[Grazyn]

lets employ the neoliberal classic of "keep the bubble afloat until my generation dies"



it'll be great to finally be on the other end of that shit for once.

I'm surprised that everyone, not just neoliberals, don't employ this kind of reasoning. There is literally nothing to gain from sacrificing your current wealth for people who will benefit for it when you will be dead. As a wise man once said: "Resources exist to be consumed. And consumed they will be, if not by this generation then by some future. By what right does this forgotten future seek to deny us our birthright? None I say! Let us take what is ours, chew and eat our fill."

Then it turns out your parents used up all the resources, there's not enough left to go around,and your children rise up to take what's left and leave you to rot in the nursing homes whose funding you voted to cut to the bone.

I mean, if you apply that reasoning, you're not even supposed to have children. You're not supposed to care about future people, and children are just that, future people who suck your money straight away.

[starmute]

lets employ the neoliberal classic of "keep the bubble afloat until my generation dies"



it'll be great to finally be on the other end of that shit for once.

Its not just neo liberals. Why do you think Trump is weakening the EPA and pulling out of Paris accord. Frankly its everyone who thinks "in the moment" and not "in the future"

[ShadowDimentio]

The Paris accord did nothing except fuck over 1st world countries who barely polluted while China and India, the real polluters, didn't have to do shit except nod and say "oh yeah we're /totally/ cleaning our shit up"

It was globalist bullshit and Trump made a good move in not paying millions to fuck America over.

[DemonFiren]

Always count on Shadowmemes to defend Trump's every decision.

inb4 BUT I DON'T HE DID INFINITELY INSIGNIFICANT THING WRONG and it doesn't change anything he is still the most awesomest evar!!!111!

[ShadowDimentio]

Make America orange again

[DemonFiren]

Make /tg/ singulo again

[oranges]

The Paris accord did nothing except fuck over 1st world countries who barely polluted while China and India, the real polluters, didn't have to do shit except nod and say "oh yeah we're /totally/ cleaning our shit up"

It was globalist bullshit and Trump made a good move in not paying millions to fuck America over.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_c ... _emissions

sort to the top per capita by 2015 and have a look where the united states ranks compared to china and india and then think real hard about what the fuck you are saying

[starmute]

The Paris accord did nothing except fuck over 1st world countries who barely polluted while China and India, the real polluters, didn't have to do shit except nod and say "oh yeah we're /totally/ cleaning our shit up"

It was globalist bullshit and Trump made a good move in not paying millions to fuck America over.

Globalism is a meme people use when they don't like something. When they enjoy the fruits of globalism they shut the fuck up and don't complain about it. I mean honestly we have been living in a global economy since about the 1600s. I doubt anyone but glycon the all powerful is old enough to remember a time where we didn't trade globally.

[leibniz]

>people only complain about <thing> when they have a problem with it

[starmute]

>people only complain about <thing> when they have a problem with it

Globalism is according to the dictionary

noun: globalism

the operation or planning of economic and foreign policy on a global basis.

When you get the best price for things at walmart generally you don't complain. You might even say "wow I bought this item at $3.00 instead of $5". People do complain where other's beat them in competition because other people can produce goods at the same level on the cheap. Suddenly you are out of work and who's to blame? Its globalism!

[Professor Hangar]

Like, maybe a valid grievance with globalism is that powerful people can outsource a country's problems rather than deal with them, and it's starting to come back to haunt them, but the USA is still definitely the beneficiary of global exploitation overall.

But even then that's just an over-abstraction of a problem specific to capitalism, the need to grind every human being's life down to making a rich person's high score higher, and ignore everything that doesn't raise the high score no matter how much damage it causes in the long run.

[starmute]

Like, maybe a valid grievance with globalism is that powerful people can outsource a country's problems rather than deal with them, and it's starting to come back to haunt them, but the USA is still definitely the beneficiary of global exploitation overall.

But even then that's just an over-abstraction of a problem specific to capitalism, the need to grind every human being's life down to making a rich person's high score higher, and ignore everything that doesn't raise the high score no matter how much damage it causes in the long run.

