Power has always held desalination back. If they can do this cheaply tesla is going to be huuuuge. Changes in our lives are gonna be huuuuge.
If ebola doesn’t get us first (just kidding).
I really think this and other developments (U.S. Oil production etc…) are what’s behind a lot of what is occurring in the mid-east and Russia,
Nations that rely on Oil production as their economic drivers are about to be made irrelevant and they know it.
We shouldn’t maximize growth for the sake of growth — we should maximize human happiness.
The fusion reactor would be awesome if it works, but I’ll believe it when I see a working prototype that exceeds breakeven by a sizable margin. We’ve been five years away for the past twenty-five years.
However, we were given a free fusion reactor up in the sky whose fuel will last a few billion years more. We should be doing more to harness its power. With a worldwide superconducting power grid to smooth out variations in sunlight, we could do pretty darn well with existing technology.
We should also be working on portable fusion reactors, but I see them as being more useful for things like long-term space travel. (There’s also the question of output – will they produce undesired radioisotopes?)
But why FORCE people to maximize their purchasing power? There should be more of a place for people who want to take it slow, and say work two 30-35 hour a day jobs between a married couple (thus having approx the same # of working hours per week as a couple did in the 70s). No stigma should be attached to that.
And things like health insurance and retirement benefits should be 100% divorced from employment in order to minimize fixed costs of hiring. And thus the cost difference between three people working 35 hours a week and two working 52.5 each. If that’s socialism, then I’m proudly a socialist in this respect.
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