
Bill Gates Expected to Create Billion-Dollar Fund for Clean Energy (2015) - noobermin
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/28/us/politics/bill-gates-expected-to-create-billion-dollar-fund-for-clean-energy.html
======
rm_-rf_slash
If a "clean energy" philanthropist really wanted to steer the world away from
fossil fuels, they would lobby for the replacement of coal and oil with
nuclear.

It is impossible to meet rising global energy needs without either a: nuclear
energy as a wedge, b: divine advancements in renewable tech and cost, or c:
burning a ton ton ton of fossil fuels.

I dream of a post-energy-scarcity-star-trek future pretty often, but the fact
is that barring some revolutionary technological advancement, nuclear is the
only long term hope we have to wean ourselves away from fossil fuels and
towards renewable energies. "Green" tech it ain't either: refining rare earths
is environmentally disastrous and even recycling the waste can be quite
hazardous, such as lead battery recycling plants in Africa resulting in lead
poisoning in surrounding communities.

If we want to be serious about renewable energy and the long road it will take
to get there, we will have to get over our fears of Chernobyl and Homer
Simpson running the power plant

~~~
dredmorbius
Gates _is_ supporting nuclear initiatives, including backing specific
ventures, such as the TerraPower "Nuclear Candle" in situ sealed breeder
design that "burns up" current spent nuclear fuel (plus a breeder initiator of
uranium).

More generally, though nuclear faces considerable obstacles, among the most
serious are designing a high-risk, high-complexity system for a very-long-term
deployment. How long do you expect nuclear to be human's primary fuel source,
and how do you plan to deal with non-technical challenges.

Modern technical society is about 200-250 years old -- most sources date the
start of the Industrial Revolution to about 1800. Virtually all our present
institutions, companies, science and understand, etc., have emerged or
substantially evolved during this time (though of course many trace back
further).

Running nuclear power at global scale from here until Doomsday means planning
at the level of centuries, if not millennia or even millions of years. That's
timescales exceeding the oldest people, companies, governments, schools,
religions, languages, even basic systems of morality and ethics.

Provisioning global-scale nuclear power would require on the order of 15,000
plants operating simultaneously. Unavoidable metal embrittlement limits these
to a practical life of about 40 years. That means commissioning and
decommissioning plants at the rate of one per day, and both processes are
themselves 20-40 year endeavours.

That occurring through political and economic crises, wars, natural disasters,
political and moral revolutions, and more. Things which are somewhat difficult
to engineer around.

Even trace amounts of some nuclear contaminants are exceptionally poisonous,
and at the proposed scale of operation, risks of release are decidedly non-
negligible. Present human experience is limited to about 400-500 reactor
cores, and there have been at least 4 major core integrity breaches, including
Chernobyl and Fukushima. Substantial fault in _all_ accident cases devolves to
human and management practices, again, exceptionaly difficult to engineer
around. With 30 times that many reactors operating from now until Doomsday,
what acceptible accident rate are you targeting? We're at about 1:50 reactor
years. Are you going to bump that up 10 - 100 fold?

At 1 per 100 reactor-years, we're looking at 150 core meltdowns pere century.
At 1:1000, 15. You'd need to exceed 1:10,000 to limit yourself to 1.5 failures
per century, and again, that through political strife, economic crisis, mob
and mafia involvement, corruption, war, and natural disaster. Forever.

Renewable energy systems based on solar, wind, geothermal, and hydroelectric
sources have far more benign failure rates. And I say that _despite_ the fact
that the worst power plant disasters are included in that list. China's
Banqiao Dam failed in 1975 (itself a story of engineering, design, management,
communications, and meterological factors) killing 171,000. _Despite that, the
region is now home to over 7 million people._ The _long term_ effects of such
failures is relatively minimal, compared to the nondiscretionary multi-century
wildlife refuges now surrounding the former Chernobyl and Fukushima sites, as
well as smaller-factor radiation problems at locations such as Hanford,
Washington.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam)

More generally, the problem I see is that which was the real core message of
the 1972 book _Limits to Growth_. There are limts to growth, and at
exponential scales, those are reached rapidly even with increasing resources
or pollution-absorption capacities by powers of 2, or 10, or 100. Those limits
need to be embraced.

Nuclear power is just one of numerous cases of pleading for exceptions from
the Gods of Complexity. The real challenge (and one Gates also acknowledges,
though generally privately) is of accepting the limits of humans' footprint on
this little, and rare, and lonely planet of ours.

