I think that green energy needs to go away.

[Guest 6.8 AR]

Now that's a much more intelligent and reasonable position than your "damn the torpedoes" OP.

Did I have you going there, for a moment?

Actually I was going in the political class taking advantage of a necessary technological leap, whether it be of

the green type, or a completely different solution. Primarily, that the political class takes advantage of things like

this to take a little more power in the name of technology, we don't need this kind. There are many good ideas

coming out of green stuff, but not the way Obama did it.

You should know by now, I won't leave a political stone unturned.

I'm a firm believer in innovation. Science fiction becomes science fact more every day I live.

Hey, I love stirring poop up, too.

Edited October 19, 2012 by 6.8 AR

[Guest 6.8 AR]

How to explain it.... Oil aside. Forget oil and energy.

Capitalists will not fund quality research that does not lead to a path of profits. Not all R&D is profitable: take a cure for a disease that only 1000 or so people have in the world: not profitable to spend billions over decades to find a cure, is it? Or military R&D: it is not all that profitable to do R&D on a new bomb or whatever during peacetime, so cut that research because no one will be buying up the tech in bulk until the next war. Or the next generation of airplain or unmanned whatever. The govt buys 10 of them to play with, but not billions of them to make war, its not profitable. But when war breaks out, and the other guy out-techs you, those R&D dollars seem like a better idea even if not profitable for the deveopers.....

Green energy is the same. Dirty will always be cheaper, more profitable, and capitalists will always destroy to get better profits. Always.

yes, get politics out of it is very important. You posted that after I slowly typed this one.

As much as I love to see your posts, I have to take slight exception to this. Our country was founded by rugged

individualists and our government wasn't intended to be the incentive for technology growth. Throughout our

country's history, it has been individuals who made those leaps until something like wars caused a growth in the

advancement of current tech. Even then, it was the individual(or company) that made it. The country started paying

for it with it being the necessity of the moment. WWII comes to mind. Only recently, since maybe the sixties, not all,

but most of the ideas have come from innovators being paid by the gov when it used to be coming from the private

sector.

The primary incentive our country can give for technology's sake is to remain as unintrusive and uncostly to the

individual to allow technology to grow. Big government can tend to hog a lot of it and use it for other means.

Sometimes those means are even to be used against us. Politics is in that part of the equation.

Government used as a slush fund for innovation is a bad investment, most of the time.

[Jonnin]

Government used as a slush fund for innovation is a bad investment, most of the time.

an awful lot of good things have come from the money. Its some of the best spent tax $$ ever. This is not saying much, granted, but if you had to pick between feeding a lazy bum on welfare or feeding an engineer making the next generation of space age plastic .....

[Guest 6.8 AR]

Good point, but when neither was ever envisioned or made to be part of our government's role, yes, I would

have an easy choice to make. when the government does something, most of the time you and I have no choice

in what's actually done. To me, that goes against the grain.

Capitalism built this country, not the government. The government muscles its way in when it should be doing

what it's supposed to be. Private capital invested in something most certainly returns better results compared to

dollars spent by the government. That's not saying good things haven't come from government expenditures,

but the overhead and layers of bureacracy that are required from government run research increase the cost

making the end result and cost of politician added on top of that, burdensome.

If I go much further, I'm going to have to pick up some more Milton Friedman because I think I may be reaching

my intellectual limit. Enjoying it, though.