Unsure if the desire to not be homeless can be classified as psychosis.
The pathology is that we have this system in the first place.
This stance is just 'acceptable losses' with more typing
Imagine if we just paid people to coat their properties in solar panels - throw them on your roof, lawn, wherever you have the space. We could drive energy prices down to nothing. We could pay people to install ADUs. The resources are there, but the imagination and commitment are not.
Instead, I'm looking at a $40k+ solar install for my very small house and a breakeven on investment in maybe 10 years for a house I probably won't live in by then.
Not when you're paying people to coat their properties in solar panels. As you noted, that would cost plenty.
Solar panels also degrade over time. By the time the "free" electricity has paid for the installation, you'll need to replace it.
Source: my experience
Roofers also tend to regularly close their businesses and open under a new name, so they don't have to honor any longevity warranties.
Worrying about the longevity of properly installed solar is quite silly.
30 years ago was 1996. No 30 year panels have lasted anywhere near 30 years yet.
How long would you say a properly installed panel from 2000 made it in practice? How long would the modern equivalent installed in 2025 be expected to make it? And how many replacement events does each of those make for over the course of your life?
Do you contest my earlier claim that solar is roughly equivalent to wood siding or an asphalt shingle roof?
Using 30 years as a lifetime for solar panels is risky as there are no solar panels running for 30 years, not even close. Never mind the lifetime of the power wall battery and the inverters.
I bought a 40 year "premium" asphalt roof. It barely made it to 20. A regular asphalt roof, perhaps 10 years. Now I have a metal roof.
Are you sure about that? https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/30-year-old-solar-panels...
All the results I've seen indicate that solar panels will keep producing electricity long after those 30 years, just at a reduced rate (but seemingly still >50%).
> By the time the "free" electricity has paid for the installation, you'll need to replace it.
Since you won't need to replace it, I'd say that this whole thing couldn't work out better: the panels are literally just generating electricity for free! And that's not even taking into account that 30yo panels generate more than "only half the power" (the study I linked measured ~80%).
Imagine someone offered to give you their 30 year old panels and install them on your property for free. Unless every eligible surface is already taken up by more efficient solar panels, who would say no?
So it pays for itself 3-4 times over.
You are going to have to back this up with credible citations. Otherwise it sounds like skepticism from 2008.
Direct to EV DC charging means I don’t buy gas, either. Planning for induction range and heat pump someday too. Not paying for energy about 3/4 of the year feels awesome.
Panels are cheap. Cheap to replace too. The newer ones have even better efficiency. My whole (unsubsidized) sistem cost around $15k here in Eastern Europe and amortization was never a consideration. Money well spent.
Finally, giving the finger to another crappy government-granted monopoly and proving once again that there is no such thing as a “natural” monopoly: priceless.
Despite plenty of demand, high density housing still isn't getting built nearly as fast as it should. High building costs, zoning laws, and the ability to just suburban sprawl to infinity mostly prevents this.
Pretty much all vertical farming startups have gone bankrupt. There are endless benefits to vertical farms, but we don't do it because existing farms are cheap in comparison to the necessary investment to make this viable.
We don't build high speed rail because it's a multi-decade long project involving massive logistics, training programs, lots of land rights issues, and the fact that for short to medium distance trips people would probably still prefer to drive since once you get to your target destination, there's still no way to get around without a vehicle.
I imagine you imagine our primitive ancestors in the canopy, glancing at their iPhones to see how their property value is doing.
But the truth is, we didn't even have this level of thoroughgoing, casual precarity as recently as fifty years ago.
Or even twenty.
There was a time, even in my memory, where rents were tolerable and housing within reach.
Also, capitalism is the natural state of how humans operate. Money literally predates writing and the first pieces of writing we have are sales invoices.
Citation needed; good luck
Could things be better than they are right now? Probably. But you'll never completely eliminate struggle and pain in this universe, unless you eliminate all life