~~~
wdewind
It's worth noting that, afaik, none of the reactors that have failed have been
built using the "newest generation" of reactors, which are supposed to be much
safer. This is a double edged sword, of course, because that also means they
haven't been tested nearly as long. But I don't think the math to scaling
nuclear power is as simple as we've fucked up 4/500 times, just extrapolate
the numerator and denominator and you've got it. As we get more experienced
with the technology we'll get better. And any conversation about the safety of
nuclear needs to contain the relative risk of _not_ using nuclear.

> More generally, the problem I see is that which was the real core message of
> the 1972 book Limits to Growth. There are limts to growth, and at
> exponential scales, those are reached rapidly even with increasing resources
> or pollution-absorption capacities by powers of 2, or 10, or 100. Those
> limits need to be embraced.

Embracing those limits requires, as far as I can tell, eugenic-style control
over breeding. Personally I'd rather the human race burns itself out than go
down that path.

~~~
dredmorbius
I'm a fan of empirical over theoretical data and arguments. The 4:500 rate is
what we've achieved, and, belabouring the point, _all_ accidents have had
massive _sociological_ elements. I very strongly recommend reading Charles
Perrow ( _Normal Accidents_ , but also other works).

Yes, something's got to control human breeding. Either humans or something
other than human. Most likely viral or bacteriological, in my book.

~~~
wdewind
I generally agree, but in the case of the environment we're not going to have
clear data on what to do. How are you comparing the risk of building nuclear
to the risk of not building nuclear? It's a _very_ difficult thing to do.

~~~
dredmorbius
That gets into some pretty profound discussions of just what "risk" is.

The current benchmark (e.g., used in the IPCC's own assessments of carbon-
neutral energy options) is of lives per GW generation. I find this naive on
numerous counts, e.g., my citation of the Banqiao disaster -- horrible if you
were caught up in it (though also note: the bulk of the deaths werev from
disease and starvation in the aftermath, the acute toll from the inundation
was ~40-50k).

Virtually all deaths due to conventional processes -- physical, heat, trauma,
even chemical -- are _fairly_ ameliorable by direct precautions. Even in the
case of a massive dam failure -- Banqiao, Johnstown, Vajont -- advance warning
of a few minutes would have reduced fatalities tremendously, and with hours or
days, all but entirely. Each of these disasters was precipitated by clear
warning signs, though they were unheeded, for various reasons. In the
Johnstown and Vajont cases, state of the art in engineering and geology was a
major component. Perverse incentives to plant operators existed in _all_
cases.

Looking at instances of explosions also suggests that warning, evacuation, and
shelter could save virtually all lives, assuming a proper understanding of
circumstances. Halifax, Canada, Galveston, TX, West, TX, Martinez, CA,
Tianjin, China, and Lac Megantic, Canada all represented substantial loss of
life which could have been avoided through both better advanced risk
management and notice in advance of the precipitating disasters. Contrast the
Pepcon disaster, among the largest non-nuclear blasts ever. Immediate deaths,
though, were only two (another 370 or so injured), in large part due to the
facility's isolation from any surrounding structures.

By contrast, long-term chronic exposures can be quite debilitating. Minimata,
Japan, Love Canal, Hinkley, CA ("Erin Brokovich"), Bhopol, India, Agent Orange
throughout Vietnam and SE Asia, and industrial contamination throughout China,
will likely be with us for a long, long time. Flint, MI, can be added to that
list.

Chemicals can generally be mitigated through binding and sequestration
operations, nucleotides are more difficult. Long-term low-level chronic
emissions, or perhaps worse: punctuated equilibria, concern me.

The bigger concern I have though is for _systemic_ failure. Nuclear energy
provisioning, particularly based on very sparse fuel sources (uranium from
seawater, thorium from rare earths mining) creates a long-term dependence on a
large and potentially fragile technological stack. By contrast, wind, solar,
and hydroelectric power are rather simpler, and even geothermal is _fairly_
straightforward.

"Complexity is the enemy of reliability" is a phrase first occurring in _The
Economist_ newspaper, January 18, 1958. It's been repeated, usually as
"complexity is the enemy", many times since, though I suspect those citing it
don't know the origins (my first encounter was through Eric S. Raymond's
writings).

Creating a civilisation-supporting technological stack that _isn 't_ complex
seems a strong goal. And quantifying _systemic global risk_ part of the
problem.

[http://books.google.com/books?id=aDsiAQAAMAAJ&q=%22complexit...](http://books.google.com/books?id=aDsiAQAAMAAJ&q=%22complexity+is+the+enemy%22&dq=%22complexity+is+the+enemy%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=_tZgU9ncAYGQyATBp4GYDg&ved=0CDUQ6AEwAQ)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/24cxgc/program...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/24cxgc/programming_sucks_or_a_young_ladys_illustrated/)

~~~
wdewind
Thanks for a very well thought out reply.

