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Roboeconomy.com 

We are witnessing a stratification in society, there are a growing number of people without jobs, and a shrinking group with jobs. One gets less and less support (from benefits to foodstamps to nothing at all) the other get all the perks of a good consumer.

This is result of economic thought, the idea of a free market for labour that is completely out of sync with reality, and has been for a century now. The only reason it held for so long was an abundance of fossil fuel allowing people to be useless but non the less economically interesting as a destroyer of consumer goods. The main driver behind the economy after all is the fossil fuel industry that wants to see its product burned, consumed.

If there was a machine that made everything we needed automatically using only sunlight. Would we all be out of a job, poor and not able to afford it, or would we all be living in wealth without cost?

It may ba a leap for many, but economic thought really is designed specifically to allow for the maximization of the utilization of fossil fuels. That is the core aim of the framework of thought we call free market economics. To maximize the utility of fossil fuels one needs to have competition over it, because the amount of fuel is limited. On the other hand we can clearly see some areas of the world are able to secure more fossil fuels to divide through competition, some so much it leads to enormous waste (the US, Europe). Its not free trade that leads to that allocation, it’s the allocation that leads to the free trade.

A world so dominated by fossil fuels is delusional if it gives importance to the worker, the whole idea of competing in the economy is to get money from people for things they need, use it to do it more efficiently, using machines that run on fossil fuels, needing the money to pay for those fuels. The basic diet in abundance of oil, coal, gas, diesel, gasoline leads to an increase in the use of automation in every process. This means the system is intrinsically reducing the opportunities for labour.

Of course the answer to this has been the ‘service economy’ in which people do unnecessary things, things that should be free, in order to secure their amount of credit which they can then allocate to the industial manufacturers of everything they need. This type of economy has jobs for every type of intellect, you can run a nail parlour or be a quant on Wallstreet, you do nothing really usefull, but you’ll get some money that is been inserted into the economy using some kind of bubble.

But this useless labour economy only works if there is abundance in fossil fuels. When the fuel supply is reduced and real scarcity becomes an issue, the competition hardens, and there has been no time when industry made way for consumers, the makers are the takers. So today, as we are approaching a fossil fuel crunch in 2015, workers are pushed out of every ‘service economy’ job, into poverty. Many still things this is the system working well, but it isn’t, because the system never worked well, it was never able to run for ever (like a labour intensive economy or a renewable based economy). It had to run out and whether for environmental or supply reasons, it is running out now. 

As a result we see a concentration of working people in a shrinking industry, against a growing group of non working people that are not needed and aren’t allowed to take care of themselves because that would compete with what the industry does! If you don’t have a job you are not allowed to do usefull work, because that would be a job, and then you’d threathen the economy!

But in reality there is no scarcity, there is no reason why anyone would have to go hungry. We have all the means to utilize solar energy and grow food, make stuff, house and keep healthy all the people of the planet (especially if we apply some family planning). This does not enter the ‘economic’ model because nobody is on the market offering sunshine, and the fossil fuel industry is not going to make it easy for anyone to enter. It is a fight, true, and solar has some success, and will prevail, but today fossil fuel is still in charge. We know fossil fuel lost it’s dominating role if we start thinking differently about credit, but that’s a nother story.

The focus on the competition over scarce fossil fuel based energy means workers get pushed out by machines and once they are poor there is no incentive to even allow them to take care of themselves. The fossil fuel based economy takes all the oxygen in the room, litteraly. It also blocks renewables that can support an economy of abundance. We are therfore captured in misery by our current economic thought. The part of industry that makes things we really need is consolidating and creating a two tier society, the have and the have nots, and is selfstabilizing. Unless we recognize it and break it open, using renewables.

The EU is a source of problems, it’s a government that is not a government, it acts autonomously while citizens are supposed to believe its being influenced by ministers. Because it’s ways are so opague it can not be trusted and should be replaced by an organization of elected officials only. We already have the trade commissioner Karel de Gucht representing the US WTO position against the interest of Europe and the environment, now we have a ruling for an austrian man that has the potential to draw all owners of solar panels into the economic equasion, which is exactly what should not happen, not in its current form.

The Ruling

In this case, the AG opined that the ECJ should decide that: 

the operation of a network-connected photovoltaic installation on or adjacent to a privately-owned house used for private residential purposes constitutes an economic activity within the meaning of Article 9(1) of EU VAT Directive to the extent that electricity produced by the installation is supplied to the network for consideration. In such circumstances, input tax paid on the acquisition of the installation may be deducted from output tax charged on the supply of electricity to the network, subject to all the provisions of that directive which govern such deduction. (bron)

Pros and Cons 

The above ruling may cause some cheers, after all, now one can pay the VAT of its purchase with the VAT of its production. This is a nice givaway. Besides there are probably rules for the freedom to be enjoyed by those that pay VAT, freedom of trade or freedom of transportation of the good produced, that may help break barriers against the energy oligarchy that tries to keep renewables under control.

But there are problems too. Any solar installation with storage now becomes more expensive, while solar panels already where made more expensive through import taxes. This while panels with storage are the way to freedom from the same energy oligachy (this is not some conspiracy theory, just central producers protecting their monpoly).

Another problem is that pulling panels in to the economic system, forcing more transactions and administration means more cost associated with them. This is not too big a problem because most countries have a treshold for VAT, and most solar producers are below that, so they don’t need to report. This may mean there is no advantage as well. 

