Potential Negative Economic Impacts of Successful Polywell

[MSimon]

I find I can move topics. I'm going to let this sit for a few more hours and then I'll move it to implications.

[93143]

I don't see a comeback for filament lamps. The hassle of burned out bulbs will be enough of an incentive to keep many people from going back.

I've been living in my current place for two and a half years. I've had four compact fluorescents fail on me so far, out of a total of six.

One advantage to incandescents is that when they burn out, they don't start sizzling and spewing toxic smoke and metal fumes into your home. They just fail benignly and leave it at that.

[MirariNefas]

When you think about it, in a terrestrial economy electricity and possibly heat would become less expensive. This could cause shifts in consumer buying decisions, and that is the basis of your question.

When gasoline was "cheap", consumers chose vehicles without much regard to fuel economy. SUVs became all the rage. When the price of gasoline spiked, consumer demand shifted; car dealers had to steeply discount to move existing SUV inventory. Entire production lines shut down. We all know the story there.

In the case of expensive electricity becoming inexpensive, there's no sudden driver for a change in consumer buying decisions. Perhaps a consumer would set the thermostat lower in the summer, without worry as to the impact on the electric bill. Perhaps less efficient appliances, or incadecent bulbs instead of compact flouresent. I don't see the driver to abandon a product when the impact is that the product becomes less expensive to operate. It's the opposite of what happened to SUVs when gasoline spiked.

Mass adoption of electric cars? Not hardly. The missing ingredient is a major breakthrough in electric storage technology. Large scale desalination? Possibly, butthen again it makes commodities like water and arable land less expensive. Less expensive means gradual shift to decadence. More expensive is what causes a sudden radical shift in consumer choice.

J

This depends on just how much we're paying right now. Make something less expensive, and suddenly the opportunity cost of using our (whatever) becomes very high. No, we wouldn't suddenly dump our compact cars all at once. But there are other things.

Here is a very speculative example. I live in a very cold state. We get snow for about five months of the year. The streets are plowed every day, multiple times a day. Massive quanitities of salt are spread around. The freezing and thawing cycle is horrible on the roads, so we have potholes and cracks everywhere, and every few years the roads get a new layer of asphalt.

Enter ridiculously cheap energy. Next time they peel back a layer of asphalt, maybe someone will throw some heating coils down before they put a new layer of street on. They'd simply never let the road get cold enough to freeze. The transition would be quick here, because the streets are a constant source of great expenditure and the infrastructure degrades so quickly anyway. Salt and snowplow industry suffer the effects. Actually feasible? No idea. But depending on how quickly cheap energy can be implemented, and there is significant financial driver to do so quickly, there will be effects like this.


Also, the windmill industry would tank overnight. Companies would declare bankruptcy rather than pay to take down their windmills. Most of the "green jobs" would die pretty quickly.

I'm seeing an attitude of "people will recognize that they've already paid for what they've got so they'll keep using it for awhile" - and I don't disagree with it. But if a cheaper power source increases competition and brings prices down, the profitability of those properties will plummet. There's also good reason to expect the lifespan of those assets to decrease, as the government pushes for clean power and tightens regulations on industrial dinosaurs. For newer power plants, this means the financing plan to pay off construction will fall through. For everyone, this means the value of shares in the current power industry would plummet. Think about how bad the subprime mortgage crisis was. The sudden revaluing (devaluing) of a large amount of property would be bad.

incadecent bulbs instead of compact flouresent.

And cheap electricity for the home has a drawback. The distribution system is already under strain. Each house might require its own pole pig. Buildings would need to be rewired if consumption went up a lot.

Most of us wouldn't rewire. Old houses are always inconvenient and crappy and it brings down their value. New houses would be built with better wiring. The nice neighbourhoods of today would be the poorly-wired ghettos of tomorrow.

[KitemanSA]

I've been living in my current place for two and a half years. I've had four compact fluorescents fail on me so far, out of a total of six.

One advantage to incandescents is that when they burn out, they don't start sizzling and spewing toxic smoke and metal fumes into your home. They just fail benignly and leave it at that.

Tres strange! I've had perhap 5 dozen compact fluorescents in my home, maybe more, and NONE have ever "failed". The only problem is that they get dimmer with age. Eventually, I have to replace them to be able to see properly.

I wonder about the quality of your power grid!

[mvanwink5]

The life of coal plants is being stretched out due to siting difficulties withEPA bargained precipitators, then scrubbers, then SCR's. Don't be too surprised at how low the depreciation value will be in 10 years. In addition, the maintenance costs for coal plants will eat the alive. If pBj with direct alpha conversion is successful utilities will march right along in a step wise replacement. Also, the workers are aging. It would be nice if this whole effort could be accelerated.

