Please...

I am not saying that the views on this forum represent Americans in their entirety. However, I think it does represent 'a' mainstream view among what would be my peer group. Typically people in their 20-40's, computer literate and likely to play Sins. Not a perfect comparison I'm sure your agree, but probably excludes more than it includes. I'm sure if I lived in America I could find my self mixing with the type of people that post here.

However, what I was driving at is that on this issue while our lifestyles may be comparable. That otherwise our interests and activities might share a lot. You would be hard pressed to find the views and attitudes expressed in the mainstream here expressed in the comparable European social group.

Its not oversimplification, as almost certainly only the simple would think I meant all. But the attitude I lambasted certainly is a significant block of opinion within your country.

It was (to simplify) that over the last few pages many Americans have cited reasons and I would expect a balance of leanings on the political spectrum, yet very little weight is given to permanence of world growth, over that Oil prices are a fixable issue, 'if only...'

Cultural change is your solution for the waning oil supply and surge in price?

I'm mailing you a get-well card.

-Dr. B

Thank you. How did you know I sprained my knee?


I am in favour of a range of solutions. Inculding a far greater use of Nuclear Power, change in habits, increased energy efficentcy across the board espacially in cars, extended research into hybrid technologies. There are a very broad range of things that need doing. Many of them cultrals habits yes.

What your solution? Mail mr Arab a 'pump more oil' card?

One thing I constantly hear (especially from the conservatives here in the U.S.) is that if you can't afford the gas prices, you should simply move.

There's a massive lack of logic in that suggestion. Not everyone has the resources or ability to simply pack up and move at a moment's notice. In some places, like my state, you CAN'T sell your house right now- the housing market is DEAD. Also, right now, I could not move if I was forced to- not only do I not have the financial resources, I don't have the credit (it was destroyed by a former employer not paying my salary before going bankrupt) and there's one other important factor- I like where I live.

Just because things aren't going right doesn't mean you should cave in and accept how they are- I used to live here when gas was $2.00 - there's no reason it shouldn't be able to come down to $2.00 again. I shouldn't have to move simply because other people in the world influence factors out of my control.

Still, the "just move" concept is laughable... it's simply not possible or desired for most people.

We need to be moving away from oil anyways and focusing on new energy creation. Oil's destroying us, and drilling for more oil is only going to continue to destroy us.

Fair enough. I'm a lapsed civics teacher and a working editor/writer, so I'm perhaps oversensitive to a definite vs. indefinite article thing

Plus, the US has a lot of baggage in international opinion these days, and I sometimes have a "we're not all like that" spasm.

$1/gal gas exists.

Tesla Motors

Look at that. 2 cents per mile. 2 flipping cents per mile. Having energy costs comparable to less than 1.00 per gallon in an affordable, practical vehicle will be possible in the near future if we merely invest in the technology and go electric.

NO amount of drilling is going to make driving as cheap as that.

The Tesla Roadster is about US$100,000.

Which is why I said -



I posted the link to demonstrate that:
1. It's ridiculously cheap to power electric compared to internal combustion
2. It's possible for an electric vehicle to have impressive performance characteristics

We merely need research to get the costs of components down to a level where the average consumer can afford a decently performing electric vehicle. Keep in mind that

1. Tesla Motors, being a small company, does not have the same economies of scale that a big corporation like GM would
2. the Tesla Roadster is cutting-edge technology and a working prototype would undoubtedly have required significant R&D costs.

These factors both drive up the price.

Just throwing it out there cause I figured somebody would ask.

We do like our cars . Might have something to do with a guy named "Henry Ford" and the first mass produced automobile.

I don't think we care if it's gasoline, hybrid, electric, or hydrogen - as long as we can drive it. I don't think we have to give up our "freakish" obsession with the automobile to become a clean nation.

There's this idea going around that nobody should driving a car, and if they do, it should be some sort of punishment, and how dare anybody actually think about driving a comfortable, safe, roomy form of transportation.

Well, I've got news for you:

-Comfort isn't the problem. Using oil is.

-Speed isn't the problem. Using oil is.

-Size isn't the problem. Using oil is.