But most of all the issue of money, the flow of money, the illusion of taxation (VAT) is all preserved in a situation that is completely different from the average consumptive act. The EC recognizes someone produces energy, a ‘good’, but it does not recognize the nature of the ‘good’, energy, which is what we trade with our money, our carboncredit. Energy allows production, and producers need money to buy the energy they need. So with every Joule of energy generated some money should pop into existence.

So energy people produce should not be payed for by the energy company, it should cause the creation of money, of credit, by the state in the account of the producer (to the degree his/her electricity can be traded). The state could stil tax, by keeping a portion of the created money for itself. This straightening of the true role of a solar panel owner however goes against every fiber of the banking oligarchy, that wants to retain the monopoly on money creation.

By drawing all grid tied solar producers into the economic traffic the above pure situation of credit granted by the state may come about, but it may also go the other way, because small entrepeneurs paying VAT are the least protected, big money always has better ‘legal’ advise. We once again see that the carboncredit system, the combination of the energy and banking sector, are a combined force that keeps us from a better system, one where all people can be a bank (cause the creation of energy credits) and and all of most people produce energy, a system without banks or energy companies.

In het westen is de doodstraf taboe. Het lijkt een barbaarse maatregel in een wereld met gevangenissen waar de grootste crimineel onschadelijk voor de maatschappij kan leven. In China heeft men een andere geschiedenis. Een van de meest schokkende voorbeelden was het verhaal van iemand die (een jaar of 15 geleden) met de trein door China reisde, met veel lokale chinesen aan boord. Opeens was hij zijn walkman kwijt, dus de veiligheidsdienst ondernam een zoektocht in de rijdende trein. De dief werd gevonden en uit de trein geschopt, zonder deze te stoppen.

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China geeft de doodstraf voor financiele delicten, dus aan bankiers die de boel flessen. China heeft ook de mensen betrokken bij het babyformule debacle ter dood veroordeeld. Veel babies werden ziek en een aantal stierven omdat er melanine in de melkpoerder was gemengd, waardoor deze geen voedingswaarde had en giftig was. Wanneer men met mensen uit bv. Thailand praat, dan zeggen die geen producten uit China te willen kopen, je weet nooit wat er in zit.

Het probleem is dat China ook geheime gevangenissen heeft, onopvallende gebouwen waar mensen in zitten opgesloten, en fabrieken waar mensen niet uit mogen ontsnappen. Het biedt wat dat betreft weinig veiligheid of bescherming aan zijn burgers. Omdat China tegelijk een enorme bevolking heeft die in opstand kan komen (zo is het land tenslotte ontstaan), moet het maatregelen nemen als de bevolking ergens genoeg van heeft. Nu blijkt het genoeg te hebben van vervuiling.

 "Milieuvervuilers in China kunnen in het vervolg de doodstraf krijgen volgens wetten die woensdag van kracht zijn geworden. Dat meldt het RD vandaag. „In ernstige gevallen van milieuvervuiling kan de doodstraf worden uitgesproken”, staat er in de nieuwe wet. Dat meldden Chinese media donderdag."

China heeft vrij agressieve klimaat doelen, relatief met Europe, RT meldt dat China de emissies (Ton per Yuan GDP, BNP) wil terugbrengen met 30% in 2017. Dat is nog eens iets anders dan 14% in 2020 oid. Het paradoxale is dat het GDP zal dalen door de eliminatie van emissies, omdat fossiele energie een belangrijk deel is van de prijs van producten.  Als producten minder fossiel eisen en bv. met eigen wind energie gemaakt worden, zijn ze goedkoper, en hierdoor daalt het BNP!

De kosten van medische zorg rijzen de pan uit. In de Volkskrant van Zaterdag stond een uitgebreid artikel van Rutger Bregman waarin de kostenafweging voor medische behandelingen eens helder wordt neergezet, een medicijn van 1 miljoen Euro dat een mensenleven een jaar kan verlengen had ook anders kunnen worden besteed, met wellicht veel meer ‘levens rendement’. Op zich is deze gedachtengang correct, en ook die waarbij wordt gekeken hoeveel een mensenleven waard is is steekhoudend. Verschillende landen lijken er verschillende prijskaartjes aan te hangen. Maar er zit een zwakke kant aan financiele afwegingen tav medische zorg, namelijk dat men het gegeven prijsniveau en de manier waarop de industrie werkt kritiekloos accepteert. 

De kosten van een nieuw medicijn zijn geen miljarden zoals de farmaceutische industrie claimt, veel geld gaat zitten in de marketing ervan. De pharamceutische industrie   

Update : Eens stuk waarin wordt gezegd dat negatieve prijzen een gevolg zijn van inflexibele conventionele energie productie, en dat het een signaal is voor meer flexibele productie (lees hernieuwbaar en opslag).

Henk Kamp zegt het al in zijn brief naar de kamer : Hij wil geen feed-in tarief, want dat zorgt voor negatieve stroomprijzen. Negatieve prijzen ontstaan als er overaanbod van electriciteit is op de ‘markt’. De prijs van duitse stroom komt zelfs tot de -200,- Euro/Mw. Intussen zijn er Duitsland voorstellen om de prijs van stroom te verhogen. Dit moet omdat de de energie bedrijven de burgers het vaste tarief betalen, niet de prijs die ze op dat moment voor de stroom kunnen vangen.

