General statistics
List of Youtube channels
Youtube commenter search
Distinguished comments
About
Tony Wilson
Secular Talk
comments
Comments by "Tony Wilson" (@tonywilson4713) on "Unapologetic Biden Pick Takes MILLIONS From Wall Street" video.
No you are wrong there actually 2 tribes run by separate groups of oligarchs. One tribe is ruled by oligarchs who are Carbon owners - oil, gas coal, etc. The other Tribe is ruled by Technocrats who are into science. At the moment they are in conflict over who gets to supply societies energy in future. The simple fact is that the group who controls energy production controls everything, because everything we have in the modern world needs energy to make and in many cases to use it. The computer you are on right now requires energy to dig the raw materials out of the ground. It takes energy to process those into raw materials for industry to use. Takes energy to transport those raw materials to the manufacturers who then use energy to convert those raw materials into the computer in front of you. The there is the energy used to transport that computer to you. And finally there is the energy used to power it. If you can't guess it I am an engineer and this is a topic find myself having to explain again and again. We are at a transition from paradigm based mainly on carbon to one mainly based on renewable energy production technologies. The existing old school Carbon People are simply fighting like all hell to make as much out of their assets as they can. They always knew the end would come because the coal and oil and gas will eventually run out, they just never thought it would end this soon and they are pissed to be loosing so much profit.
2
@beeinthehive See the reply I gave Samuel Ross it should clarify part of what I am saying. You're basically right and its a hours, days, weeks discussion on "Are we living in a Plutocracy or an Oligarchy - and does it matter if we are screwed either way?" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutocracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligarchy I have listened to a lot of Mark Blyth these last 18 months. He makes a lot of sense of these things and how we got here. He did 3 lectures in Canada last year and they are all still worth watching if for nothing else but the background information. The Q&A session after the Trumpism one will be studied for years. The one on how we got here basically explains what's gone wrong since the GFC - no new model (software & hardware). Trumpism -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGuaoARJYU0 How we got here -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJoe_daP0DE Can we have it all -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOGc6XZwVxA
2
@theaross8562 No doubt there are people playing both sides but if you look at the main players in all of this and where the heart lands of Republicans and Democrats are you can almost break this down to Carbon versus Silicon. There aren't many people on the planet who have as good of a handle on the world its economy and particularly America as Mark Blyth the Professor at Brown U. I don't like basic Ideology of Richard Wolf but in many ways he also 1st class analyst. Both of them spoke recently on the Michael Brooks show. Part of the discussion was an analysis of America. Just after 52:45 Wolf uses West Virginia as an example of the situation. Its pretty amazing to watch a Marxist justify that those people were voting in their economic interest when the backed Trump. Just after it at about 56:10 you'll see where I get my carbon versus silicon concept. Basically at the center of the Republican economy is carbon and at the center of the Democrat economy is silicon. YES there's a lot more nuance to it with other things and people on both sides who play the wider field. But when you have the Kochs, Bushes, and others with their carbon billions on one side and the Musks, Bezos, Gates and others with their silicon billions on the other you basically have carbon versus silicon. Its where the big influential backers make the bulk of their money. Note the box Mark talks about at 59:30 its carbon inside the box and silicon outside. Note the remark about people becoming coders. That's been mentioned a few times since Biden made that claim of retraining coal miners as coders. Its total BS because anybody becoming a coder will quickly learn they are up against 1.3 billion Indians and 1.4 billion Chinese who have between them millions and millions of coders. Look at your phone apps and where they come from. I'm an engineer and I work in control systems (the computers that run factories, power stations, mine sites,...etc.) I can tell you for a fact that the coding thing is utter bullshit. We have CAD & software tools now that do so much work for us that the need for large teams at the design phase n longer exists. Construction, commissioning and maintenance will not change much and it is utter bullshit when people claim that it will.
1
@beeinthehive If you want to understand the mechanics of how we got here Mark Blyth is one of the best if not the best you'll see. I'm an engineer so I am pre-wired to understanding how things work or why they work the way they do. I did aerospace and we are taught systems analysis methods and he uses similar techniques to explain why we have what we have so his explanations work well for me. I can't say I agree with everything he says but he is one of the very very few in the economic commentary field who understands any of the engineering that underpins society. He certainly has people in his circle who understand the effects of automation. In one talk/interview he gave he related how a buddy who put robots in his prosciutto factory to hang the hams. Instead of employing less he now employs more because the increased efficiency led to increased production and that grew the business creating new jobs.
1
@beeinthehive I am certainly no anarchist or libertarian. The engineer in me is a firm believer in rules and regulations because we have learnt way too many times that when you lower the regulatory requirements idiots take over and bad shit happens. Most notably of recent times the Boeing Max-8. On Automation there are many instances where it is done for no other reason than to improve quality. Its like having a better quality more accurate tool. You would also be amazed how switched on workers become. I've watched people go from the abject computer illiteracy to being quite confident on very technically advanced machines. Way too often people start the conversation with "automation costs jobs" and then you spend the rest of the time debunking it.
1
@ODoyleIYourFamilysGoingDown Yes I saw this the other day https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PL32ea0MqM I'm really impressed with what he is doing. Another one I saw was this which sounds similar but is totally different https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMLu9Dtw9yI The 2nd vid has a graph where he shows where the existing battery tech lies and where the liquid air will go. At the moment that central space has only 1 real emerging technology and that's Hydrogen distilled from water. I think where the liquid metal will fit is over the top of the Li-ion and Flow batteries. Its looks like it will have the snap type response of Li-ion but have the larger capacity of the flow battery. In Australia I think we have a huge market for local mass storage. We buy a lot of Tesla power walls but they are farq-off expensive and we need a better alternative and people are talking about "community batteries." Com-bats are where groups of people collectively buy a big battery that they can dump all their excess solar into instead of buying an individual battery for their house. Very Very early days on the Com-bat concept because their isn't a ready supplier of big batteries. Elon either supplies house size or city size when we actually need town/community size. So Sadoway's unit that he has (https://ambri.com/technology/) looks just like what a Com-bat would be. A 10ft x 10ft x 10ft battery that can support a local community or a shopping mall. My basic impression is that I think he really has something special. He's super smart, just listen to how he went about creating this. Its a matter of can he get market share or at least a foothold and keep it. History tells us that good technology doe not always win out. What they all have to realise across the entire energy sector is that we are in a major industrial transition from carbon to silicon in terms of the underpinning technology. Have a look at the US the Reps & Dems is Carbon versus Silicon. Yeah its more complicate than that but if you strip it down far enough its carbon versus silicone and by silicon. That will require a variety of energy production and storage solutions. To many of them yell and scream theirs is "the only solution" when the reality is we will need variety. I think if Sadoway is smart and targets the right markets in the right ways he will clean up.
1