[ExI] The Actual Visionary of the Future

[spike]

>...Do you understand the logictics of car production? Battery
manufacturing?
Dynamics of fleet exchange? Recharging infrastructure? Including the money
to fund it all? Do the math, it is really quite illuminating. Eugen

I have found it most illuminating to try to sketch out a math/economic model
for every wild idea.  You guys who like to make fun of spreadsheet users, I
accept the observation they don't do everything.  But they are brilliant at
some tasks, such as making 1 digit of precision estimates for time and money
required to do some big tasks.

We are coming into a rapid-change period in America which presents some
enormous challenges but also some enormous opportunity.  Automation is
taking over a lot of jobs which causes solutions along with problems: armies
of unemployed people are a problem, but also means we have the available
manpower to do what comes next.  The unemployed can supply lower cost labor
than they were before when more people were employed.  

We can do things like build solar cell factories and get armies of proles to
go out and install them on rooftops at lower cost.  Send the power directly
into the grid, so the homeowner doesn't do any of the complicated expensive
tasks associated with PVs, no batteries in the home, no inverters, none of
that.  All she does is sign up to have PVs installed and supply the roof, in
exchange for a reduced power bill.  Think of it: you could arrange for
bikini-clad PV installers for the single hetero male homeowners, or beefcake
men for the ladies or those so inclined, you could get specialty PV
cheerleaders like Your Humble Servant to wave an American flag and give the
homeowners pep talks on how all this generates our own energy for greater
independence (by god) reduce and eventually eliminate our dependence on Arab
energy-tyrants, help to save the planet, rescue humanity from itself, and
yakity yak and bla bla.  I can see myself doing something like that; we
could have some fun with it.  Yes it will cost money.  If we have a
believable plan that pencils out, investors will come.

Sheesh they are doing this in GERMANY!  We yanks have more rooftop area per
capita and way more sun than they do, and they can supply a cost model.
They have the PV factories, so we hire the kraut engineers over here to help
build our PV factories using our cheap labor.   

We can go from a discontented idler society to one in which most people are
cheerfully working their asses off most of the time.

This is what we mean by Practical Optimism.

spike