The major reason the US is doing so well is Europe was devastated after world war 2. The US had tdecent manufacturing capacity and expanded it after world war 2, while Europe and Asia were recovering from the war. Everywhere else was dealing with colonialism and it's after-effects.

Capitalism is just a extension of the world really, it's just a reflection of "Survival of the fittest" or "most powerful". Have more money and power? You can exploit and stand on the bones of others. You can get others to do labors they wouldn't do on their own and do things that would work against their own self interest.

Morality wise it isn't the most wonderful thing but it's kinda what we were programed to do.

[Professor Hangar]

Well yeah, but we're also 'programmed' to have kids at 12, shit in the woods and murder everyone from the village across the valley. We've been pretty off-script ever since we invented agriculture.

[starmute]

Well yeah, but we're also 'programmed' to have kids at 12, shit in the woods and murder everyone from the village across the valley. We've been pretty off-script ever since we invented agriculture.

We're still doing that shit. We've just come up with better ways of doing it. Regardless I think we're driven to try and dominate or do better than others, good bad or otherwise.

Also what village are you in?

[starmute]

pls stahp. Importing is a biiiig topic of morals, ethics, quality, quantity... I mean, would you want a million and one cheap solar panels from China? How does that affect your local green industry and the planet? Is it better for the global environment for China to produce it? Is it better for your environment for China to produce it? How does this affect jobs and wages in your local green industry and then on the grand scale of things? These are simple and naive questions.

Good luck not importing anything. I mean seriously we live and thrive on importing things. England wouldn't be where it is without importing things. They don't have enough farmland to support their population. The strongest countries thrive on good economic partnerships with other countries. If a Chinese factory can do a better, cheaper, and quicker job than a American factory then I welcome them to do it. Why? Because we're a country of "the lowest bidder". Do you want a interest rate of 5.5 or a intrest rate of 10.0 on your credit card? What if I told you that 2% of the interest rate on the higher one goes to the preservation of natural resource of skub? Would you pay $10 extra for "fair trade" vegetables when you go to the grocer every day?

Also use nuclear technology. Don't buy into that solar panels bullshit.

[ohnopigeons]

Emissions should be based on tons of CO2 per km^2 instead of per capita meme

[Malkevin]

>credit card
Sure, be a slave to the Jew

How about investing in your own country so there's something for banks to invest in locally so us people that are actually good with money don't get shafted on our savings?

[starmute]

>credit card
Sure, be a slave to the Jew

How about investing in your own country so there's something for banks to invest in locally so us people that are actually good with money don't get shafted on our savings?

Investing in bonds? I have like $5,000 in them from working as a kid. I have a mixed feel on them. They are a good investment but take way too long to mature.

There's nothing wrong with credit cards but honestly people should pay them ahead of time. I keep $1,000 in mine at all times and only use it as a backup. However at some point in your life you will need to borrow money.

[starmute]

Good luck not importing anything. I mean seriously we live and thrive on importing things. England wouldn't be where it is without importing things. They don't have enough farmland to support their population. The strongest countries thrive on good economic partnerships with other countries. If a Chinese factory can do a better, cheaper, and quicker job than a American factory then I welcome them to do it. Why? Because we're a country of "the lowest bidder". Do you want a interest rate of 5.5 or a intrest rate of 10.0 on your credit card? What if I told you that 2% of the interest rate on the higher one goes to the preservation of natural resource of skub? Would you pay $10 extra for "fair trade" vegetables when you go to the grocer every day?

Also use nuclear technology. Don't buy into that solar panels bullshit.

>people only complain about <thing> when they have a problem with it
>"How dare you be upset when globalism doesn't work for you? Think about those times it does work for you!"
>pls stahp, big complex thing, hard to simplify into you have to be all for or all against
>"How dare you be against importing"
reeee

I also have a 6+% interest rate on my student loan that is translated into a 30 year tax (oh dear, we're getting into complicated issues outside, or rather inside the parts, of global economy) and last I checked, interest rates on mortgages and other widely used loans are low for reasons that might not be due to import/export. I don't have credit because I don't actually know what it is nor do I buy much/earn anything but I do have debit. I was offered a credit card at uni because I assume my bank wanted to wring money out of me in some fashion.

