Stafford Beer , Nuclear Cost

Vietnam, Stafford Beer
Pondering why Vietnam became a rice exporter upon 'privatisation' of farms. How this proves the superiority of Capital over Central Planning. [CPE]
At my Roman Catholic School, the priests taught us that 'Freedom' ie Capital was superior to Communism because 'half' the food produced in Russia was from 'private plots'. This was because people 'naturally' worked harder on their own behalf than for land they didnt own.
Several thoughts occurred:

1) What about the majority of people under Capital who work for Corporations they dont own?

2) Actually the Russian system sounded not bad, with a lot of people growing their own food.

Just a theory, but I reckon the Vietnamese farmers produce under the incentive of Debt.
Loans (presumably from 'State' banks) enable them to buy fertiliser, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, oil powered tractors and pumps. This industrial agriculture gives high yields. (per man-hour, not per Joule).
The incentive is fear of loan default, not a simple joy in a bountiful self-owned farm. In North India 16,000 farmers have killed themselves, often with herbicides, as they failed to meet repayments.

3) Under Capital small farmers are rapidly taken over by mega-farms, where workers work for wages.


The benefit of Capital Free Markets is clear and accurate accounting. The prices paid and costs incurred are transparently known by the Bank.
Under CPE 'targets' are promulgated. Lies were told to the central government about yields. In the worst case this could mean famine, as the government, accepting at face value the claimed yields, would seize its 'proportion' of the crops. Which might be all of actual production.
In the best case, the lack of accounting meant lack of flexibility. Farmers couldn't rapidly switch crops or methods according to actual yields.

One great benefit of Capital is the ability to fail. Enterprises which fail to produce at the best level are left to fail.
Limited Liability corporations with compulsory Insurance protect the owners.
These days the phrase "Ltd'" is rarely used. Formerly it was part of the name of most entities. Maybe they dont care to advertise their limits now.
Upon bankruptcy now, corporations try to rapidly switch around so that workers dont get redundancy.

Under CPE its difficult for any enterprise to fail. The startup is similar: a bureaucrat authorises a loan. But for CPE enterprises to fail, planners would to have to admit mistakes.
Now that Capital is concentrated into Corporations "too big to fail" we seem to have the worst of both worlds.

In 1979, I attended a lecture at the Open University, given by Stafford Beer the eminent cybernetician. He described how he had worked with Salvador Allende to 'cyberneticise' the Socialist economy. in those days (1972) networked computers were rare. Beer proposed a network of teletype machines, reporting to the Centre. His idea was that they should only report deviations from the Plan. This would enable a CP Economy to have the flexibility of a Market economy.

Somehow this didnt sound like true transparency, despite being a bold idea [google Stafford Beer Chile]
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In the late 80s I programmed for Ford Motors, that notorious bastion of anti-unionism.
The idea was to put barcode tags on the cars, and readers in workers hands.
Terminals on the factory floor and even in dealers showrooms would connect Production and Sales.
Middle management were alarmed, rightly, that their function was being subsumed.
Workers, rightly, called for a 'technology allowance'
I ended up banned from the floor, a pawn in their game.

Rather soon, the New "Labour" Thatcherite govt canned the entire idea of assembling cars from kitsets
Pevious governments had had a vague idea that this was 'preserving industrial capability'. Since they werent 'making' much beyond fancy mag wheels, the New Right canned the idea, and commenced to import second hand Japanese cars.


Beer ,guardian

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“The cats licked them perfectly clean”.

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Rachel Maddow, Lefty Lesbian, dissects Barry O
As Japan installs 1G optic internet and doesnt know what to do with it, as the Internet collapses into expensive 3-4G cell phones,
I marvel at the lefty videos that remain,
opdiner

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Karman vortices over Cape Verde
nasa

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Rondônia deforestation
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Nuclear reactors: Cost overruns...

After four years of construction and thousands of recorded defects and deficiencies, the original €3 billion, or $4.2 billion, price tag on the Olkiluoto reactor has climbed at least 50 percent. The reactor was supposed to be completed this summer, but work is so far behind schedule that Areva.. no longer are willing to predict with certainty when it will go online.
........
Areva also said its model would deliver 1,600 megawatts\

= $3.75/watt
cf NZ$3 for wind turbines = USD$1.9
olkiluoto
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The OL3 project is the only example of construction on a European Pressurised Reactor (EPR), the flagship of the so-called nuclear renaissance, aggressively promoted as a low-cost "mature" technology. The chronic delays and setbacks at the Olkiluoto plant show that quite the opposite is true: complications, escalating costs, chronic safety issues, delays and a lack of transparency remain the true face of the nuclear industry.

The story now unfolding in Olkiluoto is also typical of other nuclear reactor projects across the world. The latest Chinese reactor was finished two years behind schedule because of similar problems, in Taiwan the reactor project is five years behind schedule. In the UK, the latest nuclear reactor cost double the initial estimated price.

"As we are seeing in Finland, nuclear power undermines the true solutions to climate change. It is a dangerous, costly distraction.

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USA today
Barry O promulgates Indefinite Preventive Detention
and thiss :

Two founder members of what was once the biggest Muslim charity in the US have each been jailed for 65 years.
Shukri Abu Baker, 50, and Ghassan Elashi, 55, were convicted of channelling funds to the Palestinian militant group (sic), Hamas.
Three other members of the Holy Land Foundation were jailed for between 15 and 20 years by a Dallas court.
The charity was found guilty last year of sending $12m (£7.4m) to fund social programmes controlled by Hamas.
bbc

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Typhus extermination requires good circulation
codoh

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Wood why-gasifiers-rock
1 cord = 2.7 m³ solid wood

The truck burns one pound of wood for each mile driven, or about 5,000 miles per cord.

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Dental Care:
Western Dentistry is expensive because of an Idea. The Idea that a Dentist is a "professional" who deserves several big cars and a big income.

In RP I got 2 crowns for P1500 each.
(US$32) which would have been AUD$1200 each plus several visits @ $120 each.
You might cherish the idea of becoming a "professional" yourself,
You might argue that my dentist deserved more, but he seemed happy and did good work.
_posted in peakoilhausfrau

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Drug Money

Vienna-based UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa said in an interview released by Austrian weekly Profil that drug money often became the only available capital when the crisis spiralled out of control last year.

"In many instances, drug money is currently the only liquid investment capital," Costa was quoted as saying by Profil. "In the second half of 2008, liquidity was the banking system's main problem and hence liquid capital became an important factor."

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime had found evidence that "interbank loans were funded by money that originated from drug trade and other illegal activities,"

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Trust me, I'm a mathematician; the the-black-scholes-equation
is a crock of shit
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Miley



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