To make and keep the upper stories of a tall building habitable requires routine high technology. The lifts have to work, the water needs to be pumped, the toilets have let the poop down one hundred stories without shattering violence. It is not all that expensive. Current office space costs in the centers of major cities are so high that very tall buildings are immensely profitable. It is simply difficult to do, requires able people working together, both initially to …
Category: economics
Global Warming Scientists trapped in Antarctic Denial
This expedition to Antarctica is led by global warming scientist Chris Turney, whose company, Carbonscape, sells carbon indulgences. If you sin by emitting carbon, Chris Turner will, for a suitable payment, offset your sin with his carbon offset credits. In the course of this expedition, they have repeatedly smacked up hard against ice that their ideology said could not possibly be there, and then proceeded to act as if the ice was not there. And then their ship got stuck.
No peak oil
Inflation adjusted price of oil shows no obvious trend, suggesting that limits on oil production reflect social decay and technological slowdown, rather than physical exhaustion of resources. Oil prices rose, and rose, to 2008, and in 2008, it looked like the peak oilers were, like a stopped clock, finally correct. And then prices fell, a lot. They have risen since, but not to their 2008 peaks. From 2010 to the present oil prices have been high and steady in nominal …
Equal opportunity
Whenever someone announces that they are in favor of equal opportunity, in favor of equality of opportunity rather than equality of outcome, they have usually a few paragraphs, or a few comments away, defended some outrageously unjust inequality of opportunity implemented and enforced by state power to destroy group X, as punishment for group X privilege. Everyone is in favor of equality of opportunity. I am in favor of equality of opportunity. But, realistically, you are not going to get …
anti anti anti anti reactionary faq
Scot Alexander has answered the anti anti reactionary faq. The anti anti reactionary faq argument to which he replies is that leftist have a dreadful record of misgovernment, terror, tyranny, artificial famine, and leftists tend to get lefter over a time. It is a slippery slope, the slope gets steeper and steeper, and at the bottom of that slope, a deep pit filled with sharpened stakes. Scot’s reply is that these bad things done by leftists were a response to …
Pilgrim socialism
By now everyone knows the real story of thanksgiving. The pilgrim fathers attempted socialism, as usual famine ensued, followed by mass die off, they appointed a new governor who concluded that when God expelled Adam and Eve from the garden, God ordained private property in the means of production. Famine solved, prosperity ensues. Pilgrims ordain a day of thanksgiving to thank God for their prosperity. But strangely, the New York Times, and the left generally, is fighting back, attempting to …
Moore’s law ends. Technological singularity postponed indefinitely
The fabs will soon be delivering “16nm” chips. But they are not in fact 16nm chips. That is just marketer spin. The wire to wire spacing, the pitch, is still 64nm, as it has been for some considerable time. There have been substantial improvements in power consumption, and this and that, but chips have just stopped getting denser. There are no more transistors per unit area than in previous technology generations. They are 64nm chips, and we have been stuck …
Predicting collapse
I am a prophet of doom. There tends to be an oversupply of prophets of doom, and the proportion who turn out correct is quite small. Equally, there are also a large number of prophets of non doom, for example the numerous prophets of complacency during the fall of the Roman Empire in the west, who assume that everything will continue as today, often even when spectacular collapse is under way, they assume that everything has now stabilized, or will …
Hayekian critique of Obamacare
Hayek correctly predicted that socialism must be despotic, because it cannot operate according to laws, but according to decrees. And so we see the President issued a speech declaring his intent to ignore and unilaterally change some parts of a law, passed by Congress and signed by him, that he was suddenly finding inconvenient and then enforcing obedience on state employees, non federal government employees to obey his words and ignore his laws. But, Hayek tells us, even this does …
Progressives are channeling me
Not long before 10-10 no pressure came out, I compared environmentalists the French Revolutionary terrorists, and said that they would murder children for insufficient environmentalism, and then the revolution would devour its children. And lo and behold, they produce an ad depicting themselves murdering children for insufficient environmentalism, and then murdering each other. Observe, the Obama ads for Obamacare: Now people who actually work for a living will fund your self destructive behavior! Is it not great? Obamacare is wonderful …