> By contrast, wind, solar, and hydroelectric power are rather simpler, and
> even geothermal is fairly straightforward.

My understanding is scaling these technologies is where the complexity may
lie, and that it would so extremely difficult to support the growing energy
needs of the world's population using these technologies that they aren't
really even an option. I'd like to be wrong. Am I?

~~~
dredmorbius
I don't know.

This gets into a whole mess of considerations, and there's not a lot of
agreement.

There's little doubt that there isn't a gross surplus of solar energy incident
on Earth's surface. But that surplus is, by orders of magnitude, fairly thin
relative to present human energy demands. By the time numerous factors are
applied, you end up with infrastructure requirements which are truly
prodigious.

I'm increasingly coming to the conclusion that the real lesson of _Limits to
Growth_ has largely been missed -- not _what_ limits are, but _that_ they
exist, and even highly generous assumptions of abundance (or effluent
absorption capabilities) are rapidly overwhelmed with even modest rates of
growth. That is, the lesson is _humans must embrace limits._ There's
considerable more math on how far in advance clear warning signs do or don't
exist, though fundamentally the principles are simple.

This turns the typical statement of sustainability on its head. The question
isn't "how do we provide energy, food, and other resources for the people we
see coming", but "how many people can be supported, at what level of
affluence, for what duration?" It's not energy supplies that are insufficient,
it's humans which are overabundant.

Answers to "how many" vary, though I've seen published values ranging from 50
million to 50 billion -- three orders of magnitude. Someone's off by a lot.

Going by history, the range of 50 million - 2 billion corresponds to human
population from early prehistory to about 1920. At the dawn of the Industrial
Revolution, the value stood at about 500 million.

Levels at or above present populations would require a large number of complex
problems be solved for a very long time.

The answer to your question may well be not that you're wrong, but that you're
asking the wrong questions.

Put another way: there's nothing inherent to the Universe (or even this small
speck of it) which gives humans any right to existence or level of affluence.
Predicating reality on what we'd prefer is the definition of wishful thinking.

------
timsco
This article is dated November 27, 2015. Shouldn't he have created it by now?

~~~
amlgsmsn
He did, a couple of days later.

[http://money.cnn.com/2015/11/29/news/economy/bill-gates-
brea...](http://money.cnn.com/2015/11/29/news/economy/bill-gates-breakthrough-
energy-coalition/)

~~~
noobermin
Unfortunately, I can't change the url

------
saosebastiao
I'm pretty sure we don't need billions of dollars of investments in clean
energy, we need billions of dollars of investments in energy storage across a
variety of scales ranging from household/vehicle level all the way to
geographic regions. There are plenty of existing clean technologies that are
as low or lower than the existing cost/kWh of dirty energy technologies. They
are just intermittent and unreliable for base power distribution.
Unfortunately energy storage is not as glamorous as clean energy production
and doesn't get anywhere near the investment levels that it deserves.

~~~
Retric
Grid scale energy storage is a 'solved' problem.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pumped-
storage_hydroel...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pumped-
storage_hydroelectric_power_stations)

EX: A single location is storing 4,200 gigawatt-hours per year:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huizhou_Pumped_Storage_Power_S...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huizhou_Pumped_Storage_Power_Station)

~~~
dredmorbius
Pumped hydro / storage sites are largely built out. To meet full needs, or
alternatively, the equivalent dispatchable generation capacity of present
fossil-fueled generation, would require something on the order of 2,400 Hoover
Dam equivalents.

Siting and water flows for such installations are somewhat lacking.

[http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/11/pump-up-the-
stor...](http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/11/pump-up-the-storage/)

~~~
Retric
Solar and wind never produce zero energy in a single day. So, at most you may
want ~30% of one days worth of storage which less than ~1/20th of what he
wants. Extra capacity is actually fairly cheap (winds cost are ~2.5¢/kWh now)
and something we already do. In extreme events like a heat wave, traditional
hydropower can make up the long term difference as it's designed to store
power over long periods already.

There math is also wrong on energy density, you get ~30% efficiency with gas >
electricity. So one gallon of gas takes less water on balance. ~4 cubic meters
of water dropping one mile ~= 1 gallon. A 10 meter drop in water level over 1
km^2 = ~2,500,000 gallons of gas _per day_ and 0.9 billion gallons of gas per
year.