There's no way we should have to sacrifice any of this, because frankly they're not the problem. You really want to make a difference? Fix the problem. Don't go around blaming side issues.

The idea that we should be switching to alternative fuels and use clean technologies is a very good one. The idea that we should have to start driving insanely small vehicles that cut so many corners that they torture us? Not a good idea.

Tesla Motors is showing we don't have to drive cars that torture us to save the planet. Yeah, it's designed and priced to compete with the Ferraris, but I think it's a good first step. I think they're showing it's possible to create a car that doesn't cut comfort or performance and still be plenty clean.

In my opinion, It's just a matter of showing automobile makers that yes, we do want clean cars and maybe it's time to do the right thing for a change rather than the most economically optimal thing.

Except that's the crazy thing - an electric car is the most economically optimal thing. The price of gas is such an important thing in our economy - it effects the price of almost everything. Paying 1/6th of what we do now on transportation would have a revolutionary, cascading, transformative effect on the whole economy.

Now granted, big-rigs (Road Trains for you Europeans) would still, most likely, have to run off diesel. But the cut in demand for fuel would drive down diesel prices.

Well, if the energy saved over the lifetime of the vehicle is greater than the increased cost of the new technology. Right now, there are tremendous R&D costs, as well as increased costs due to the fact that there's not much mass production going on yet.

In addition, we have a problem with perceived price being totally different from actual price: A lot of people only look at the upfront cost of the actual purchase and ignore the long term savings of switching to electric.

It can also be a bit difficult to measure exactly how much you're saving with an electric car. Different people will have different driving habits, and some people may save more than others. It can be very difficult to base a purchasing decision on something you can't measure.

I don't know if they already do it, but if the amount of money saved is significant, they should show the estimated savings compared to similar vehicles powered by gasoline.

nuclear power is a great idea by the way diesel and gas power plants are an atrocity but thats not the point nuclear power is dead it shouldnt be since its safe its clean and we can now reuse the spent fuel rods...

i suggest doing is putting solar panels on every home forgeting the gas and diesel power and encourage the use of electric or alternate fueled cars through the use of things like tax breaks and such...

mabye we could scale back military spending by say half? about 200 billion a year and use that money to buy everyone a new electric car?

if only hinckley had better aim... we would probably have flying cars and 0% poverty
and still get free admission to UC colleges

No. You actually have a pretty thorough, intelligent plan.

I'll get you next time!

-Dr. B

I spent most of my English classes with my mate Rixon talking to that Kim girl and whatever her name was on the desk in front. But I think I get what you mean. For your part it would be quite fair to say that Europeans are cheese eating surrender monkeys. I know I'm not, but enough of 'us' are that its a fair comment.





Actually, I like the ones that are "like that" if by that you mean neo-cons. The ones that typically get vilified over here. The nub of the issue is obviously Iraq which most Europeans think was a golden land where the rivers flowed with chocolate and children laughed and danced and adults sung the praises of the wise old farther Hussein.
Obviously the post war planning was absolutely dire. Its a shame the British did'nt have a greater say in that, our experience in N.Ireland and E.Europe means we know alot about 'winning the peace' as its now called. But America is a big swinging dick and decided to @#!* something (rightly) they just did the cuddling after really badly.

But your right that America gets a lot of unfair stick. Most Europeans should be on their knees thanking America for all it has done over the last 50 years in the world. With the possible exception of the British who were so stone cold broke by the time America decide to step up in late 1941 that we went from world superpower to basket case. Still if the mantle of superpower had to go to anyone else I'm glad its people who got the language and code of ethics right even if they do drive on the wrong side of the road.

I wonder what you consider to be insanely small?

I'm 6'2" and 190Lbs, and I drive a Honda Civic which gives me 40mpg. That would be considered quite average in terms of size and economy. I am perfectly comfortable in it. Its not cramp in the slightest. Yet Whenever I go state side I see these enormous vehicles are just comical in size they look like they were engineered to carry a driver and his or her two pet hippos. The space you need to be comfortable is only slightly larger than yourself, anything beyond that is just air for the viewing. Not to mention the 5mog you get from them.

