[ExI] lotta splainin to do

[Adrian Tymes]

On Tue, Nov 15, 2022 at 3:50 PM spike jones via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> This is important stuff.  We are at a time when plenty of us here foresee
> that China will take over Taiwan, giving China a monopoly on the world’s
> most advanced computer chips.  If China manages to pull that off while the
> US is weak and divided against itself, then it can export the less advanced
> chips and keep the more advanced ones for itself.  China generates power at
> a lower cost than anyone, since it makes all those solar panels which it
> subsequently exports while generating its own power using coal (still the
> cheapest way to generate power.)  These two factors will hand China the
> ability to mint the world’s money, while the USA is farting around in a
> useless attempt at fighting against cryptocurrency.
>
>
>
> Adrian is there a flaw in this reasoning somewhere?  Please find one, for
> I don’t like where this all leads.
>

If China starts refusing to export certain stuff, then the rest of the
world gets it from elsewhere.  China's "monopoly" only exists so long as it
is cheaper to get it from China; a refusal to export breaks that condition.

As to coal being cheapest, that has not been the case for a while - at
least, not for new plants (which China needs to worry about given its
growing demand):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_electricity#/media/File:20201019_Levelized_Cost_of_Energy_(LCOE,_Lazard)_-_renewable_energy.svg
https://energyinnovation.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Levelized-cost-components.png
https://www.freeingenergy.com/the-market-has-spoken-clean-energy-just-became-the-cheapest-source-of-electricity/
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