I discovered this yesterday trying to respond to a post on r/conservative about the CCP enforcing ideological conformity. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
That strikes me as far more a function of being on reddit. There are no conservatives on reddit and from my own interactions with the people on r/conservative, I can assure you that they are not in fact what they say they are. You may as well go to Weibo looking to advocate against the repressive CCP regime, or you can try it a bit closer to home and advocate for free speech on reddit. Same outcome.
Complexity is the enemy of any reliable system. No energy source is simpler than solar arrays. They don't require any moving parts, thermal management, waste containment, or strong security. The only maintenance required is dusting. Why otherwise intelligent people cannot appreciate the cost of complexity for nuclear energy is beyond me, especially when viewed in contrast to something as simple as solar.
There are costs other than complexity which must be considered before selecting a power source. For example, energy density per unit area. Nuclear has a much smaller footprint. Also the cost, maintnence, lifetime, and environmental impact of batteries required during night time/occluded operation is also not trivial, as is accommodating for unpredictable outputs due to weather.
Nuclear is slow to operate, so it needs batteries to handle peaks during day. Nuclear can provide baseline power only.
Solar panel can be installed at roofs, so it can double as shelter, and power loss due to transmission can be lowered. Backup gravitational battery can provide backup power on site for short (hours) periods of time, to cheaply offset energy from peak of production at noun to peak of consuming at evening. Efficiency of solar panels can be improved up to 80%, so they can reduce need for air cooling.
Agreed, Also diversity of power is a win. But I agree, with the OP comment here, the simplicity of Solar is hard to get past, but sometimes it just won't work for a given application.
Except that solar doesn't provide power at night, and reduced power on some days. That means you need either storage or alternative power. Areas which can provide large amounts of solar tend to be located far from population centers. That means long range transmission systems, which are among the most complex systems in existence.
But these companies are funded by VCs. The cause is more a function of wealth inequality. The ultra-wealthy have so much money that they only need 1/100 to be a gusher. If there wasn't so much capital consolidated in the hands of so few, this model wouldn't work as you need an ungodly amount of money to sustain 99 failures. Investments should be more constrained by real balance sheets and the needs of real people. There is a ton of waste on this billionaire's roulette wheel.
> The cause is more a function of wealth inequality. The ultra-wealthy have so much money that they only need 1/100 to be a gusher.
It has nothing to do with wealth inequality. Whether you're pooling $100 from a million people, or $20 million from 5, the economics of venture capital are the same. Wealth inequality has nothing to do with this.
The purpose of venture capital (for investors) is diversification. It is an uncorrelated, positive (hopefully) return stream. Investors want to combine uncorrelated return streams as much as possible, due to the AM-GM inequality. The geometric mean of a series with a given arithmetic mean is higher when that series is less volatile.
It does have a relationship to wealth inequality. On the one hand you have money seeking returns and getting caught up in zero and negative sum games while doing so. On the other you have a lack of small investors with lower risk tolerance. Both of these are results of wealth inequality.
> On the one hand you have money seeking returns and getting caught up in zero and negative sum games while doing so.
This happens to retail investors all the time.
> On the other you have a lack of small investors with lower risk tolerance. Both of these are results of wealth inequality.
Citation needed. Retail investors buy all kinds of risky shit. You can do all of these same things with retail investors money. You don't need any wealth inequality whatsoever to explain venture capital.
Are you referring to investors in penny stocks? I was thinking more in terms of seed investors and self-funding entrepreneurs; of which there is a real dearth at present.
No. You are right that non-wealthy people do not make angel investments in startups (usually). However, they could make a small investment in a fund that does so. Right now, such funds do not exist, primarily for regulatory reasons.