Also what is 'the problem' as you say. The supply of Oil? Whether it runs out in 30 years or 130 years, it is going to run out one day. and certainly the global demand is ballooning. While the easy to reach (i.e cheap oil) is the first to be exhausted. The price of Oil is going up from here not down. I agree the 'problem' needs to be fixed, but I consider the 'problem' to be is Oil dependence not wishing on supply.

i'm still trying to figure out why we make cars have increasingly heavy frames to resist crashes from other really heavy cars rather than just making everything out of lighter materials

cost?

I think that would be "profit margin". You earn more on selling people really expensive big cars than small cheap ones.

Sure production costs are bigger too, but a 10% profit margin on $100 is still ten times as big in real cash as a 10% profit margin on $10. And "real cash" is what goes into shareholder dividends and executive bonuses.

Tell that to the passengers in the back with their legs curled up . . .

. . . and it kinda forces you to get that mileage by sticking you in the slow lane. I've been driving a Civic myself for the past few months, and there's no way you're passing anybody on a 2 lane road.

In comparison, I test drove the new Ford Focus (I don't actually own the Civic, so I'm looking for a vehicle I can actually own), and it'll pass somebody if you want it to. It's rated at 35 MPG, although I'm sure I can get 40 out of it if I drive it carefully.



Bingo. I may be making it last longer driving a Honda, but it's still going to get overly expensive someday. If more dealerships in my area started selling electric cars, you'd bet I'd be looking at them instead of the Focus.



I dunno about you, but I'd think a smart company would reinvest the cash back into the company rather than simply giving all of it to the CEO. The shareholder divedends would be much smaller if they took the cash out of the company and gave it to the CEO.

already back under 4$

Temporarily, I'm sure. The trend has been largely upward.

On the other hand, the government only has to spend it 'sufficiently' wisely that ((Money Well Spent)+(Money unwisely Spent)) < ((Money Well Spent)+(Money unwisely Spent)+(Corporate Paychecks)+(Profit)) - so long as the government inefficiency is less than the corporate inefficiency+Management Salaries+Shareholder profits, it's still better to pay taxes and do it with public funds.

Better still to do it *efficiently* with public funds, and I have no objections to that either, but in a world where the CEO's are making 400+ time average salary, it's hard for the much vaunted "Government is inherently inefficient" argument of certain conservatives to sway me - government contracting can be pretty bloody inefficient and still not be paying 200 people twice what they're worth.

Jonnan

Going off topic for a moment - I find that to be a really weird perspective.

First of all, Iraq had not attacked us - in the U.S. at least, those wonderful cuddly neo-cons you like got their way in this by convincing a lot of Americans that
A) Iraq had attacked us and,
They were trying to get weapons with which to do so again.

I will concede, quite happily, that the evidence they used was flimsy and should not have convinced anyone, what was true was not convincing, what was convincing was often easily debunked, and all too much of it has proven in the final analysis to not be mistakes, but deceit.

The odd thing is that all this was obvious at the time to a large group of Americans, who were vilified for pointing it out. So a large portion of the blame rests on an American Public that was eager to be deceived. But, being eager to be lied to is still a lesser sin, to my mind, than doing the lying, and the neo-cons did the lying.

So I have objections to people that like those "Like That".

Secondly - Rivers of chocolate? That's BS, Saddam was a bad person, I don't regret that the bastards dead. But there are verified civilian casualties in Iraq of 100,000, and estimates in the range of 500,000 to a 1,000,000 dead. More than twice those that died in the actual Iran/Iraq war (~200,000).

Are those estimates, and therefore fallible? Sure, in the same sense that *all* the casualty figures in historic wars are estimates. To be blunt - if those figures are off, then they are off in a way that will carry over to all casualty estimates in any historical period - the U.S. Civil war, WW I, WW II, Korea, the Holocaust, these are all measured with he same statistical models, and when those models have been compared with verified casualties (when we could get them) they've turned out to be pretty damn accurate. So I'm inclined to believe John-Hopkins when they estimate casualties.

