This is an insane take. Of course there are other areas that are growing or could grow if there was investment.
The problem is an absolute lack of vision on the part of those holding the capital.
Meeting the challenges of climate change could hold huge opportunities. Look at China’s massive expansion in renewables, look at the expansion of renewables in the US despite political headwinds.
Have some imagination, break out of your echo chamber. AI ain’t the only game to be played.
It's not lack of vision. It's that capital demands gambling. Everyone knows you could plough money into big projects in the US and double your money reliably. But the powers that be do not want that. They want to gamble, and try to become trillionaire #2.
It's not insane. The GP is correctly describing a bubble economy.
The money chasing investments is orders of magnitude larger than the money people have on their pockets to spend. As a consequence, the only profitable thing to do is sell capital goods to make business and there is no profit on selling actually useful things.
China is in a different reality in large part because of their capital barriers that stop money from flowing in. Countries with bad reputation are also less affected.
What the GP gets wrong is that none of this makes AI a good business. Instead, it makes Nvidia a good business, but that's not news.
Looking at venture funding, it's definitely true. That doesn't mean other problems don't exist or aren't worth solving. But the concentration of (competing) capital and talent is insane.
The skepticism is from people who are making money emitting CO2 and don’t want to stop making money in the same old way. It is well documented that oil companies have been sewing skepticism for decades, go figure.
Blaming the consumer is a time-honoured way to ensure nothing is done. The consumer can't pick options which don't exist, so the producer says oh well, you can either burn coal or you can go without light - there's no mention that the producer doesn't have to burn coal to make electricity, just straight to blaming you for wanting light.
It's a two-sided sword. When you are the consumer, blame the producer. When you are the producer, blame the consumer. In this way everybody can blame someone else and ensure that nothing is done.
For example, more people buying EVs can meaningfully reduce CO2 consumption, but you can easily find millions of people ideologically opposed to that.
Or just look at how reliably people reject any policy that vaguely looks like a carbon tax scheme. "Fix the earth somehow, now, but I'm not paying a cent, because that wasn't my fault!" is everyone's rallying cry.
> For example, more people buying EVs can meaningfully reduce CO2 consumption, but you can easily find millions of people ideologically opposed to that.
If you're talking rich democratic countries, largely only in the US (this would generally be a _very_ fringe position in Europe, say, even on the hard right). Where the fossil fuel industry spends a lot of money convincing people to be ideologically opposed to that. That is, it's still a producer-driven problem.
When you are informed, you hold to account the person responsible.
The entire issue of incentives to consume being a reason to blame consumers, is obviated when there are entire industries that have spent significant amounts of money and capital to ensure that voters cannot come to a consensus.
The science on global warming was clear eons ago. The true revolution has been in scientists learning how weak facts are when going up against media machines.
At some point, people should agree they are responsible for the opinions they hold. Otherwise there's no point even arguing, because the only alternatives are that (1) the modern society fails, or (2) we will have an iron-fisted eco-fascist ruler who will "restore the balance" by stomping on people's will.
> Or just look at how reliably people reject any policy that vaguely looks like a carbon tax scheme. "Fix the earth somehow, now, but I'm not paying a cent, because that wasn't my fault!" is everyone's rallying cry.
I still don't get how people got to that. In my head a decent first step for a carbon tax would be producing made consumer goods; the end result would be that yes, capitalism 'should' eventually win out and the more ecologically sound solutions would prevail.
They have renewable only energy plans. So the choices do exist. Not to mention that the choice to go without something is a valid choice. If one believes strongly enough about something, then they will sacrifice for it.
This ignores too much to be a good faith argument like lack of options to choose. Ability to choose in absence of regulation, the fact that industry spends millions to curb any regulation and I know ok missing other factors.
Individual choice is actually a small part of this wheel, almost negligible.
The vast majority of polluting is done by industry, and they also do the most not to make things better and actively often try to make things worse.
People want the products. Industry wouldn't exist, or not at this scale, without that. The easiest way to see this is air travel. The vast majority of it is unnecessary - business trips that could be a zoom call, vacations, shipping, etc. People got to every place on earth using trains and ships before air travel. Possible exceptions are medical transport and some types of products, which are tiny by comparison. So yeah, pretty much all on the consumer choices.
For instance, consumers want fast and high speed rail and light rail in cities, yet the federal government is still subsidizing hundreds of billions of dollars to car centric projects rather than allowing municipalities and state governments to have control over those funds they come with strings attached that force them to choose car centric options.
Affordable housing is another example. Consumers want reliable cheap homes but every single attempt to unseat obtuse regulations and policies that make home bulldog a nightmare across metropolitan areas all over the Us entrenched home owners fight in as many ways possible to keep new homes from being built. This pushes more people into farther out suburbs that makes an existing issue even worse.
So no, it’s not all consumer choices, not even “pretty much”.
The false dichotomy that it’s simply choice is not a good faith argument.