Negatieve prijzen duiden op een overschot aan stroom. Dat is op zich zelf beschouwd toch een weelde? 

Deze problematiek is een gevolg van de mythe van de energiemarkt die de energiebedrijven in stand wenst te houden. Het is een gevolg van de fossiel krediet gebaseerde investeringen waarvan de banken wensen vol te houden dat men die terug verdient, dwz ze moeten een bepaald ‘rendement’ hebben. Wat te doen met negatieve prijzen? Er zijn verschillende antwoorden waarvan sommigen vereisen een eind te maken aan het ‘markt’ denken. Wat men iig niet moet doen is meedenken met de kolen centrales, of de andere belanghebbenden van de markt.

Grr..Te veel gratis stroom!

Het gaat hier om een zeer bekend probleem : Liquiditeit (handelsvolume). De beursen hebben dezelfde problematiek, namelijk : Wat doe je als iemand 1000 aandelen Shell wil dumpen maar er is op dat moment geen koper? U ziet de overeenkomst met “Wat doe je als iemand 30 MW stroom wil verkopen, maar niemand heeft die nodig.” De beurs heeft daarvoor een zogenaamde ‘Marketmaker’. De Marketmaker koopt en verkoopt aandelen zodat de markt liquide blijft, en zodat er een prijs is, want prijzen ontstaan pas als er iets wordt verkocht. Er is veel over marketmakers te zeggen, tegenwoordig zijn het doorgaans algoritmes die vaak betrapt worden op het beinvloeden van de prijs, het uithollen van de marge en het verbergen van informatie over wat er eigenlijk aan vraag en aanbod bestaat. 70% van de liquiditeit op de NYSE bestaat uit handel tussen algorithmes. Maar als het om energie gaat zijn dat soort trucs niet mogelijk. Electronen zijn niet virtueel. Aandelen en futures soms wel, maar dat is een ander hoofdstuk.

Een Marketmaker in de energiewereld zou energie moeten kopen en verkopen op momenten dat er geen vraag of aanbod is. Het probleem is echter dat dit de baseload ‘functie’ van de gas, kolen en kerncentrales aantast. Die kunnen logischerwijs wel reageren op vraag, maar weigeren dat te doen op aanbod! Een Marketmaker zou wel op een overaanbod reageren, en dit namelijk kopen en Opslaan wtf OPSLAAN! ALARM ALARM OPSLAAN!! Aaarrghh roep de exorcist!

NEE, geen Energie OPSLAAN!!!! Boehoe!!

Opslaan kan niet in de energiemarkt, dat zou de boel verstieren. Opslaan was nooit nodig want productie was regelbaar. Opslaan van stroom kan niet want het zou het Grid minder belangrijk maken. Opeens komen er duizenden (re)producenten bij die lokaal aan vraag kunnen voldoen. Opslaan van stroom (of warmte) opent de weg naar autonomie van straten, steden, regio’s, en dat is uit den boze.

Slaat men zonnestroom zelf op, dan stopt op gegeven moment elk eraan gerelateerd economisch verkeer.  Dit vinden banken vreselijk eng.

Denken we even niet in termen van bescherming van de oude fossiele economie maar in termen van oplossingen, hoe zou deze Marketmaker dan te werk gaan? Heel eenvoudig. Bij de grens met Duitsland, of bij de grote steden of in de buurt van industrie zouden opslag faciliteiten komen. Grote pakhuizen met batterijen. Flow batterijen zouden nog beter zijn. Er zijn uitontwikkelde technologien. Deze zouden in principe eigendom kunnen zijn van de eigenaar van de huidige energie markt, maar die verzet zich tegen dit soort ontwikkelingen. Het is dus beter deze markt te omzeilen en relatief kleinschalige energieopslag te bevorderen, dus per stad een grote accucentrale. Hierbij kan de regering helpen door bv. bepaalde technologie patenten uit te kopen (of af te schaffen), zodat de opslagoplossing in de buurt van de kostprijs geleverd kan worden. De duitse regering geeft momenteel subsidie op electriciteitsopslag (subsidie is nodig om de marktweerstand te doorbreken). Als de prijs van stroom negatief dreigt te worden, omdat niemand hem wil kopen, koopt de Marketmaker hem voortaan, voor iets onder het standaard tarief (welk tarief is een verhaal apart). De stroom heeft dan een prima prijs en iedereen kan zijn leningen afbetalen (want dat is de reden waarom het een ‘probleem’ is). De Marketmaker verkoopt de stroom later als er meer vraag is, bv ‘s avonds. Natuurlijk kan iedereen dat doen, op de energie markt, ware het niet dat de markt en de banken dit soort oplossingen door hun politieke voorkeur voor fossiel niet op weg helpen. Een Marketmaker met voldoene opslag capaciteit kan de markt verzekeren van een positieve prijs.

Energie opslag (een term die in de nederlandse politiek vervuild is met de betekenis van een heffing), is dus het correcte antwoord. Natuurlijk zijn er plenty mogelijkheden voor bedrijven om juist te rekenen om zeer goedkope stroom, dus bv. een bedrijf dat aluminium smelt en alleen werkt als stroom bijna niks kost. Het is belachelijk dat de monetisatie van stroom opeens een probleem blijkt, terwijl het voortdurend bij de gigawatts wordt afgenomen.