If a Chinese factory can do a better, cheaper and quicker job than a local factory, then sure, why not welcome it? Obviously hands at home should compete in a different area, work smarter or work harder. Unfortunately better, cheaper and quicker aren't necessarily going to happen all at once and so I'm going to have to stop you there. Chinese products are notorious for being cheaper and faster made. Cheaper and faster products, along with Chinese products, are notorious for being cheaper and faster for a reason. They're shit. They either break fast, are hazardous or at worst, don't do the job they're built for. They also have concerning working rights and quality of life. There's also environmental concerns over there, whether it's a local smog or a global emission.

If you tell me that I'm paying more to protect something, be it an environmental cause I agree with or not, I'd have to ask why, how or if I should even care. I tend to not buy the cheapest shit from the corner shop or supermarket because it's shit. I will put more pounds down on the counter for something that doesn't taste of nothing, is full of gristle and threatens my health with an overload of sugar. Are you trying to use fair trade as a meme because I don't even know what the sticker means on products I buy or what it means if it's not there. As far as I know, charities are case by case questionable and they produce the dullest telly adverts that never change no matter how many years go by (more sub Saharan non-specific nationality Africans, presumed living in mud huts or concrete brick communal barns, always toddlers thin enough to show off every bone in their body, looking at the camera with the narrator giving them a name and saying the child is asking for help/X number of children die every day because of unclean water, and then they try to do the same thing with work in third world countries and I wonder if any of them have reasonable or achievable goals). I know I just prefer to scrutinise fruit and veg that is being marked down in price and if it's a pastry product, I know to use it within the day.

One thing that is of a concern of late with the durn global trading is what Britain is going to do outside of the EU and what we're going to have to give up to get a trade deal with Murica because it'll look good to the voting public if the ruling party gets dat fukken deal. Some people are concerned over animal well being, our farmers losing their jobs (we don't subsidise our agriculture as far as I know), chickens being chlorinated and something about hormones in beef and bad diet leading to poor quality beef that doesn't taste like what we're used to or what we like over here.

To also put a point on the nukular tech. In Bwitain we have a controversial power plant that is expensive, being built by the Chinese (do they own a part of it? Do we have to keep paying them? Are we politically and financially in debt to them? Is it going to be safe? What about the software and other technology in use?) and the French (who I think kicked in it a few times). I don't know what gruuun power generation tech there is to compete but nuclear has some issues, be they political or very real such as not enough people educated in or practicing the technology. So, we don't know how to make nuclear power cores or the associated parts. We don't know how to make wind turbines. We have to depend on others for this. Is this good? Maybe, it lets us do work elsewhere and contribute to the world that way. But maybe we don't want to be politically and physically active with some of the other countries or maybe their products are concerning.

But who gives a flying fuck, eh? I can buy a burger for a couple of quid cheaper in the corner shop if I buy Murican or grab a fidget spinner for 99p if I buy Chinese. Who gives a sod about the rest of it, amirite?

>England not subsidizing agriculture.

Wut? Even just looking at the wikipedia article says you are heavily subsidizing it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_England

Now don't get me wrong, it's your money and you can use it however you want but you are propping up farmers who otherwise couldn't make ends meat. Its a feel good prop up that you tax everyone for and makes your local farmers competitive with the rest of the world. (Such as propping up a saudi prince)

Also you have to face the facts that everyone is going to say bad things about another countries products because you want to "buy local". Example: Do you know what FIAT stands for "Fix it'a again tony!". From my perspective I've had American meat products and they seem fine. I imagine though many people are opposed to receiving American meat <gigity>.

Regarding your concerns on morality. That's great, honestly its impressive but it doesn't stop capitalism and free trade. People will always buy from the lowest common denominator. There's plenty of idealism abound but people do buy Chinese products due to their prices and availability. You may be different than the vast majority of people but if you are as you said you don't buy much and you don't earn anything.

As far as nuclear power goes: its clean and the best thing we have at the current moment.

Honestly your country is the home of the import. You imported tea from India, you imported wood, fruits, vegitables ect from the colonies. Your XBAWX and Playstations, your tvs and kitchen appliances are imports 99% of the time. Take a look at the labels on your clothing. Is cotton native to England? Would cotton even grow in England?

