Letters to the Editor
sunspot
Published Letters: 351 Editor's Choice: 43
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Energy <> Technology
[Read the article: Stocks plunge as investors flee risk]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Expensive? Sure it is--now. Do you know how much a PC cost in 1981?
As I grow tired of repeating, energy is not technology and technology is not energy. PCs don't manufacture power - they consume power. All of our technology consumes power - in fact, the more technologically advanced a civilization becomes, the more power it consumes.
We've been trying to crack commercial fusion for over 50 years - as far as I can tell, we're no closer now than we were the day I was born almost 40 years ago. Solar still runs far behind coal, after decades of research, although it may soon finally be practical as a peak load smoother in warm, sunny climates. Wind, tidal and wave power all hold out promise, but combined they won't come close to making up for declining oil supplies even if they were aggressively deployed.
Just because there have been advances in one arena (semiconductors) does not mean there will be advances in others (power generation and storage). Where's my flying car? Fusion power? Supersonic airliners? Rocketbus service to our lunar colonies? Personal robots? Just because you want a technology doesn't mean you're gonna get it.
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People DO Eat Oil & Coal (and Natural Gas)
[Read the article: Stocks plunge as investors flee risk]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]And, to state the obvious: people don't eat coal or oil.
Of course they do. Where do you think the chemical fertilizers which grow 90% of our crops come from? Not to mention the pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, antibiotics, growth hormones and other substances used in agriculture. Or the fuel used to plow the fields or harvest the corn, ship it to market and process it into high fructose corn syrup for use in your Big Gulp. It all comes from petrochemicals. The energy in your diet comes from fossil fuels and sunlight, in that order.
The U.S. food system consumes ten times more energy than it produces in food energy. This disparity is made possible by nonrenewable fossil fuel stocks. From: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/100303_eating_oil.html
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Those Who Don't Learn From History . . .
[Read the article: Stocks plunge as investors flee risk]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]In 1700, infant mortality in England was about 30% overall. Today, it's 0.5%.
You can thank a lot of factors for that, largely improved sanitation and improved diet, but also modern medicine. All of those depend on oil, though.
And by 1800 England had escaped the Malthusian trap. It hasn't had a famine since then.
Ask the Irish how the f*cking English accomplished that sometime, why don't ya.
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A Stupid Question
[Read the article: Placating the GOP base or protecting the workplace?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Tell me, you who are so gung ho on kicking these people out, are YOU willing to take any of those jobs for minimum wage or less? NO?? Gee, why not?
Because those jobs shouldn't pay minimum wage, that's why. They should pay whatever it costs to get somebody to do that work on the fair, open, American labor market.
Of course it's cheaper to get what amount to slaves to perform that labor. By your twisted logic, maybe we should just fire up the plantations and enslave a good chunk of the population.
You first.
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This Isn't The 1800's
[Read the article: Placating the GOP base or protecting the workplace?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Open immigration worked fine in the US 1880-1910 as the US's capacity to absorb new jobs was matched by the throngs of people floating here to get them.
And therein lies the rub - the fact people had to float here, a few hundred at a time, aboard ships, provided a natural brake on the rate of immigration.
Open our borders with Mexico and half the population of Mexico would end up in our border states within a couple of years. Good luck absorbing that.
It didn't hurt that the United States was generally sparsely populated and drenched in natural resources during the 1800's. Neither condition is entirely true today. We may already be coping with at least as many - if not more - illegal immigrants from Mexico than we had legal immigrants in the 1880 - 1920 period from all the nations of the world, when 20+ million people came to America.
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Were Everyone Legal . . .
[Read the article: Placating the GOP base or protecting the workplace?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Were everyone legal you wouldn't have illegal Mexican roofers working for $10/hr less than legal residents. Instead everyone's wages would normalize to something less than the old legal rate and higher than the illegal rate.
Oh, well that's just wonderful, then.
Um, tell me again why American workers should accept a massive paycut so that Mexico can dump its social and political troubles on OUR doorstep? I mean, working Americans have already seen their wages stagnate for almost a generation. But what the hell, let's screw the working guy again.
Tell you what, why don't you take half of your pay and ship it to Mexico's well-lubricated elites, since you think cleaning up their mess is such a great idea?
By the way, back in the 1800's during our last masive wave of immigration there weren't the myriad of social programs in place that we have today. So not only do you want to take a crap on the head of every working man in America by "legalizing" 20 million illegal immigrants, but you also want to rob their kids by funding entitlements for these largely poor, illiterate illegals - entitlements a lot of working Americans either don't qualify for or refuse to take. Nice.
No wonder the working class increasingly votes Republican. As usual, the bleeding hearts just don't get it.