De energiewereld is niet nauw verstrengeld met de financiele wereld, het is een ding, het zogenaamde carboncredit systeem. Het financieel systeem is dus niet politiek neutraal, het is fundamenteel pro centrale opwekking, pro fossiel. Het leeft van brandstof die we keer op keer moeten kopen, en waar we steeds weer geld aan moeten uitgeven. Het probeert dus doorgaans met prijsargumenten de hernieuwbare revolutie te stuiten. Als het gaat om negatieve prijzen is het fel tegen omdat het de mensen die geld van hen geleend hebben hindert bij het afbetalen van de schulden. Daar zijn die mensen het ook mee eens. Het probleem is alleen dat de schuld onzin is en niet hoeft te worden afbetaald. Dit is het eenvoudigst uit te leggen door te vragen of degene die de schuld heeft ooit de fossiele brandstoffen die hij met zijn geleende geld geconsumeerd heeft kan recreeren, dwz terug brengen in hun onverbrande staat. Dat kan niet. Dus kan de schuldenaar zijn schuld nooit compenseren. Hij kan wel geld uit roulatie halen door een rente en aflossing te betalen, zodat de bank nieuwe klanten krijgt omdat er geen geld in private handen rondzwerft. Dat laatste is de functie van de schuld, om geld als middel om bij met name fossiele brandstoffen te komen schaars te houden.

Dus, aan de ene kant is overproductie natuurlijk geen probleem, daar wordt vanzelf op gereageerd. Echter kan de markt niet werken omdat er geen Marketmaker bestaat, iets wat nooit nodig was omdat men de productie altijd precies kon regelen (niemand gaat kolen erdoor blazen als er geen vraag naar stroom is). Het hernieuwbare energie kan dat niet. Het is dus driedubbel dom van Henk Kamp om er tegen te zijn, het is een irrelevant (kwijt te schelden) financieel probleem, het is een oplosbaar marktprobleem en het is een fundamentele bijkomstigheid van hernieuwbare energie zonder energie opslag. Maar Kamp denkt economisch dus hij is mentaal niet in staat deze afwegingen te plaatsen. Hij laat zich kennen als zeer fundamenteel tegen hernieuwbare energie.

Nederland blijft achter zolang de VVD de dienst uit maakt en zolang andere partijen aspiraties hebben tav economische groei. Ze bedoelen dan onbewust “Expansie van de utilisatie van fossiele energie”. Daar gaat onze wereld momenteel kapot aan. Ook politiek is het dodelijk om te proberen de VVD te zijn, want ze houden zichzelf in het zadel door zulke aspiraties te laten mislukken (winstgevend voor de banksector in industrie dat wel). De onverkozen bank regering en leiding van de fossiele sector blijven zo de baas. De fossiele sector moet daarom aan banden worden gelegd, het economisch denken moet tijdelijk overgaan in een duidelijke transitiestrategie (met minimale verspilling en ‘suffering’). Pech voor wie nu van de vrije markt geniet, het is eindresultaat zal voor iedereen beter zijn. 

De Robo(eco)nomy is de wereld waarin automatische systemen op hernieuwbare energie worden benut om de ecologie te restaureren… (zie roboeconomy now called extraeconomics)

Het is belangrijk aan een toekomst visie te werken. De focus die doorgaans gelegd wordt op problemen verhinderd de stabilisatie van een doelstelling. Door te zeggen dat we CO2 uitstoot moeten verminderen verbinden we ons met huidige processen, die zeer sterk in de fossiele schoenen staan. Dat hoeft helemaal niet. De oplossing voor uitstoot ligt niet noodzakelijkerwijs bij de bron. De Aarde heeft een natuurlijk absorptie vermogen dat we kunnen vergroten met behulp van technologie, speciale programmas die zelfondersteunend zijn, de zogenaamde Extraeconomische programmas.

Extraeconomische projecten zijn projecten die niet afhankelijk zijn van externe geldstromen, en geen verhandelbare goederen opleveren. Ze werken als gevolg zonder fossiele beperking (omdat je om die in onze huidige wereld economie te kopen altijd geld nodig hebt) en zonder controle door de ‘markt’. Het vreemde is dat als eenmaal gekozen wordt voor zo’n opzet, het speelveld waarop dat kan gebeuren zich sterk vergoot. Niet langer gaat het om economische ontwikkeling van gebieden, verstrengeling en uitbreiding van de cashflow van bv. Monsanto of Haliburton e.d. maar om het creeren van opwarmings bestrijdende biomassa of regelrechte technologie die CO2 afvangt, omzet in O2 en C en de C (koolstof) in de grond achterlaat.

Windturbines kunnen stroom genereren, maar ook water, koude, en warmte (zie dutchrainmaker.nl en ons project windheatinsystem.com) . En waar worden windturbines van gemaakt? Niet van 100% aardolie, kolen en gas. Ze kunnen prima met duurzame energie geproduceerd worden, bv uit een groot windpark of zonnepark. De hele productieketen van een kant en klare windturbine kan fossiel en dus krediet vrij worden gemaakt. Daarmee daalt de prijs ervan tot in de buurt van nul, zeker als met een paar zelf gebouwde turbines een stuk landbouw van energie en kunstmest wordt voorzien, zodat iedereen in de fabriek te eten en te drinken heeft. Waar kan die fabriek staan? Ergens waar zon of wind is, zo’n beetje overal. Wat is dan de rem op de productie? Die is er dan niet. De sleutel is het ontsnappen aan krediet van banken, die fundamenteel afhankelijk zijn de behoefte aan fossiele energie. Duurzaamheid leidt immers tot autonomie.