[ohnopigeons]

There is some merit to protectionism sometimes but it really should be done at the national level with things like tariffs and not the individual consumer level, that's pretty nonsensical.

I think you're over-stereotyping Chinese products. A lot of them are shit but just because it's Chinese doesn't mean it's shit, especially for things like solar panels. Most of your arguments don't really apply to Chinese solar panels because the most toxic part of the production process is the extraction of rare earth metals, of which China dominates 85% of the global supply so even if you made the solar panels themselves in Britain the rare earths would still be from China. If one day China starts importing rare earths then you'd also have to compete with China for rare earths outside of China, and China's foreign policy has recently becoming more and more aggressive, especially economic-wise.

[XSI]

People will always buy from the lowest common denominator. There's plenty of idealism abound but people do buy Chinese products due to their prices and availability. You may be different than the vast majority of people but if you are as you said you don't buy much and you don't earn anything.

As far as nuclear power goes: its clean and the best thing we have at the current moment.

Honestly your country is the home of the import. You imported tea from India, you imported wood, fruits, vegitables ect from the colonies. Your XBAWX and Playstations, your tvs and kitchen appliances are imports 99% of the time. Take a look at the labels on your clothing. Is cotton native to England? Would cotton even grow in England?

Just this bit to quote, though I've seen plenty of questionable shit since my last post
Over here, they tried to import chinese appliances. Practically nobody bought it and they went back to German stuff, which actually works, because shops don't survive if nobody buys from them.
That's how bad Chinese rep is, even with a substantial discount people don't want it.

Last bit left in just to point to Thatcher, whose death was celebrated widely thanks to how she pushed this and destroyed domnestic industry for not being 'competitive' enough for global markets.
That's the big problem everyone has with globalism. Not that it brings us cheap shit from elsewhere, but that the third worlders work for practically nothing and because of that western labour rights and protections against abuse that we've fought long and hard for (Since the 1700s, really) are being sidestepped by just moving the jobs out of the country. Since the 60s, the real income (Income percentage remaining after taxes and housing/food/heating etc) has been steadily dropping and it's projected to continue dropping. The combination of inflation and globalism moving jobs out while reducing the wages for those that are still here is wrecking the purchasing power of the people and pushing many formerly middle class families into lower class situations.

And yet, you're talking about how these fruits now cost only 3 bux instead of 5. That's nice, but you're ignoring the part where this doesn't matter when the average income is dropping faster than the prices.
Nobody dislikes global trade. People dislike the big businesses using global trade to fuck over our countries for the sake of profit.

There is some merit to protectionism sometimes but it really should be done at the national level with things like tariffs and not the individual consumer level, that's pretty nonsensical.

Also this bit. Tariffs are practically a necessity to prevent the country's manufacturing base from disappearing. Bit late for that at this point, so I doubt it will work even if we did put them in today

[XSI]

Just to say, I wish Victoria 2 modelled tariffs well. I hear they lazily coded it (as with all paradox games) to have consumers and factories buying locally/nationally first and then internationally second if needs are not met. So tariffs are just an extra tax or penalty for a dependent economy. I guess maybe it was coded like that because they couldn't or didn't want to code nation based pricing but instead a flat, global price. It'd probably be quite hard to cobble it together in the game (and then I'd complain I can't stockpile a resource to prevent global pricing from being driven down, to trick AI countries into building something I can then flood the market of or I don't know, advanced economy shenanigans that the game would let you have fun with), especially with how England's cows are the same as Indonesia's and I'm not sure if the game models import costs either.

Victoria 2 really is just a historic simulation you muck around in and then metagame where the gold and oil shows up for when playing financially incompetent minor nations. I guess I'll cross my fingers paradox thinks up something better for Victoria 3 but then that'd be up there with hoping they'll add an economy to Stellaris that isn't minerals->butter/happiness. I mean jesus christ, EU4, and dare I say, even HoI4 have some economic modelling. EU4's being the most fun or game like in practice.