Sure, you would need two ~1 km^2 square body's of water within ~3 miles of
each other with one ~1 mile higher than another. But, building two 10-20m deep
pools is cheap, so now you just need a large flat hill or an unusually deep
valley.

PS: People talk about how variable wind is, but if you ignore the peak and
compare median power to minimal power it's actually surprisingly steady. Yes,
we will waste a few days at peak power, but that's not actually a lot of
wasted energy.

~~~
dredmorbius
Solar produces, to a reasonable approximation, zero energy _every_ night.

If you want to see seasonal trends, the Fraunhoffer Institute in Germany has
excellent actual production plots for Germany. Solar does well in summer, not
so much in winter. Some of the slack is made up for with wind.

There's additional other sources, including wastestream processing, though
that itself is just derivative of biofuels. Germany has surprisingly little
geothermal potential.

And though Germany is a high-latitude country, it's fairly representative of
about 450 million people living in modern high-energy lifestyles, throughout
Europe.

~~~
Retric
People use vastly more energy in the day time. Peak solar and usage don't line
up 1:1, but they are fairly close. Further, Summer cooling uses a lot of
energy and you get more solar energy in the Summer.

Solar hot water heating is much more efficient ~90% and easy to store locally.
Payback is ~3-5 years in most of the US even if you only need heat for a few
months out of the year. Granted, it does not work in Alaska, but it does work
in Mane.

Thus, Wind for base load 24/7/365\. Solar for peak power usage. Toss in a 30%
buffer + ~20% extra generating capacity get's you to 5 9's.

~~~
saosebastiao
> People use vastly more energy in the day time.

This isn't guaranteed to be true. Before electrical household appliances were
common, we used far more energy at night because indoor lighting was the
primary use case for energy. And we are likely to revert to this pattern again
if we ever have a mass move toward electric cars which will be charging at
night.

~~~
dredmorbius
To be fair: EVs (or other high-demand storage-recharge uses) will most likley
operate _when supply is abundant_.

Presently with inflexible base-load power generation (coal and nuclear),
that's at night.

Given nondispatchable opportunistic generation, that's likely to be during
daylight hours.

Storage is the electrical demand of last resort, along with other very-high-
energy uses (e.g., thermal banking, aluminium smelting, etc.).

------
mrfusion
I never understood why we don't do geothermal? I guess it's just more
expensive to dig giant holes than do prettying energy sources?

~~~
jbhatab
There are geothermal plants but from what I remember they aren't that amazing.

------
littletimmy
Why isn't the government doing this? Why do we have to depend on the
benevolence of billionaires to do something so essential?

~~~
rhino369
There isn't a strong consensus among the worlds people that global warming is
1) real 2) bad, and 3) preventable.

I myself doubt whether there will be strong action until major changes already
start.

And unless the whole world agrees to act in unison, it doesn't make sense for
America to act unilaterally. China and India will just eat our lunches and do
the polluting for us.

~~~
cossatot
I agree about the former, but not with the last two sentences. China and to a
lesser extent India have massive incentives to get clean energy ASAP. The
pollution in China is out of control, and is a major toll on public health,
tourism, and agriculture (especially fishing). In the US, with its low
population density, we worry more about climate change, which is more abstract
than the local environmental pollution that is so visible and problematic in
Asia.

While unilateral US action through regulation and taxation might not directly
do anything to ameliorate the global problem, US investment in technology
might. The US can absolutely sell technology to China and India, whether it's
intellectual property sales/licensing, product sales/licensing, or simply by
charging huge amounts of tuition for Asian engineering students to learn at US
universities (this is currently a very large subsidy to US education).

------
elcapitan
A good time for shady energy companies to get some funding ;) Germany had
cases like Prokon
[http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/cbd86008-8394-11e3-aa65-00144feab7...](http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/cbd86008-8394-11e3-aa65-00144feab7de.html)
destroying quite some investor money.

~~~
pacificmint
You say that as if the consequence is that we should not invest into
alternative energy production.

Prokon used unregulated financial instruments to take investments, and they
obscured their financial situation by spreading their balance sheet over
dozens of companies. It took the bankruptcy administrators a year to even
figure out what the financial situation really was.

I think what we should take from that is that oversight over companies that
take financial investments, especially from consumers, should be tighter. That
really has nothing to do with alternative energy.