Het gebruik van technologie hoeft niet ingewikkeld te zijn, maar kan wel een enorme impact hebben. Wie nu leest dat boeren in de VS te maken hebben met overstromingen en dan weer droogte snapt dat daar een drainage en irrigatie systeem moet worden aangelegd, zoals het contour trenching van Peter Westerveld. Simpele greppels houden water in de grond en voorkomen het wegspoelen van de toplaag waardoor de mensen in Mali ondanks de droogte in de zomer toch 3 in plaats van 1 oogst hebben. Niet alleen betekent het beschikbaarheid zijn van water voor plantengroei maar ook voor verdamping en zelfs regen. Door ketens van dit soort greppelsystemen aan te leggen ontstaat een lopende band voor regenwater landinwaards. Voor het graven van greppels zijn fossiele brandstoffen niet nodig, dat kan ook met electrische graafmachines die op een verplaatsbaar zonnepark draaien. Dat is misschien niet de makkelijkste manier, maar wel de goedkoopste. Door alleen hernieuwbare energie te gebruiken is het mogelijk gebieden waar een watercyclus te geven zonder ze meteen aan de wereldeconomie te hoeven te offeren. Zo zal er dus CO2 worden vastgelegd. Waar stopt men? Waarom zou men stoppen? De impact van een man als Peter Westerveld kan zo de deur openen voor een groen mals Tanzania.

Er schreven al over Bambooya, een drijvende bamboe massa waarop bamboe en andere gewassen kan worden verbouwd, op zee. Tussen de drijvende bamboo vlotten kan vis worden gekweekt, zeewier en op de vlotten kan het bamboe worden verwerkt tot textiel, brandstof, biofuel, you name it, of het kan worden verkoold en gedumpt op de zeebodem, waar het zorgt voor carbon capture and storage. Het is een manier om het landbouw areaal van de wereld enorm te vergroten, en wederom is er geen fossiele input nodig. Een bamboe vlot kan volledig van bamboe worden gemaakt, de onderdelen van een maritiem argratisch systeem zijn op zee aanwezig, de meststoffen komen uit het diepe water dat rijk is aan allerlei nutrienten. De pomp systemen kunnen met golfbewegin worden aangedreven. Maar wederom is er geen reden om moderne technologie uit te sluiten. Wij willen hiervan een proof of concept realiseren en zoeken een plek aan zee om dat te doen. Du moment dat we bamboe succesvol gekweekt hebben op een zout water vlot is er een rijkdom aangeboord die zijn weerga nog niet op Aarde heeft gezien, en is er een onstopbare methode om CO2 uit de atmosfeer te trekken. Het Bambooya project moet extraeconomisch in gang worden gezet, om te zorgen dat het levensvatbaar is. Wie helpt ons de eerste stappen maken?

Update : Trans National Corporations use spying and other covert methods on a large scale. Big McDonalds is watching you..

Update : Thousand of companies traded classified and private information

Update : Yes, information was sold on to Wallstreet and other companies.

The recent revelations on NSA wiretapping, recording billions of emails and phone conversations without catching any terrorists has another uneasy aspect : Industrial espionage. The world has always been a stage of industrial competition. It is the main driver behind US Chinese tensions, because industry means you have something to offer, and fossil fuel producing countries rather sell to clients that are industrious, so not the USA. So how hard is it to tap into communications of inventors, researchers to find out their progress, find out about their ideas. Not very hard obviously.

One may think this would mean a technology acceleration, in the hands of the US (or Canada as is often the case), but an acceleration is not in the interest of the market forces. Turnover is in the interest of the carbon suppliers, the intermediaries, because that is what makes them rich. So if turnover is good and all products the rich want to own are available, the drive to change anything about the market is absent with the peeple that are supposed to finance it.

The above trailer of the movie Antitrust is about an IT mogol that spies on young developers to steal their code. This is not a far fetched scenario at all. Why if code is so easy to copy, would you not steal it if you can. Most people think this is about it for internet espionage, but of course all kinds of ideas and initiatives can be detected and taken over. We have one example of Apple patenting a technology that is described in a paper years before. Now apart from being faced with bogus patents (ones that can be succesfully contested) we face patents on stuff that was in the public domain! We can also expect patents that are on inventions that are not supposed to be used.

left ,scientific paper right, Apple patent. Applications of a technology are not patentable

What about screenwriters, songwriters, anybody with a commercially interesting creative job? How can we know if the NSA has all the emails (or a large part of it) to mine by whomever (we don’t know) whether ideas are still with the originators. How can we know for that matter, if the database is not used to measure public opinion. Test words. See what messages get repeated. Until the system is openly and clearly shut down, nobody can tell who gets his information where.

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We already live in a technological Ground Hog world, where the 70’s are repeated, Algae can provide biofuel, cars may run on NH3 one day. Commecial interests, industry, is happy to reinvent things time and time again, basically proving technews does not disturb the ‘Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind’ of the undereducated consumer. You can say salt storage for CSP is new, you can say Solar Zinc water splitting is new, daring, a promise. And whomever invents something awesome and doable, you buy it up, over invest and fail with it when entering the market (because new stuff at the same price never competes).

