Brevity is the essence of wot

I think I've found my word of the year:

Sesquipedalian (ses-kwi-pi-DAY-lee-uhn)
adj
1. given to using long words
2. (of a word) containing many syllables.

Boredom's end

As of today, I'm moving to Montreal to start my new job there. New posts will be few and far between on this site for a while.

Immetric (part II)

A sketch of the real economy, drawn from here. See also "The Story of Stuff" here.

A previous post criticized our current economic system (method of resource allocation) on several fronts. That begs the question--if this one isn't working, what should we replace it with?

Whenever we design something, there are certain steps to follow. First, we need to decide what we want the economy to do. I offer the following:

An economy should reliably provide subsistence to all.

That is, all humans should have access to enough healthful water, food, and shelter to contribute fully to society. Any resource use beyond that is a cultural or political matter and should be decided by the people not by economists. The reliability condition means that the system must be robust and flexible enough to function amid the normal disruptions of life, and it implicitly forbids any irreversible or unpredictable degradation of the planet. There is already enough food, water, and goods produced to satisfy the needs of everyone on the planet--it's just a matter of allocating it more intelligently.

Second, we need to understand the "universe" we're working with. That sets the limits on the economy. How big can it be? How much resource consumption and pollution can the biosphere tolerate? The classical view of economics as a tension between supply and demand is woefully inadequate here because it ignores limits entirely.

That was fine when the economy was far from its limits, but these days, such a view is dangerously simplistic. A better picture of the economy is shown at the top of this post. The limits are the supply of energy and raw materials, the capacity of the biosphere to absorb waste products, and the physical dimensions of the Earth. The sectors or aspects of the economy can be tweaked to improve the operation of the overall economy.

Third, we need to sit down and design the structure of the economy. We don't need to re-invent the wheel: there have been many economic systems throughout history, and we can learn from their successes or failures. I can't go much further without getting into specifics; there is a body of work already out there describing possible economic models and how to get there. Personally, I favour ecological economics, which is based on steady-state use of materials and energy rather than perpetual growth.

Sustainable electricity--not as easy as it sounds

In the past few months, along with job hunting and reading and keeping house, I've occasionally worked on a technical side project. I didn't write about it here because, without a workshop or money for components, I could only do a literature survey. I will be busy with my new job for a while, so I thought I may as well go back and explain what I'm trying to do.

In our society, fossil fuels are the basis of our material well-being. We rely on them for transportation, heating, cooling, lighting, food, clothing and consumer goods, pharmaceuticals, and many other things. Other energy sources (besides hydropower and nuclear power, which are near their technical limit) make up a tiny fraction of our energy use. However, fossil fuels are being depleted much faster than they are regenerating--we've already consumed more than half of all crude oil on earth--and our demand is increasing exponentially. Even with strict energy efficiency measures, sooner or later we will have a sudden and painful scarcity of fossil fuels. In certain sectors it is better to move forward to a low-energy paradigm, such as organic agriculture or solar heating, or simply do without; in others, we must use alternative energy (electricity) to maintain our health and comfort while avoiding ecological damage. This last category is what this project is concerned with.

A major problem with the alternative energy industry is that units are manufactured almost entirely using fossil fuels. Alternative energy is currently more expensive per Watt than fossil fuels, so in a free-market system manufacturers will use fossil fuels. If and when there is a fossil fuel shortage, though, it will be difficult for society to switch to a non-fossil-fuel energy source. Moreover, in the long term the only way to have a sustainable energy supply is to manufacture energy sources entirely without fossil fuels. So the central question is this: how can alternative power sources such as solar panels, wind turbines, cellulosic alcohol, fuel cells, or geothermal power plants be manufactured and operated without fossil fuels? (Cost will be ignored for the time being because I assume that the prototype will not be widely adopted until fossil fuels are unavailable or much more expensive.)

Moving picture review

Apropos of nothing, here are some Youtube clips I enjoyed.

Athletic stock footage set to music:


The exquisite Rita Hayworth with Fred Astaire:


Charlie Chaplin in a dramatic turn--his closing speech from 1940's "the Great Dictator":


The opening of Watchmen. The film had to cut about half the material of the book due to time constraints, so instead they have this brilliant montage: