Quote:
Originally Posted by Exeric
Yeah, but then why doesn't some smart person in a traffic center in a major city collude to make all the traffic lights quit working. Or better yet, make the signals conflict to cause collisions between cars, like I saw on an episode of XFIles. It's true that there are a lot of very very stupid people, but even I knew that Enron was messing with us in California and causing a power shortage. I didn't know it was Enron at the time but I knew it was extremely fishy and I was mad.
Actually, a lot of people who are the worst offenders in any civilization make the excuses you are making, though I'm not saying you are one of them. As long as one can make people apathetic, like your comment encourages, then the public can be perfect marks. The point is to try to improve things before you leave the planet rather than join the crowd in taking advantage of others.
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The greatest detriment to a democracy is propaganda.
Look up a guy named Edward Bernays, he was the nephew of Sigmund Freud. His specialty was propaganda and when the corporations got a hold of him it was a marriage in heaven.
This is a true story:
The tobacco companies went to him, I think in the 20's, and said they were losing half their market because it was a taboo for women to smoke. Bernays had several prominent women all smoke in public during a major parade with the news papers present. He called the cigarettes "freedom sticks" and pronounced that women who smoked were expressing their independence. Bingo, women started smoking everywhere!
With that said, I still think the wild card here is technology. Once we get to the point where you can buy a home with PV in place that will supply all your power new homes will be expected to have those systems in place just like when we got running water and toilets in homes.
Right now Elon Musk from Tesla is making cars that people want. I just saw that Nissan has a lease for the Leaf at $199 a month, I'm thinking of getting it. I drive the car for three years with no concerns about batteries or being stuck with a car I can't sell because technology has surpassed the technology in the car I'm leasing.
The last thing anyone should think is that technology isn't going to far surpass what we have now. When I was building Sinclair computers back in the late sixties people thought it wasn't much more than an geek exercise. When Steve Jobs put the mouse on a computer everyone laughed. Don't underestimate technology. If I sell a new home with a system in place that saves on the rising costs of electricity, people are going to buy it. When you go into a HD or Amazon and buy a system that you plug into your wall that sells power back to the grid people will want it. Amazon sells something right now that does that. What do you think will happen when it improves? Module efficiencies aren't going down they're going up, their cost is going down. That's called free enterprise and when it's combined with new technology it's a powerful thing.
Rob