How did the hero in the movie Antitrust break the cycle of theft? Through Hypertransparency. By broadcasting his claim to everyone that could be reached. It seems with the revelations about the abilities and practices of the NRA patents granted can be put into question. Maybe a good time to revise this system, that has been corrupted into a kind of financial asset factory, locking down technologies through high royalties over invalid patents. Open up the databases or destroy them, thow out any contested patent in the last 12 years. It wil be a benefit to the renewable future for sure.

Edward Snowden came forward about the indiscriminate ability of the NSA to wiretap, eavesdrop, record and store email and phone conversations of every citizen in the US. His job gave him access to an enormous amount of privileged information, as he explains in an interview with the Guardian, so much information that it really makes one wonder if there was no intent to leak or provoke some kind of treason. It seems almost rediculous to prosecute Snowden for his crime, after all he exposed things that are indeed illegal infringements, open doors for corruption, nepotism and other exploitation. You don’t want to be the guy that shoots Jesse James, Robert Ford, even though Jesse may have been an outlaw, he was understood and loved for his strength. 

You can’t respectably eliminate a man that shows moral strength.

The existence of a large network that gives access to any and all communications between US citizens however inspires a number of different questions, depending on your outlook.  

For instance, if the US was eavesdropping then who else was doing it? Lets not have the illusion that China did not tap in to this PRISM system. In fact the system puts the US on a par with China and perhaps any other state these days. Digital signals, mobile communications are just to easy to intercept. One has to wonder how it can be that the NSA expected only the patriotism and salary would keep the secrets secret. Bradly Manning, Julian Assange and others already clearly showed that’s not how people work. It’s almost as if they where waiting for it to happen, as if this revelation is timed.Timed with the new dawm of relationships between the US and China, timed with the relaxation of North Korean tensions. It is entirely possible that the US opened it’s databases to China to show it has no plans to conquer or destroy it, that there is no reason to prepare for a war as China has been doing for decades now. The tool used was hypertransparency. Of course there is no need for it when it concerns the public, it should only be applied to the private sector and government, to back up trust. Now that it allowed a view into the psyche of the US citizen, and showed no big plans, the service needed to be demolished. This would be part of the global standdown, the abolishment of war before we move into the renewable powered roboeconomy. Of course this may be way to optimistic for most.

The mad world of war gone commercial

There’s a funny link from Edward Snowden to the movie Catch-22. He’s the person dying in Yossarian eyes, who goes crazy because commercial interests are infiltrating the ideologically motivated war machine. Slowly all sense leaves the base and everything that goes one becomes an M&M enterprises operation. Catch-22 is about the birth of the Military Industrial Complex, which took place in WO I, a war prolonged because industry made a killing and oil didn’t run out. It is the same wild expansion of the MIC that bread the NSA to it’s super power, and that drive the Cold War, the same desire to be usefull and earn money that made the Shin Bet manouvre Israel into it’s dead end struggle with the Palestinians. You can’t object to a man acting out his morality, you can’t object to palestinians opposing their erdication.  

Everything companies do, their accounts, emails and phone conversations, should be public 

Of course there’s a dark side to the NSA program, but we need to realize that darkness, evil, is a projection intended to intimidate. If an animal paralyzes you with fear, you become easier bait. So you can fantasize about it in a Ludlum fashion, and revel in your comfortable paralysis, or try to make a judgement on the threat and your response. It’s baslcally a lot of computers storing your emails, phone conversations, analyzing them, building network graphs of behaviour. To that back end you can expect a connection to all you see on the web, even your google results, youtube suggestions, adds on your pages. It is a growing intervention and influencing machine. It makes most sense it will be abused by business interests.

People will want to see these databases destoryed 

Another (more real) dark aspect to the existence of these databases with stored personal trivia goes back to WO II, back to the supression of the rebels of Indonesia, back to many cleansing operations we may or may not know about: You first make the list of your enemies, then go in and kill them. Germany first generated an (IBM) database of who was Jew to what degree, and that made it a lot easier to find them and deport them. The Dutch captain Westerling made lists of all the rebels in the unruly part of Indonesia before going from kampong to kampong to shoot them (while his commanders in Holland didn’t really have any grip on him). We know the East German and communist burocracies, Stazi, KGB. The NSA database can be used for such a purpose, the US military certainly would think that way from my own conversations about datamining with DARPA specialists. Many suggest this is a progression towards 1984. To the Casino Gulag state as Max Keiser calls it, where most people toil for a plutocracy (one that is already clearly forming).

But all that stands between us and this dark future is the morality of man. People want to be free and keep other people happy. It’s the most secure world, so we evolutionarily adapted to bring it about, even if it costs our own lives. Events like Snowdens defection are like the spontaneous appearance of matter in a vacuum. It’s not the highly agitated that will act, but those with a proper understanding of reality and care for others. People that are in touch with reality and just don’t like it. Unless you breed a planet of psychopaths (a risky proposition in itself), dreams of global supression and zombie citizens won’t pan out. It seems the only option is world peace with a population that sees the creation of a happy life for each other as it’s purpose. Kumbaya.

If the positive scenario is true, The Syrian conflict should die down the next months 

It does help if you take out the main driver for war and conflict, scarcity. You can start with energy scarcity by turing the MIC into a renewable energy source manufacturing conglomerate. Guns to plowshares as it where. Then tackle hunger by teaching sustainable methods and revitalizing the ecosystem using renewable energy as well (so there are no restaints). Wars are fought over resources, over space and wealth. Create wealth for all and you end up with peace, then just watch the population and you will be doing fine. Machines can make what people need, restore the eco system, even maintain the renewable energy sources. Take that route and you’ll end up on a restored planet, that can last until it burps out another Moon, or the Yellowstone Caldera explodes, or it is hit by another meteorite. Which may be longer than a few centuries we get if we keep "fucking that chicken".  

Hypertransparency II

Hypertransparency

When studying filosophy one can come across the question whether all questions can be answered. If not then the follow up question would be why not, and where can we draw the line. Obviously our mind and vocal organs are capable of making a lot more seemingly meaningfull noises in a lot more odd permutations using a lot more disperate concepts than our universe is entropically capable giving reality to. "Does the Earth fit in a shoebox?" seems a rediculous question, but place a shoebox upside down on the ground and you have your answer (The Earth doesn’t pop in). The question demonstrates undefined limits to the relation between our mind and the universe (meaning the future experiences we expect from our past experiences, maybe made more robust by repeating them a number of times). So if we think and talk about the world that is out there, how do we know we make any sense? Doesn’t it make more sense to constantly do something so you are in fact sure you are making progress (test your beliefs).

A philosophical tool 

It is one thing to never be able to find an answer to a question. The punishment for that is just a bit more complexity. Quantum physics deals with that using probability calculus, finding rest in distributions of outcomes "It wil be a color between green and orange". If the question can’t be answered because you mistakenly believe it can, then you suffer due to your own delusions.

But in reality there are things that can never be, things with zero probability. The best example of a never gonna happen situation is a person being welded naked into a steel box. A big one, 3 by 3 by 3 meters, made of 5 mm steel plates, welded shut. If it’s a guy he has to get out before the air runs out. We know it’s not possible. It is a cruel example that may not feel good to contemplate, but view it as an abstraction of impossibility. There are questions never answered, but there are also realities never achieved.

We think it is important to note that our decisions may lead us or some of us into a steel box from which there is no escape. Poverty, now rising (due to a malign policy called austerity), makes people less cooperative, and as a result some types of movements become less possible, some types of political directions get cut of. See the riots in the Southern European states, riots that should be for renewable energy but are about jobs (let us serve so we can earn carboncredits). Those may become so violent (because the policy is exactly wrong) that anyone offering the solution will be met with anger and obstruction. Reducing the freedom of thought through rising poverty (and a pro carbon media) may be welding the box shut for millions. The future holds only less and less wealth, not more and more as is perfectly possible.

Economics is a glass box painted silver inside, a place of darkness to be in. Outside : The Sun.

The box most of us are already welded into in is that of economical thought. We already respect steel walls made of credit, money, trade, concepts that all vitally depend on fossil fuels, so have no real persistent reality to them. By going along with this delusion (usually obtained through a difficult intellectual process) we limit our understaning of the real steel box we may becme trapped in, we think this one is made of steel, but it is made of fragile glass. We think we can use it as ship with it’s lid open, seeing some benefits in it’s constraints, but if we lean against its walls just a little it would break. It is a mental box, it is not real. It asks nonsensical question (how to achieve economic growth) by nonsensical answers (by stimulating it!). After a flash of buring fossil fuels and an associated rise in cashflow we find we end up with more machines, products, less fossil fuels, minerals, ecological reserves, more people expecting income. Did something grow? No. Was something valuable added? No. The only stimulation was provided by the prostitutes visited by the lazy intermediaries who came up with the theory of economics.

Economics works, but only in a truely closed system, our present system is open, carbon enters it from the mantle of our planet, and accumulates in our atmosphere, churning everything alive like a toxic laundromat, changing our planet into a steel box, a hot sarcofagus with us locked inside. We are paralyzed into not testing the belief whether we are realy stuck in the economic steel box. 

Before we take this economic glass box so seriously we end up in a real steel one, we may want to consider our options! Because a steel box is a trap we can not escape from. Our economic delusion is one we can escape from! How? It is simple : Make the delusion less powerfull, dim its light, and place people as much people as possible clearly out of the path towards any steel box.

Strategy 

A strategy would really only have one core goal : Reducing the power of the markets. Make smaller markets until you don’t need one to satisfy certain needs. This is not communism or socialism at all, it is called independence. Autonomy. Make things progressively less dependend on cashflows, reduce cashflows, break up larger flows into smaller ones, break up larger companies into smaller ones, make them more local, and above all increase the role of renewables in driving them.

Renewable energy can be centralized, but in general it is localized, distributed in nature. That means that if you produce the things you need using renewables your production capacity is limited, so central production and global distribution of products is not the most logical thing to expect. The most logical thing is to have many comparable production facilities producing what people need for each area, like bakeries and buchers, taylors, carpenters. All trades from the bygone fully renewable powered past (although people burned wood).

The point is not to go back to the middle ages, but to create pockets of wealth that are absolutely robust to what happens elsewhere. It is impossible to do that using fossil fuels. It is the obvious way to do things if we use renewables. It does mean less globalism, less international banks and logistics. It would mean more equally distributed and attainable wealth. More jobs, more social coherence, because we would better understand our own role in our culture. Being usefull is more important than being liked on facebook.