Also, because public service commissions are forcing utilities to divest themselves of coal mines and transportation companies, they will be more eager to jump ship.

Just some thoughts.

[MSimon]

I've been living in my current place for two and a half years. I've had four compact fluorescents fail on me so far, out of a total of six.

One advantage to incandescents is that when they burn out, they don't start sizzling and spewing toxic smoke and metal fumes into your home. They just fail benignly and leave it at that.

I've been using the devices for over 10 years. They usually last (estimated) 5K to 15K operating hours. No catastrophic failures.

You might want to check your line voltage. I suspect either long periods of low voltage or spikes.

[JohnP]

It could be the biggest economic change from polywell might be indirect. Instead of a doubtful future dominated by diminishing resources, the confidence that we could instead open the sluice-gates and plan big would be great. And I think that's what's behind so much of the enthusiasm here. Being tied to fossil fuels, knowing that their use entails filth, and knowing that there's only so much of them is a bummer.

[TallDave]

Some CFLs are markedly inferior. Depends on the mfgr.

I agree the mercury fumes are a problem. If a lamp gets knocked over it's a HAZMAT site. If the enviros weren't pushing them as part of their carbon fairy appeasement effort CFLs would probably be illegal.

[Betruger]

It could be the biggest economic change from polywell might be indirect. Instead of a doubtful future dominated by diminishing resources, the confidence that we could instead open the sluice-gates and plan big would be great. And I think that's what's behind so much of the enthusiasm here. Being tied to fossil fuels, knowing that their use entails filth, and knowing that there's only so much of them is a bummer.

That and space applications.

[Stoney3K]

I'm a fan of Vernor Vinge's science fiction. One of his short stories, Run Bookworm Run!, takes place in a future where cheap energy has been developed, all old energy tech is obsolete, but its going to be several years to get industry converted to the new technology. The result is an economic Depression as the stock values of businesses formerly dependent on expensive energy collapse, people lose fortunes, pension funds implode, and most manufacturers have stopped production waiting for the new energy tech, as much as people have stopped buying old tech.

This is already happening. Only difference is, that it's happening with the abundance of cheap/free music (MP3's), much to the despair of major record companies. Just replace "technology" with "business model" and you get my drift.

[MSimon]

I'm a fan of Vernor Vinge's science fiction. One of his short stories, Run Bookworm Run!, takes place in a future where cheap energy has been developed, all old energy tech is obsolete, but its going to be several years to get industry converted to the new technology. The result is an economic Depression as the stock values of businesses formerly dependent on expensive energy collapse, people lose fortunes, pension funds implode, and most manufacturers have stopped production waiting for the new energy tech, as much as people have stopped buying old tech.

This is already happening. Only difference is, that it's happening with the abundance of cheap/free music (MP3's), much to the despair of major record companies. Just replace "technology" with "business model" and you get my drift.

How about the plentitude of industrial robots? Not all of them have hands. Some of them look like milling machines or lathes.

Vonnegut did a novel about this. Ice9 I believe. Mentioned a lot in the polywater excitement.

Part of our depression is that we are maintaining industrial output (look at the numbers) with a fraction of the labor.

[choff]

The biggest impact would be in Africa, China, India, and South America, places where Hydro and Coal is expensive and distance/cost a big factor. A lot of poor people in the third world will be able to afford the Western lifestyle, lots of new customers.

[KitemanSA]

Part of our depression is that we are maintaining industrial output (look at the numbers) with a fraction of the labor.

True, but add to that the fact that the government has effectively stolen all the money that the unused fraction of the workers could have invested in that industrial improvemnt and thereby could have become part of the idle rich (ok, idle lower middle class). Instead, the workers are laid off with no access to their stolen money until they reach 65ish (social insecurity). And no possibility to pass any of it on to their offspring. SS bites!

[MSimon]

Part of our depression is that we are maintaining industrial output (look at the numbers) with a fraction of the labor.

True, but add to that the fact that the government has effectively stolen all the money that the unused fraction of the workers could have invested in that industrial improvemnt and thereby could have become part of the idle rich (ok, idle lower middle class). Instead, the workers are laid off with no access to their stolen money until they reach 65ish (social insecurity). And no possibility to pass any of it on to their offspring. SS bites!

I dunno - in the 1920s farmers were all going to get rich by increasing their productivity with the new oil powered tools. Instead most of them went broke.

What do I see - you can live quite nicely on a very limited income in America if you don't need big city life. I am part of the idle rich. On $15K a year.