I think the world is better off without Saddam, but I think it is worse off without the 500,000-1,000,000 people that got killed to get him. It's a hard sell to say he was 'anti-worth' 500,000 people.

Lastly - Those soldiers and money could have been doing worthwhile things. Do you think Kim-jong Il would have been the happy go lucky psychotic he's been for six years if he didn't know the world most powerful military was tied down? Do you believe for a minute that while George Bush was 'looking into Putin's Soul', Putin wasn't going "He's actually stupid enough to tie the only military that can stop us down in some third world quagmire. Great!".

Instead, we are probably going to cede a strategic region to the "Neo-Russian Empire, Czar Vladimir the 1st", and Georgia will be listed in the same class of "We said we'd help and then weren't there" as Budapest in 1956 or the Kurds in 1992.

Jonnan

Not much difference that I can see. Congress votes to raise its own salaries, and the amount of money dumped into pork barrel spending makes the management salaries and shareholder "profits" of even Microsoft look like chump change. Is government truly more efficient, or is its inefficiencies just given different names?

. . . not to mention that a shareholder only truly makes a profit if they sell their stocks, or if the dividends are cash dividends. If the stock holders keep their stocks and don't sell them, then the company is not losing anything.

Accounting 101: Assets = Liabilities + Equity

This equation must balance out. Anything that you do to an asset must have something done to either liabilities or equity.

If I am understanding my accounting equation correctly, Equity (mostly stocks) = Assets (what the company owns) - Liabilities (what the company owes creditors). You sort of "own" a piece of the company's assets when you buy a stock.

Granted, when you sell your stock, you generally receive cash and not an employee's chair (they usually keep some cash around for buying/selling stocks), but the concept is the same: When you own stock in a company, there is a corresponding asset that the company has and can use.

Think about it: What happens when you buy stock? You trade some money for a piece of paper. That piece of paper is now equity, and that money is now an asset. You're essentially giving the company money without buying a product.

The same thing happens when you buy a product: The company gains some sort of profit from the product, and that goes into their assets as cash. In order for the accounting equation to balance out, however, something must happen to either their liabilities or their equity! The equation can't be unbalanced!

So if the company doesn't need the cash to take care of some liabilities, then it has to do something to their equity. It's not really a matter of if it goes into their equity somewhere, but where.

A company does not suffer any sort of loss when they increase the cash value of their stocks due to profit. The profit still belongs to the company, and the stock is just reflecting the increased value of the company. It only suffers a loss when a shareholder "sells" the stock and receives cash from the company.

Personally, I like the idea of people being able to start and run their own businesses. It fuels innovation when people are free to invent things, compete in a market, and even make a decent profit from it.

If I come up with some new method of treating people for some disease, should I not benefit from it somehow? Most people are going to want a bit more than a pat on the back and a "job well done" for their research. I don't really see very many people wanting to get into research if the only personal benefit of the discovery is that the government is footing the bill.

Ah - but most companies, ah, issue dividends. That's the *point* of buying stock. There are exceptions, but they are exceptions, not the rule.

I will concede that I personally don't buy those exceptions - if you buy stocks in a company that doesn't issue dividends and you don't expect it to issue dividends, then really you're just holding the stock till you can find someone dumber than you are to take it off your hands. Unless it's a new company - different rules apply there, but for the life of me I have no idea why people buy Microsoft.

In any case, I'm not sure what the General Accounting Equation has to do with anything - sure Assets = Liabilities + Equity, but that just makes sure the books balance out correctly, works exactly the same way in a government department as in a business entity, just with no dividends and no CEO getting paid $40,000,000. I suppose Equity would be your budget surplus (And certainly many departments avoid having one of those so as to not get shortchanged in the next budget cycle.).

But, other than the fact that a company *has* liabilities not reflected in a government department(the responsibility to increase equity for the owners, higher paid management), none of that has anything to do with 'efficiency' per se.

So I don't really see your point, and the addendum re treating a disease - well, frankly, it runs counter to most historical evidence - There's a quote about "If the government tried to cure polio, we would have the best Iron Lung ever designed", but it neatly sidesteps the fact that the actual polio vaccination program actually, ah *was* a government program.

Jonnan