Nope. They coded it so that any industry, even your own, will first buy/sell from/to your sphere of influence leader, then rest of the sphere, then the highest prestige, and only after that internal.
Your own clothing factories can go bankrupt because there's no wool available in a wool-producing country, because you're sphered by Austria and Austria is making a shitton of clothing already.
You can also be prevented from training military units, even with your own factories making guns and ammo, because Britain is expanding their military and they've got a higher prestige than you.

They coded it because "Game", not to simulate anything. Just to have it as a gameplay mechanic. Import costs are not modeled at all, goods have no travel time either. It's very light as far as the simulation aspect goes, but it has lots of numbers on display to seem like it's complex. Once you work out how it works you can pretty much just prevent the industrial revolution as Britain or Austria, or at least slow it so much that it wont really happen before the end of the game.

[oranges]

nz probably the only country not subsidizing it's agriculture and we probably still are subsidizing parts of it.

[XSI]

Great countries get to lead their sphere, so they get to have first pick of their own resources, and the resources of their sphere before they go to the global market
And by prevent the industrial revolution, I mean 100% tariffs so nobody else can afford coal(While conquering as many coal places as you can) and using it all yourself so that nobody else has the resources to make factories

No factories, no industrial revolution. At best maybe Britain and France can get enough coal in to support some factories, but if you play as Austria and systematically conquer coal regions you can pretty much block the industrialization of everyone except Britain. If you play as Britain, conquer Austria to get their coal and shut out everyone else. except maybe France
And the AI isn't smart enough to see what's happening so they won't try to stop you either.

[starmute]

I need to stop browsing leddit until they back up their memes with citations it seems. Mmm. Making ends meat. I also need to point out a problem with your source. The only reference for the web page is, I presume, a paper from the 20th century looking at the 19th century. And then there's this:

Agriculture is heavily subsidised by the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy and it is not known how large a sector it would be if the market was unregulated.

So what is Britain leaving again? And who is Britain trying to get a deal with? And doesn't that country export a lot of agricultural product? Why would the British government pick up the slack? I mean, our health secretary (I think said, it was someone important) they're happy with importing chlorinated chicken because it was becoming a health scare headline but I somehow don't think we'll compete on the chicken front locally if we're open to Murican meat.

The common argument is you need it in the same veins you need defense. If America suddenly gives you a bad deal on your corn, your fruits, your vegetables then you need someone to make grain.

https://fullfact.org/economy/farming-subsidies-uk/

Oh and then there's this bit which is what the reference for the web page is for, really the only thing with a citation on tha tpage:

In the late nineteenth century a slump badly affected arable farming, known as the Great Depression, which is usually dated from 1873 to 1896. The depression was caused by the dramatic fall in grain prices following the opening up of the American prairies to cultivation in the 1870s and the advent of cheap transportation with the rise of steam ships.

>farming got shat on
>caused by fall in grain prices
>because Murica grew loadsa grain and exported it
So if it happened once... let's not pretend it can't or won't happen again. My government are friendly to their friends, not businesses or people.

Obviously it couldn't be protectionism, oh wait... it either directly contributed or was the cause.
https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/ ... epression/
http://voxeu.org/article/protectionist- ... sion-today
EICHENGREEN, B., & IRWIN, D. A. (2010). The Slide to Protectionism in the Great Depression: Who Succumbed and Why?. Journal Of Economic History, 70(4), 871–97.
Robert Whaples, "Where Is There Consensus Among American Economic Historians? The Results of a Survey on Forty Propositions", Journal of Economic History, Vol. 55, No. 1 (Mar., 1995), pp. 139–54 in JSTOR
Temin, Peter. 1989. Lessons from the Great Depression, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass

I can post more sources if you want.

>equating propping up farmers with propping up Sauds
>propping up sheepshaggers is equivalent to propping up nepotistic, murderous cunts
I guess letting farmers buy guns is the same as selling state guns to foreign bastards for what I hope is some 5D Middle East great game chess and not scratch my back and I'll put money in your bank account.

EXCEPT IT LITTERALLY IS PROPPING UP SAUDS
https://www.cnbc.com/2016/09/29/saudi-b ... idies.html
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-37493956
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... -subsidies

I mean it even benefits the Mormon church.