The other flip of the coin is this: people can consume in ecologically smart and sustainable ways, and often given the choice they do but lack of choice exists across most sectors that don’t allow them to or are knowingly priced higher than the alternative options due to poor regulation or lack of proper subsidy on the scale of the dirty alternative.
And we subsidize a lot when it comes to oil, natural gas and coal, let alone other industrial polluting industries.
"For instance, consumers want fast and high speed rail and light rail in cities, yet the federal government is still subsidizing hundreds of billions of dollars to car centric projects rather than allowing municipalities and state governments to have control over those funds they come with strings attached that force them to choose car centric options."
Oftentimes that comes from road taxes, so it's really car use subsidizing the car-centric projects. If states and municipalities (and the voters) really want it, then why aren't they subsidizing the public transport options... choices - there arent that many who want it bad enough to pay for it.
"Affordable housing is another example. Consumers want reliable cheap homes but every single attempt to unseat obtuse regulations and policies that make home bulldog a nightmare across metropolitan areas all over the Us entrenched home owners fight in as many ways possible to keep new homes from being built. This pushes more people into farther out suburbs that makes an existing issue even worse."
Not really. Consumer polling shows people want things like bigger, fancier single family homes over basic small apartments. Of course they only want them in "good" neighborhoods too. These preferences are choices.
"The false dichotomy that it’s simply choice is not a good faith argument."
Dichotomy implies there are only two choices. I'm simply following the logic and data. As soon as you give people the resources for "better" housing/transport/etc they take it, regardless of the externalities. Check the size and quality of new homes, the requirements and accessories for new cars, etc. The standards and options for things only goes up as the affordability does. If you can show this is not true, then I'd love to see real world examples of the majority of people choosing smaller homes, simplier cars, etc when affordability is not a factor.
"And we subsidize a lot when it comes to oil, natural gas and coal,"
Do you have examples? Most of the recent subsidies in the past decade and tax credits I've seen have been around solar, more efficient appliances, etc.
Oftentimes that comes from road taxes, so it's really car use subsidizing the car-centric projects.
The various vehicle taxes haven't fully covered roadway expansion and maintenance for years. The national average is somewhere in the neighborhood of 60% of costs, I believe.
No it's not on consumer choice. The US government is SUBSIDIZING gasoline when it should be taxing it at a higher rate because of the environmental side-effects. This is standard economics theory, you tax any form of an environmental damage (e.g. carbon) at the rate of what it costs to clean it up.
Can you give me some examples of gas being subsidized?
"This is standard economics theory, you tax any form of an environmental damage (e.g. carbon) at the rate of what it costs to clean it up."
Again, that's a choice for which the population's opinions differ. You have some people who would tax people for existing because of their carbon dioxide output, body heat, space they take up, etc.
Gasoline is heavily taxed as well, far in excess of the subsidies it receives compared to typical consumer goods. Jet fuel itself has almost no tax net of its subsidies, however passenger aviation is also heavily taxed compared to most consumer goods. It is for sure incorrect in both cases to say that these goods are “heavily subsidized” as a way to absolve consumers of any responsibility for their ecological choices.
If there was enough demand for high speed rail, couldn't a company form a profitable business model to provide that service? Many people don't take trains because the service is abysmal in the US. People who visit Europe tend to use the trains and prefer it over flying. It seems we're in a chicken and egg situation in the US. Even subsidies to Amtrak don't seem to fix the issue.
As long as the pollution is a negative externality and the polluting option is (immediately) cheaper, people (especially poorer people) will choose the cheaper option.
Microsoft had a neat trick here in the Netherlands: instead of opening a new site they decided to make a their existing site higher by adding a few floors.
Ofcourse that only works once the Dutch borg adapts!
> Perhaps they’re afraid announcement would trigger divestment
S&P don't get a choice around whether they announce their methodology or not.
That said, the rule change at the NASDAQ 100 doesn't seem to have impacted pricing or allocation. I can't imagine that many people are that concerned about this. (I posted the public-comment request from S&P to HN [1]. The response was crickets.)
Just pick up your instrument and make some noise. DAWs are time sinks.
Music is about the “feel” first and foremost. Playing music on a physical instrument or singing is a feel thing.
DAWs are tools for polishing what was created with feeling into something “produced”. If that’s what you want to end up with, that’s ok. Just be clear with yourself on which you’re trying to do.
I had this exact realization. Taking chords from a chord progression generator, putting it into FL studio, adding a random melody that stays in the key from a cool synth preset, some random drum loop, and end result? I guess it could be called music. Its a combination of sounds that doesnt sound actively bad.
I noticed the problem when I realized I couldn't make music in a specific mood or genre. Sometimes I'd finish my song and think "oh wow, a happy rock song" or "a sad edm song" or whatever but it was always just random chance where I ended up. With music theory knowledge I could always add more instruments or notes that could exist in that place but with 0 direction, whatever I made was always listenable but never more than that.
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