------
graycat
Look, guys, some of you are all wound up, concerned, alarmed about the effect
on the climate of CO2 from human activities and, thus, are eager to reduce
burning of fossil fuels.

Well, since you are concerned, I have some really good news for you. For your
concerns, the news is much better than anything from research on solar cells,
energy storage, wind farms, geothermal energy, nuke energy, carbon-taxes, etc.

The news is really, really simple and says how to address your concerns in the
best way, absolutely, positively the best way possible.

In three posts in this thread, I've given a reference to a quite well done BBC
video available at YouTube.

The secret solution, best possible for your concerns? Sure: Do nothing.
Absolutely nothing. Do zip, zilch, and zero. Totally f'get about it.

Why? Because as in the video, CO2 has nothing at all to do with the climate --
in any meaningful sense at all. None. All details are in the video. It's like
you had some doctors tell you you had a very sick child and then a week later
told you that it was all a mistake, that some lab tests got mixed up, and, in
fact, your child is fully healthy.

And from CO2, the earth is fully healthy.

Again, why? Because in fact, CO2 has no effect at all meaningful. It didn't in
the past several hundred thousand years, isn't now, and won't for the
foreseeable future.

Best news you can get. Why? Because to save the planet from the dangers of
CO2, you don't need to work on solar, wind, nukes, carbon-taxes, home
insulation, subsidies, EPA shutdowns of coal plants, have cold houses in the
winter and hot houses in the summer, etc. All those things you were doing to
save the earth from CO2, you get to stop all of them.

Now, is this a happy day for you?

I'm not joking.

Watch the movie. If you have any questions, then post them here and I will
respond.

------
graycat
If his concern is CO2, then he might want to watch a good movie, the BBC

 _The Great Global Warming Swindle_

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52Mx0_8YEtg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52Mx0_8YEtg)

------
hackuser
People will say: don't look a gift horse in the mouth. But that's exactly the
trap we have fallen into: A very few obtain most of the wealth, many of them
fund an anti-tax and anti-government agenda; as government shrinks, the power
of these people relatively increases; and so the public has to depend on
oligarchs rather than on a democratic government including for national issues
like energy and climate change. Then the oligarchs say: Look how generous we
are; how you depend on us; who dares complain? And governments and people have
to focus their efforts on pleasing them on all matters so as not to lose
precious funding they control (instead of the legislature).

It's anti-democratic and, to use a provacative but applicable term, un-
American. National issues should be decided democratically, not by a few
oligarchs. We were founded on the rejection of an aristocracy.

It may be unfair to Gates and to this fund but unfortunately, even with the
best of intentions, he is part of the problem.

~~~
eloff
Yes, I think this is really unfair. In no way is Gates a part of the problem,
the country would be in much better shape if there were more like him. He
innovated, created tens (hundreds?) of thousands of jobs, and one of the
biggest companies on the planet. To top it all off, he puts the majority of
his personal wealth in a foundation that he and his wife run to the benefit of
humanity in general. It has been my dream since I was a kid to do the same (on
a much smaller scale, likely). I wish there were thousands more like Gates and
Buffet.

~~~
hackuser
> In no way is Gates a part of the problem ...

But he is, by amassing and using power that should be democratic, whether or
not that was his intent. Doing good things with that power only makes one an
"enlightened oligarch". Though to be fair to him, I don't know what he should
do - at least lobby for higher taxes for the super-wealthy, and economic
policies that don't result in such conncentration of power - Bill Gates of all
people can't claim to be a helpess, innocent bystander.

I'll add that his power, even well-intentioned, can distort things for the
worse. For example, there was (maybe is) a problem in some African nations
where foreign AIDS (and/or malaria or TB) funding was so much greater than
local health care funding that they hired away all the talent and net more
people were dying from a lack of basic health services.

In fairness, there is a middle ground. Realistically money always will provide
some power, some people will have more than others they have a right to use
their money as they choose, and it's great if they use it to help others.
However, when that concentration of money becomes so great that it undermines
democracy, then it's gone too far.

> He innovated, created tens (hundreds?) of thousands of jobs, and one of the
> biggest companies on the planet. ...

A side point but let's not whitewash Microsoft's history, which wasn't all
bad, but wasn't unicorns and rainbows either.

~~~
eloff
You have a strangely socialistic way of looking at the world. I can't say I
agree with any of your points.

~~~
hackuser
> socialistic

Just characterizing someone's statement and then disagreeing with your
characterization is an internal debate for you. If you have a respose to
something I specifically said, that's valuable.