I wouldn't want Murican bread, mainly because I hear British people go over the pond and complain it tastes like cake because of the sugar involved. I also don't want American/Scottish descended pancake culture ruining the English pancake/crepe imported from France, that's if we ignore the abomination of oat pancakes.

I don't know what morality I have, I just prefer what tastes nice and doesn't come loaded with baggage on the package. You can shut the fuck up about telling me to stop caring because capitalism and free trade have made up their minds. If I decide tomorrow that I want to save all the pigs and the cows from eternal food slavery, then telling me I have to give up my opinions because most people decided to eat meat is a shite argument.

I'm not telling you anything. As a consumer you have all the power. If people bought things only locally then there wouldn't be a argument (however England would starve due to the fact that it couldn't support itself). If you don't like murrican bread then don't eat it. I would say that you need to look at the sources of things (like steel) and where you get them. England frankly doesn't have the natural resources to support herself, that being said due to imports it's manufacturing and service industries more than make up for it.

[XSI]

(...)England(...)

(...)manufacturing(...)

Spoiler:

[Professor Hangar]

Stuff made in China is fine when it's done under total foreign supervision every step of the way so they don't cut corners with cheap materials, skip out on testing, make finished exteriors with no interiors, etc. High end and low end stuff is both made in China, it doesn't mean much. Chinese businesses who cater to higher-end or niche markets know they can't cut costs no matter how much they'd like to because their customers can and will desert them in a snap.

Maybe because I'm Australian, but hostility to solar power sounds completely retarded. You buy em, stick 'em on your roof, boom, you're your own power plant. Depending on your consumption you may never need to pay a power bill again, or even MAKE money by selling it back to the grid. Maybe it's not quite efficient enough yet for industrial purposes, but it still pays for itself eventually. Plus, you'll still have power if/when the grid fails. (Obviously, not counting for theoretical super sketchy companies or the ones that force you to put your power into the grid, but you should be avoiding those and throwing rocks at their cars anyway)

Farm subsidies being used to prop up rich assholes sounds about right, and is the result of when said rich assholes pay the government to look the other way. (despite the government paying them more) This is why politicians need to be locked up as soon as they're elected, to save time.

[DemonFiren]

>he's australian
Suddenly everything makes sense.

[starmute]

Stuff made in China is fine when it's done under total foreign supervision every step of the way so they don't cut corners with cheap materials, skip out on testing, make finished exteriors with no interiors, etc. High end and low end stuff is both made in China, it doesn't mean much. Chinese businesses who cater to higher-end or niche markets know they can't cut costs no matter how much they'd like to because their customers can and will desert them in a snap.

Maybe because I'm Australian, but hostility to solar power sounds completely retarded. You buy em, stick 'em on your roof, boom, you're your own power plant. Depending on your consumption you may never need to pay a power bill again, or even MAKE money by selling it back to the grid. Maybe it's not quite efficient enough yet for industrial purposes, but it still pays for itself eventually. Plus, you'll still have power if/when the grid fails. (Obviously, not counting for theoretical super sketchy companies or the ones that force you to put your power into the grid, but you should be avoiding those and throwing rocks at their cars anyway)

Farm subsidies being used to prop up rich assholes sounds about right, and is the result of when said rich assholes pay the government to look the other way. (despite the government paying them more) This is why politicians need to be locked up as soon as they're elected, to save time.

The only problem with solar is it isn't cost effective and it needs other power to back it up. Maybe it will work someday but currently its not cost effective enough to be implemented. For most of us it's hard to get that amount of money without a huge loan. According to forbes it would cost you about $50,000 dollars to go solar. Take that at a average interest rate you go up to $60,000.

The average electric bill costs $110, a month. Thats $1320 a year. To break even you need to generate pay it off for 45 years without having a power deficit. By the time you are old enough to buy your own house I'm guessing you are in your late 30s. So you might be able to reap the rewards when you are 80. Maybe.

