Deregulated energy markets accelerate solar adoption

I think you are misguided because of a true belief in "the system". The problem is systems often fail to handle bad-faith actors who intentionally abuse them. Absent a higher system, we lack good means to address this. But the system is not a moral good and we don't owe it to anyone or anything to maintain arbitrary rules when our enemies are using them to hamstring us and threaten our citizens, liberties, and way of life.

beijing has a consistent policy of subsidizing and dumping to gain dominance of key industries. metals, energy, etc. they are surely aware of the security implications of this. it seems to be their response to the mutually assured destruction of nuclear weapons: since those are no longer usable, create a new asymmetric situation where china can install herself as international dictator without or in addition to military force.

We can't afford not to respond. If we are unwilling to go to war, we'd have to concede to being china's bitch, which is a worse option than war.

Importing solar panels with no means to repair, replace, and resupply would absolutely make things worse; it'd increase dependence on a technology over which we lack control.

This isn't "imperialist" rhetoric, I'm quite plainly speaking in terms of maintaining our own autonomy and independence, not in terms of coercing others.

I don't think you can credit technology from foreign grad students at American universities or companies to those foreign countries. Doubly so since said chinese grad students have a long track record of facilitating the IP theft we're discussing.

Withdrawing would not free other countries to do so; the core difference here is china is a bad actor who exploits and steals IP. not to mention we could get away with this because we have a military of a certain size; smaller countries probably could not.

Regardless of whether we produce domestically, there's no particular reason why we can't work with other cheap nations within our sphere of influence (probably latam) to handle production.

A better solution is recognition that like all other math, patterns, and formulations of matter at micro and macro scales; those are natural patterns and the most optimal configuration for a precise enough criteria is going to be in the range of zero to one single natural solutions.

Should there be some process for rewarding those who discover those most optimal solutions to problems? Maybe.

Patents as they are currently implemented seem to be even less beneficial to the progress of science and useful arts (trades skills) than copyright. Unlike the consumer protection of brand reputation (trade mark); both create artificial scarcity and impede the development, distribution, and diversity of manufacturers of works which would benefit society and citizens.

I am not confident that this comment promotes an atmosphere of curious inquiry based on a presumption of good faith.

Calling out a rather destructive take with just harsh NO is pretty high on the the hierarchy of disagreement. If you refer to the "bitch" statement that is quoting the person I replied to .... Their own comment seems heavily concerned with "being a bitch" which implies deep insecurity or trauma on their part .... Pretty typical maladaptive coping mechanism...

Are all these extra words to say the same thing I already did better for curiosity?

It’s a crude term, sure, but sums up a potential future where total dependence for critical materials leads to one nation being able to do relatively whatever she wants while the other is stuck taking terms as given. If you’d prefer “highly disadvantaged diplomatic, economic, and security situation” I can say that, but this is an internet comment not a freaking Brookings Institute report.

Calling me an insane jingoist with no particular rationale isn’t really helpful. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe you are, but neither of us will ever learn which at that rate.

> We can't afford not to respond. If we are unwilling to go to war, we'd have to concede to being [C]hina's bitch, which is a worse option than war.

Current US foreign policy is a bit all over the place, but it's difficult to determine if the US is actually willing to go to war or not to defend its allies or even its own interests. There were the attacks on the Houthis, ok, but in order to facilitate that the US requires military bases outside the US territories proper. At the same time, the US is threatening to stop supporting allied nations, which means it's also threatening to close its bases outside the US and its territories (why would those nations host the bases if not in exchange for some degree of protection?). This will put the US in a position where it is unable to prosecute a war effectively.

This sends a signal that the present US government may not be willing to go to war. Of course, as with all things Trump this could all be bluster and provocation to see some desired action or response, we'll know more in a few months or so.

Insane because almost none of this is based on reality and as another commenter said is just US imperialist propaganda. Literally hyper concerned with dominance and zero sum winner take all logic aka fascist. Using sexual terms to illicit an emotional response as if China is RAPING us by not giving us everything for nothing(a bitch)? again a fascist style of logic that the ONLY outcome is SOMEONE being the bitch ...

You talk about going back to era of enforced IP as if it isn't the USA that has led to the modern draconian farce of IP .... The golden age of the US growth was when we had a similar disregard for such silly concepts... Or ignoring the fact the vast majority of the US industry base was built on "stolen" British IP?

Jingoist because you are obsessed with war and violence and making things/people"bitches" thru petty dominance rather than leading by excellence as the US has some in the past.

So to summarize

Insane because lack of connection to reality and history and actual geopolitics beyond usa supremacism.

Jingoist because immediate reaction to war/violence/domination/humiliation of enemies etc .

I live in Argentina, so my belief in "the system" is that it's comprehensively rigged. Also, a friend of mine was raped by the police under the US-backed last Argentine dictatorship, so I'm not super enthusiastic about dictatorships like the PRC, nor about LatAm being inside the US's sphere of influence.

This dumping stuff is nonsense. If you investigate more deeply than reading PR, you'll come to the same conclusion. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43463872 for more details on that.

If "being china's bitch", as you put it, were the alternative to war, it would not be "a worse option than war", because the PRC has ICBMs and 600 nuclear warheads. War with China would mean every major US city and every Chinese city becoming a radioactive wasteland. There are people who would prefer that to some kind of unfavorable economic situation, but I do not think those people merit a place in public discourse.