As advocates of the robo(eco)nomy we don’t think we need full employment to have a wealthy society, what else did we invent all those machines for? They take jobs our of our hands, they run fine on renewables. But it may be hard to come to grips with not having to do anything, and it may be more secure to not allow anyone to monopolize certain types of manufacturing. In any case we should start breaking the glass box of carbon based economics, smell the fresh air and feel the Sun that can provide 5900 times the energy we need, the wind, and geothermal resources we can build a whole new type of economy with, before we let ourselves be herded into a real steel box of non cooperative desperation, the soylent green world.

Notice any resemblence. 

We often see the question "Why invest in solar" or "What makes solar a good investment". You could extrapolate that to "What makes renewables a good investment". It is necessary to write a post about this topic because the short answer is : They are either no investments, or the only type you can really make. The way we think about allocating resources (investing) is so deeply ingrained and accepted that it is hard to pry open the concept and pour some light in, but here goes.

Normal investment works like this : You get a buch of Euro’s or Dollars (your own reserves you invest or a loan), you spend them on products (say a copy machine), you get money for the use of those products (people pay for copies) and that is how you pay/earn bcak your loan/investment. This has been the model for decades, it seems to be how everyone understands investment works. But this is not investment, it is consumption. Even if you get money for allowing people to use your copy machine the only thing going on is consumption. You consume paper, plastic, electronics, electricity, so coal/gas, diesel for the paper logistics, the car of the maintenace guy, the meat he buys for his BBQ, the dirty kerosine burned in the engines of the containership that brought the copier from China to the US. consumption consumption consumption. Nowhere during the lifecycle of your investment is anything produced that replaces or replenishes the ‘reserves’, maybe the paper mill plants new trees, but that’s doubtfull.

Investment used to work differently. It used to mean that you go out and invest in some labour (pay them with savings) to work land to harvest crops that would add to the real food inventory (a type of energy inventory). You would sell the crops on the market for a fair price (causing a tiny amount of deflation, because the amount of money did not change) and had food to eat, and reserves to do this again.

You invest with a profit if you are left with more than you began with after the process is done. If you are left with less, you consumed

Now most investments these days are actually wild jumps into completely waste. Build a road? At the end you are left with a road that will cause more cars to burn more fuels, wear out more tires, cause more accidents, damage more nature. The whole process seems to come at the cost of the money invested, but it doesn’t. It comes at the cost of the resources consumed. If towns along the new road start booming that is because they now draw money away from other places. That money is then spend in the towns, to build stuff, do all kinds of upgrades all consumptive, all wastefull. It seems there can be no good done according to us but this is a fact of our modern economy : It is geared to consume, mainly fossil fuels.

Now this could all be different, but because there is one category of product that really pushes itself into every economic nook and cranny, fossil fuels, it is not. Because our economy is ‘carbon based’ it uses fossil fuels in nearly every step from mining to production to logistics to marketing and sales to consumption. And because of that the economy is extremely wastefull. Why? because if you make a milk bottle once and use it 20 times before it breaks, you burn gas to blow it only onces in a while. While if you use plastic containers to ship the milk you make and sell a container every time, you buy a petrochemical product with your milk, one you throw away. That process generates better cashflows for the carbon industry than using glass bottles. The economy is the maximization of the utilization of fossil fuels.

Now suppose a grocery store buys a solar panel plant that generates lots of electricity. It ‘invests’ in that plant. It then has to pay back the loand over a number of years. When the loan is payed of it is now custom to also destroy the asset! But you don’t you leave the plant running for another 20 years. In that time you are ADDING to the total reserves. You can use the now free electricity to clean glass milkbottles and collect them and bring the back full to the doors of your customers. You electric milk car doesn’t cost anything to run, except a bit of maintenance you pay for with milk credits?

Say you use the electricty to make fertilizer to grow more grass for the cows. More than there was before, at zero cost. Or you use it to pasturize it, and sell it at a lower cost than gas heat pasturized milk. This solar power plant keeps adding to your wealth, and you don’t have to pay for it, your reserves are growing depending on how you utilize the energy. This is real profit, yield, return on investment. The other stuff with fossil fuels is wasting resources.

So should you invest in renewables? The answer is of course YES. You only invest if you invest in renewables or some process with a net positive resource balance. Don’t look at money, look at what usefull raw materials come out of the whole thing. If you see our point you will realize the whole ‘investment community’ is a buch of malarky that doesn’t add any real value to society, the fate of humanity, on the contrary. It is an industry focussed on getting a cut of whatever resources are sacrificed and wasted, and making sure fossil fuels get to every last valuable object or resource on Earth, and consumes it. 

Rather than thinking highly of investment bankers building mega projects we should look at the actual material yield they realize. If it is negative the whole thing is a cost to an already overburdoned planet. We should not allow it. The ‘Circular Economy’ is one type of solution to improve things, but it won’t be improved until the use of fossil fuels has become an option, not a given. For that to happen we need to have more renewable energy sources.

So not only is investing in renewable energy one of the few real investments, it is also the way towards turing our options of allocating our resouces back from being wastefull by definition, to possibly creative, regenerative, accumulative and adding to our reserves and security. 

See more on this on roboeconomy.com