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spdrun
ParticipantI on the other hand, will wait till the cheap product is hacked six ways from Sunday to work without Google’s dubious help. I’ll use it without giving Google a fuckin’ thing, and ride off the backs of the sheep who don’t know any better.
Same deal as a cheap Android phone running Cyanogen.
ParticipantNo different than today, except the factories are external to the US vs internal.
BTW – the US had inflation in pre-Civil War days and the economy was heavily based on exploitation of unpaid and poorly paid workers then. This was just the nature of the US economy in the 1800s, irrespective of inflation.
ParticipantTechnically speaking, if they’re on the same WiFi subnet, there’s no reason why a Nest can’t talk to sensors directly without using the Google mothership as an intermediary. It could even auto-discover occupancy sensors on the subnet.
And the self-programming firmware is internal to the Nest. Again, no intermediary needed to spy on users.
As far as sharing, I was the kid who hoarded all the toys in kindergarten 🙂
ParticipantBut families could have done so during the height of the SUV boom as well. People didn’t need SUVs. They wanted them. Most of the non-farmer world got on just fine without them for 100 years or so. SUVs were about marketing, not utility. Most big furniture and appliances are delivered anyway.
Read about Clotaire Rapaille if you’re interested in that sort of thing — he’s the mad shrink who basically convinced US automakers that the American public REALLY wanted SUVs and it was a good idea to market them to the average burb-dweller.
My parents never owned a truck and they renovated a few houses, took long road trips, etc. It wasn’t that hard.
Hopefully smart controls without the spyware will become more popular. I want my thermostat to talk directly to my phone or computer, not have data-mining swine like Google as an intermediary. If I get smart controls, I’ll go the following route. Kloudkrap optional, not mandatory like in Scroogle Nests.
ParticipantI think people will still want to have their own cars — having to unload EVERYTHING from a shared car that you’ll likely never see again every time you’re done with it would be really annoying. A lot of women I know use a car essentially as a second handbag.
Plus Americans are prissy and don’t want to share seats that have been sat in by others repeatedly. Rental cars get NASTY after about 30,000 miles.
I wouldn’t say that LEDs would cut energy usage drastically. Lighting is only about 10-15% of energy use in the US. LEDs use about 1/5 the power as incandescents, so the cut will be 12% if we’re lucky. And that’s not taking into account fluorescent fixtures that are already installed as well as increased electric heat usage in winter.
ParticipantDeflation was also the post Civil War US to about 1890, where increased mechanization drove the price of goods down while creating growth.
ParticipantFusion reactors have always been 20 years away, since the 1940s at least 🙂
Personally, I’d be happy if they succeed, but also disappointed. Free energy would mean no good reason for people to concentrate in cities anymore, reducing spontaneous human contact and making the life of the average person a living, isolated Hell.
ParticipantActually, it’s a big deal. There’s a big difference between oil independence (build-baby-build, nukes and renewables for me please) vs energy independence (frack-baby-frack, drill-baby-drill).
The two concepts are diametrically opposite.
Frankly, in the absence of nuke/alternative investment, I’d sooner see US oil production infrastructure wither. The oil in Saudi is easier, and thus less environmentally costly to extract. And better they pollute their environment than we ours.
Sooner or later, there will also be another severe crisis in the Middle East, which will hopefully cause world oil prices to hit $300/bbl. Then we’ll be forced to seriously consider alternatives, with a gun to our collective heads.
What we should be doing is taxing gasoline at $2/gal while it’s cheap and using the revenue to push alternatives while the opportunity exists. But this will never happen — Americans are too stupid and brainwashed to accept it, and we don’t have enough of a strong technocratic leadership class to get it done against the will of the lumpenidiotariat.
ParticipantAnd that’s smart not to make enemies with anyone. Live, lead by example, not by force.
ParticipantSo let them ship them to China. We’re one of their largest markets as well — if we slap tariffs on foreign-made goods, guess who has the last laugh. We could kill China’s economy tomorrow if we wanted to.
Make keeping manufacturing in the US *pay!*
Nothing wrong with being another Finland if the alternative is working yourself to death. (Incidentally, Finland’s GDP per capita is higher than Japan’s and South Korea’s)
ParticipantAnd what did it get them? Low birthrate, aging society, and a ranking in the top 10. Top 10 suicide rates in the world, that is.
Especially high when controlled for their latitude (they don’t have the excuse of seasonal depression).
By contrast, the slackers of Europe (Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal) have low rates of suicide. Proof that slacking is good for the soul.
Japan and Korea are nice places to visit…
ParticipantExcept that most people in developed countries see America as all nice and fuzzy until they get down to the gory details.
People outside the US *like* their month of time off every year. They *like* having their working hours be limited to a sane amount. The US is nice for them to visit. Few want to stay once the details become known.
BTW – in the 20th century, working hours were historically longer abroad than in the US. It’s only recently (past 2-3 decades) that the situation flipped. This didn’t actually make the US any less competitive.
ParticipantFlyerInHI: What’s wrong with just living and letting the other countries take over the world? Fuck our responsibility. Maybe the world would be better off split between the Russians, Chinese, or Iranians. We have enough nuclear weapons to deter invasion, so it might alter our economy, but it won’t alter our rights materially.
But note that the world didn’t implode in the 80s when our working hours were shorter and we still took lunch. The Soviets were supposed to have a chance of beating us — see how that worked out 🙂
In fact, if we become a “nobody” country, we might be more free, since we won’t have as much money for law enforcement and won’t be as worried about terrorism. When was the last time a 9/11-scale attack happened in Prague, Budapest, or Amsterdam?
The only reason that I live in NYC is that it’s the part of this country that’s least infested with Americans and their idiotic notions. I much prefer the company of Russians, Hondurans, or French people than spending time with people actually born in this country. Not for the tall buildings, glamor, or anything else.
Only because it’s the closest thing to not being in America while still being within driving distance of my family. Nothing more.
ParticipantPolicy should be made for the benefit of the average citizen, not some insane abstract notion of the economy or national interests (aka ugly American d*ck-waving. “WE’RE THE BIGGEST! WE’RE THE BEST! RAH! RAH! RAH”). Really, who gives a flying flip?
The economy is there to benefit the average person. We’re not there to benefit the economy. National interests are only important as far as they benefit people living in a given country. Not as some sort of abstract chest-thumping patriotic idea.
And real standard of living has gone down since the 1990s. OK, people have more tablets and smartphones, but so what? If anything, those devices are more of a leash than a liberator. As long as you have the things in hand, you can’t really disconnect from work or other personal worries.
Longer working hours, but lower rate of employment. Damage to groundwater from fracking. More surveillance since 9/11. Worse food (more HFCS/more obesity). Higher college costs for four-year schools, and less ability to graduate debt-free. Overly rapid industrialization of third-world pestholes, impacting the global environment.
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