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Comment by aresant | Hacker News Reader

One of the key points in the article is how inexpensive energy is critical to both economic recovery and a high quality of life.

Making a jump, if we put together a heroic "Manhattan Project"-like commitment to supporting such energy measures, it’s feasible that we could all live better with a lower GDP, is it not?

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>we could all live better with a lower GDP, is it not?

Yes and No. GDP is a measure of production, expressed in dollars. However, when GDP growth is computed, changes in the value of money do not have an effect. E.g. GDP growth from year-1 to year-2 is:

  (volume produced in year 2)*(prices in year 1)
  /
  (volume produced in year 1)*(prices in year 1)

So reducing the price of something does not in-of-itself have an effect on GDP growth (or GDP stated in nominal terms). However, it's often the case that reducing the price of something means that there is more demand for, so more is produced, so (volume produced in year n+1) goes up, so GDP grows.

Summary: if the price of energy is reduced it will most likely lead to GDP growth - whether we could all then live better lives, I don't know. I'd like to hear a good holistic explanation of why GDP growth is required for national happiness..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gdp - see 'Adjustments to GDP'

I can give you a good holistic explanation for why GDP growth alone is not required for national happiness. According to some, Nordic countries tend to be happier. They have the highest taxes, they work less, have virtual universal health care, but at the same time, on a per capita and per hour basis, they're virtually just as productive. Not that I blindly favor such policies here, but I don't know, maybe there's something to be learned from them. They seem to have had stable growth since the 80s. (Note: I really want to stable "stable.")

The Nordic countries are ethnically homogeneous with rooted communities. They have high average IQs and very low crime. I'd read a lot more into that than anything to do with economic or healthcare policy. The somewhat nordic Minnesota is also fairly "happy" despite its American economic system. Maybe you should be advocating policies that steer the country to being homogeneously white, middle class, and immobile? Somehow I doubt it.

Nordic countries tend to be happier

It's all a ruse. The Nordics simply have deep-rooted cultural proclivities to lie about how happy they are.

That would explain why the nordic populations in the upper mid-west are similarly "happy"...

Indeed...

Perhaps you can point me to some sources on which you base your argument?

I'd like to read some more into this at some point. Thanks.

As I posted in another thread, a point President Obama made in his State of the Union address is whether or not people still skeptical of global warming are right, the rest of the world believes in pursuing greener energy solutions, and will invest in countries leading the way. The country that leads in new forms of energy will likely lead the world economy. Pursuing such policy makes sense from an economic perspective if nothing else.

That seems like a baseless assertion. For all you know the country that maintains naval supremacy and control of access to oil reserves will lead the world economy.

The last two wars pretty much prove it's more expensive to control oil rich countries than to spend dollars on home grown energy, which boosts your own economy at the same time.

Bush style invasions and assertive control of shipping lanes are two very different things.

Baseless assertion? Those are President Obama's sentiments, although I happen to agree with them. Energy is an important part of any economy. I don't think you'd find any credible economist say finding innovations in energy would not likely yield noticeable economic effect, not to mention the compound benefit of foreign sales and investment, as well as jobs from the new industry. As for naval supremacy, I believe that's currently the U.S., but in case you haven't noticed we're still pretty vulnerable to economic problems.

Are you talking about fusion or something? The whole point is that nothing now known competes with fossil fuels. Oil is ridiculously cheap and versatile energy.

That's sloppy thinking. Oil is just one of many fossil fuels. You can refine it into several high energy fuels, plastics, and asphalt etc. But, plenty of things fit with with it in each of those niches. Now there is far more coal but it's used for basically one thing, electricity, and there are several things that competes with it in that area.

Now if you want to replace oil, we can substitute coal and water. So, just because we are quickly running out of one fossil fuel does not mean we are running out of all fuel's or even just all fossil fuels.

I'm not sure I understand you. The point is no combination of any known substitutes are close to competitive with current fossil fuel usages.

Coal is basically in the same situation as oil, contrary to what you may have heard. The good stuff is gone and it's getting more and more expensive already, when measured by joules of net energy per dollar. It's lower quality and harder to mine stuff.

If coal supply was really becoming limited you would see most extraction locations receiving huge profit as they reduce supply just like oil due to lack of completion. (It's a simple question of discounted future cash flows and competition.) However, the price of coal is still dominated by the cost of extraction and shipment across the board.

Fossil fuels are really mindbogglingly cheap, but you still see completion such as: Ethanol fuel in Brazil, nuclear power France, and by looking at the subsidies it takes to adopt wind power you can see how close it is to coal.

I don't follow your line about huge profits. The simple fact is coal, when measured in terms of energy content, is getting scarcer and more expensive.

You can't look at state supported industries and come to any meaningful conclusions. All those examples have government driving them. Nuclear fission power would not even exist without government: the plants and businesses are uninsurable in the free market. No private insurance company to date has concluded the lifetime risks of a nuclear power plant are acceptably quantifiable.

Who would require them to be insured if there were no government?

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