[ohnopigeons]

Solar can work but there's multiple problems with it. First it's heavily geographic and climate dependent. Obviously you need clear skies but you also need to be near the equator and be relatively dry. I made a map:

Spoiler:

So solar works for Australia because:

• It's very near the equator
• The climate is dry and skies are relatively clear
• There is a lot of flat land clearings with a clear view to the sky that is otherwise unusable (freaking desert)

Solar does not work for Britain because:

• It's very far from the equator
• The climate is not dry and the skies are not clear
• It does not have freely available land

The second problem is the energy generation properties. Generally:

• Raw power generation is the easiest
  Transmission is harder
  Quality control is the hardest

So solar panels generate energy freely and eaily from the sun, there's no doubt about that. There's issues about maintenance and how you need to replace them as they wear but let's ignore that for now.
What you give up however is quality control. Weather prediction is far from perfect and renewable energy sources such as wind and solar induce a great source of instability and uncertainty in the electrical grid. You always need to produce and transmit more electricity than is being consumed at all times. If cloud cover suddenly blocks half of your solar capacity and you don't have enough energy to make the shortfall in that moment you are fucked. Contrast this with coal or nuclear power plants where you turn them on and they give a constant, predictable and controllable output. That's why, currently, unstable renewable energy generation should not make up more than 20% of total grid capacity. Maybe with serious overhauls and reforms to the electric grid (such as large-scale energy storage) this limit can be increased but thus far there's been no effort (publically and politically across most countries) to address the infrastructure side of renewable energy.

[Screemonster]

There's also the "what kind of solar" question. PV has been getting better recently, but even in australia it's more efficient to use it for heating than it is for electricity. (and concentrating thermal power plants have historically been more efficient, if a little tricky - last year there was an accident in California where the mirrors on a plant went off-target and directed the beam at a part of the plant that wasn't meant to have a few square miles of desert sunlight pointed at it).
That is changing, but really, the real impact of the push for industrial-scale solar is that the cost of making small solar panels, like on things like portable chargers and outdoor lights and all those little devices, has crashed through the fucking floor. Outdoor, low-power devices that are portable or distant from a grid connection are perfect for PV.

The real issue though is that whenever environmental journalists talk about power, they have a tendency to talk about it like a watt is a watt is a watt. "HEY THIS WIND FARM HAS A GENERATING CAPACITY OF X WATTS WHICH IS ENOUGH TO POWER Y HOMES" and the like as though hooking more windmills up means all our power needs are fixed forever.
Meanwhile, last summer I remember a fun situation where National Grid were having to instruct plants to shut off on the west coast because an offshore wind farm was producing more power than they could handle, while running the Short Term Operating Reserve on the east coast because there was a shortfall there.

Meanwhile NIMBYs sown south will complain about transmission pylons, never mind having a power plant in their county somewhere

[Screemonster]

Scotland's entire population is only two thirds of that of London alone, and the geography is fairly well suited to hydro and wind.
Wind is better than other forms of power when it comes to other land usage in the footprint, but it's still not like you can just hang around them. Up at Whitelee there's a sign made of that stuff that changes colour according to the temperature, and once it gets below five degrees it tells people to stay out of the field 'cause of the risk of ice forming on the tips of the blades, which can then get flung off at pretty lethal speeds.

[XSI]

That sounds like a drawback of wind power

The biggest drawback will probably always be the inconsistency, power needs to be consistent, or your fridge will shut off when the wind dies down/you're going to need coal anyway to supplement it(Pick one)
Same for solar

Maybe in a few decades we'll have better power storage to make it more viable, but right now it's not that good

[ShadowDimentio]

Germany forced the green revolution early and it fucking sucks. During gloomy days power has to be rationed, and on really sunny or windy days the system gets overloaded and they get so desperate to get rid of the power they pay neighboring countries to take it from them.

[Screemonster]

That sounds like a drawback of wind power

The biggest drawback will probably always be the inconsistency, power needs to be consistent, or your fridge will shut off when the wind dies down/you're going to need coal anyway to supplement it(Pick one)
Same for solar

Maybe in a few decades we'll have better power storage to make it more viable, but right now it's not that good

with current technology, assuming we were to run on 100% renewables, storing excess power when we're producing more than we're using and then putting it back into the grid when there's a renewable shortfall, assuming renewable output continues to produce the same patterns of peaks and troughs on average as it did over the last five years, the power storage needed to cover periods of low supply would entail a hydro dam the size of the cairngorms.