What I'm advocating, however, is not that the US accept an unfavorable economic situation and give up autonomy and independence; it's that the US cease to force an unfavorable economic situation on itself by sabotaging its own energy supply, which is fundamental to both transportation and to all forms of heavy industry. The foreseeable energy future is solar, and US policy is built on wilful blindness to that fact, a blindness which will cripple its industry's capacity to compete with China over at least the next three decades.

Please try to make HN comments more like a freaking Brookings Institute report instead of more like /b/ on 4chan. Doing the opposite fosters the kind of environment you claim to want to avoid, where people call you names instead of rebutting your claims with evidence.

China's trade abuses are insane. Firstly, china has better than 80% marketshare. Most people agree that a monopoly of this size is net corrosive to innovation and competition. What's more, china massively subsidizes industries she prefers. Both in terms of direct subsidies, but also in that the PBOC can direct any and all banks through the country to offer privileged terms on loans or capital. This often doesn't factor into western analyses because it's simply not a tool we use. It's also not the sort of thing WTO/GATT rules are written to consider, see prior comment about the system not being set up to deal with chinese. You're right that there's less evidence of explicit dumping under international law, though since the domestic chinese solar market is so much smaller that's not an entirely meaningful number, but I was using it more as a colloquialism people would recognize to indicate state-backed overcapacity to knock out competition than as a legal term of art.

And you're assuming being stuck under the thumb of an illiberal regime hostile to our beliefs and way of life, a regime with a long history of violating basic liberties, of mass murder, and of ethnic (han) supremacy, would stop at trade concessions. I don't believe we could reach a point where we could make tolerable policy changes to appease the PRC.

I don't think it's an issue of us being blind. There are plenty of contributing factors. For one, we are terrible at industrial policy and it's ridden with recapture. E.g. Ford shutting down a battery plant because the UAW demanded (and gov't generally supported) the fact that they'd have to re-hire and re-train tons of UAW employees at the new factory. This is objectively not the way to handle what we believe to be a critical energy supply issue. The fact that it's become incredibly difficult to produce solar panels or batteries competitively, both due to higher wages and more stringent regulations than one would find in china. This is exacerbated by decades of conspiracy to wink-and-nod at illegal immigration suppressing investment in automation, meaning catch-up would be painful and take time. Etc.

There's also the fact that, as it stands now, we cannot replace our grid with renewables. It's also much easier to make a large chunk of it nuclear, but the environmental/clean energy groups have mostly been captured by nuke-hating tree-huggers for half a century now. Objectively you do not want to make all your generation wind/solar because your storage requirements are much higher, because the LCOE numbers people use in their calculations (Lazard's are popular) are notoriously bad, and because storage tech either isn't there yet or is cost-prohibitive.

I am very frustrated by people who 1. try to reduce this to "one simple thing" that they happen to support, and likely supported long before and apart from current issues, 2. people who see it as an opportunity for recapture, and 3. the head-in-the-sand denialists who just don't know or care that America's position and people are threatened by the way things are headed.

I tend to agree with you. There's a valid point that we shouldn't be consigning young Americans to die in foreign wars, but I do believe we should still maintain foreign bases and a global military. I think the past several administrations have made critical mistakes w.r.t. our diplomatic and military posture.

I'm making more of a positive statement than a normative one. I'm aware the political winds are rather against me in this and wouldn't expect to be able to sell this particular set of ideas to either party, but I still believe them to be our best option.

You're making more unsubstantiated accusations and saying I'm a propagandist, a fascist, blah blah. What is your support for this?

I am concerned with dominance because I don't trust china to hold a military advantage and not abuse it against my people. I expect multiple other countries feel this way, which is fine. All of us will probably jockey for position and I'm arguing we should focus all our resources behind maintaining ours.

Kind of insane that you think because of this I'm a fascist. I'd struggle to think of a credible definition of fascism, even one with which I disagree, that encompasses this. Can you clarify as to whether you're referring fascism as in the definition and political system or in the sense of "orange man is a fascist"?

I specifically talked about disregarding china's IP in response to her disregarding ours. I think we may be in violent disagreement on this point. I didn't say we should go bomb beijing to protect American patents, I said we should cheerfully rip hers off in return. From what you're saying, you believe this would be a good thing and help American growth; I agree.

Obsession with war isn't precisely a good definition of jingoism; regardless, I'm not. I'd very much like to avoid war. As Clausewitz put it, war is an extension of policy by other means. My concern is that we lose most of our non-military means - trade, diplomacy, etc. - due to economic and industrial weakness and insecurity, thus leaving only one open for important issues. I wish to avoid war and pursue peace through strength.

I said nothing about humiliation etc. of enemies. You're reading that into something I said, not sure why.

I'd agree with you except I didn't direct it at anyone. If I had called someone a bitch that would be different and your complaint would make sense.

It's still an internet forum. It can be high-quality while people still use a colloquialism or two.

Your last two paragraphs are almost perfect satire.

Renewables don't work. Nuclear is much easier. It's the environmentalists at fault. LCOE is notoriously bad. Storage doesn't work.

Also, you're angry at people who are head in the sand denialists who don't realise or care that America is under threat.

The person you're discussing this with is totally correct. America is throwing away it's future with this approach to energy. And you are a perfect avatar of the people enthusiasticly commiting this self-destruction.

I'm not really going to engage anymore. The support is self evident in your own statements and it's obvious you just want to play bad faith games.

If you don't see how becoming or making "bitches" is not related to humiliation I'm not going to bother.

If you dont think "the orange man" is a fascist, then any further peaceable discussion is a waste of time. See you in the field

Fascism: characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.