Oh, and the variable nature of renewable generation means your fossil plants can't just run at a constant rate, which has a similar impact on their efficiency as highway versus city miles in a car. (again, different types of generation have different tolerances for this sort of thing. Nukes, for instance, have a very long ramp time compared to, say, gas turbines)

[XSI]

And if your powernet is over or undersupplied with power, the whole thing can go down and then things are fucked
Just imagine what a big city losing power for a day or so would do to the economy, or what losing power to residential would do for the food in everyone's fridges

Wind and solar just aren't viable on large scale yet. But they're working on it

[Screemonster]

Oh yeah, for sure, keep working. We'll get there.

The problem is that in the meantime we've got to deal with the screeching from people who are pushing for us to make the change NOW NOW NOW BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE NOW NOW NOW before we actually do get there.

If you want an example of a related field where this happened - light bulbs. When compact flourescent "energy saver" bulbs first became a thing, the green lobby was immediately pushing for a ban on incandescents. People who opposed the ban for any reason got mocked and derided as luddites, tagged with names like the "dim bulb caucus" in the US for senators that opposed the ban, and so on, regardless of their reasons for opposing it. Meanwhile, CFLs produce shitty light, take ages to warm up, flicker at a rate that gives some people migraines, can't be dimmed, and to top it off, compared to being filled with argon and a simple tungsten filament in the case of an incandescent bulb, are filled with mercury vapour and emit ultraviolet radiation. Literally the only saving grace they have is requiring fewer watts per lumen, but that was enough for the demands for a ban to go up. The argument kept raging until ultrabright LEDs arrived on the scene, at which point the argument was settled near-instantly. Louder voices in the anti-CFL crowd like Anthony Watts came out to say "this is exactly the technology we've been waiting for", along with glowing (hue) reviews of the LED lights he'd fitted to his house - suddenly, we had a commercially available product that was not only even more efficient than the flourescent tubes, but had none of the downsides or toxic waste problems when it comes to disposing of them.

tl;dr environmental campaigners screeched and stamped their feet and demanded bans on things, then technology advanced by itself to the point where something so completely superior in every way to both the thing that was being banned and the "green alternative" that replaced it came along, and now there's no point in banning them anyway. Like, why the fuck would you, it'd be like banning horses and carts in an age of electric cars.

[XSI]

Pretty much similar here
Green lobby wanted to ban lightbulbs for years, and recently actually got it done through the EU because they couldn't convince any national governments of it. Because it's stupid

Meanwhile, the publicity they gave to the first, very flawed, energy saving bulbs means that people here now distrust even the LED things and there's several web stores selling these banned lightbulbs because they've got a good rep and the new stuff does not.
This essentially means that the new, better and cleaner bulbs just aren't used by large groups of people because some people couldn't shut up and wait for the tech to improve before demanding change

[Professor Hangar]

Problem is, screeching, stamping and demanding change NOW NOW NOW is basically the only way you're getting things changed any time remotely soon. A few people being gigantic babies and flaunting pollution because muh nostalgia is a small price to pay, and their children won't understand what all the fuss was ever about.

[killerx09]

Is ShadowDimento usually this insane?

[Screemonster]

Problem is, screeching, stamping and demanding change NOW NOW NOW is basically the only way you're getting things changed any time remotely soon. A few people being gigantic babies and flaunting pollution because muh nostalgia is a small price to pay, and their children won't understand what all the fuss was ever about.

The problem with that is that when you demand change NOW NOW NOW you can stifle development in things that are genuinely better by plumping for whatever shitty marginal improvement comes first. In this case, it was ultimately unnecessary to "get things changed" because the change one step down the pipeline was far better than the thing that they were trying to ram down everyone's throats by force.
You'll notice that nobody's having to legislate to get people to switch from CFLs to LEDs.

The next big thing that's causing a fuss is electric cars and those are going to be an interesting shakeup. I'm not sure how many people realise just how much extra load they'll put on the electricity infrastructure if people were to start switching en-masse. (hint: lots. Even if they charge overnight.)