Also, it's sad that democracy is now seen as such a liberal idea that people
call it socialism (though it's not that at all).

~~~
eloff
Democracy is not some magic solution. It's often described as the best of a
lot of bad options. It can only be as intelligent and effective as a mob of of
its average citizenry - which if you look at democracies in the third-world
and developing world where your average person is uneducated - doesn't lead to
good results.

The best form of government has often been described as a benevolent
dictatorship. This is closer to the form of governance of corporations and
open-source projects. The problem is, there's no easy way to guarantee the
benevolent part.

I see no problem with people like Bill Gates having amassed power, money, and
influence, because he can use it far more effectively than a mob of your
average citizens would - the average citizen being a lot less educated and
less intelligent than Bill Gates. Now, among the wealthy and powerful you also
get types like the Koch brothers, who use their power for dubious ends -
that's inevitable in a capitalist system. There's no way to prevent that aside
from very strict socialism - which has the same economic problems seen in any
communist country past or present. So for better or worse, I think we have to
accept the influence of the wealthy.

~~~
hackuser
> Now, among the wealthy and powerful you also get types like the Koch
> brothers, who use their power for dubious ends - that's inevitable in a
> capitalist system.

It's not. Don't accept the status quo as inevitable. Money wasn't always so
enormously concentrated in a few hands, and the disparity wasn't always so
great. It's worse now in the U.S. than in modern history, and worse than on
other Western nations. It's now in an extreme state.

The current rules of the economy, the tax rates, etc. that yield this
situation are not inevitable or somehow natural. They aren't the result of
capitalism or the free market. They are simply the product of politics that
favor one group (a group that now has enormous power over government) over
others.

> There's no way to prevent that aside from very strict socialism

I disagree. They can have their money, and we can separate money from
politics. If we take money out of elections then money loses a great amount of
influence. If we decide and fund public issues democratically, as our nation
fundementally believes, everyone gets a vote in deciding things for their
community. For example, I was reading that because government is so under-
funded a park in a New York was being funded by someone wealthy. Now who
decides where that park should go and what it should look like? Instead of
being decided democratically by everyone in the community, it's dictated by
the oligarch. That's not democracy.

> Democracy is not some magic solution. It's often described as the best of a
> lot of bad options.

I agree, but it's clearly the most effective; almost all the nations that lead
in their citizen's welfare, from health to education to safety to civil rights
to economic issues, are democracies. Also, there is very importat moral
component - nobody has a right to tell me what to do, and if we have to come
to an agreemet, we should vote on it with everyone getting an equal say.

> if you look at democracies in the third-world and developing world where
> your average person is uneducated - doesn't lead to good results.

I disagree that the results are necessarily worse than they would be under
other forms of government. Also, we're talking about the United States and not
a developing country.

> The best form of government has often been described as a benevolent
> dictatorship.

Hmmm ... I haven't heard that from anyone but the dictators who want people to
think they are benevolent. If they are so effective and benevolent, why not
hold an election? No doubt everyone will vote for them.

> I see no problem with people like Bill Gates having amassed power, money,
> and influence, because he can use it far more effectively than a mob of your
> average citizens would - the average citizen being a lot less educated and
> less intelligent than Bill Gates.

Let's assume Gates is more intelligent than the average (almost certainly
true) and is purely benevolent (certainly not true, and remember the
corrupting influence of power). He still can't do better because he can't
possibly understand the interests and needs of millions of people; nobody has
that capacity. That, along with the lack of true benevolence, is one place
where central planning fails and where free markets and democracy succeed. The
people who don't have a seat at the table are the ones who get their interests
trampled on because either nobody cares, or people think of course, the other
person's priorities really aren't as important as their own.

~~~
eloff
Now you're making some reasonable points, higher taxes on the rich and on
corporations _might_ help. It has to be weighed against the cost in lost
innovation and investment. For example US corporate taxes are so high that
companies don't repatriate their international profits - they invest the
abroad when in many cases they would rather bring the money back to the US.
The international "market" of countries and tax system also functions as a
free market, and the money has a tendency to flow to where it will be taxed
least. It's the the free market and competition (between countries) at work.
Where the optimal point is for reducing the wealth gap while still maintaining
optimal levels of innovation and investment is something nobody knows - the
issue is very complex.

Removing (reducing to be more realistic) the influence of money on politics is
a great idea. I'd love to see a system that leverages technology to provide a
finer-grained representational democracy. One where you can vote for a
representative on any given issue, or group of issues, or type of issues, etc
and you can change that vote whenever you want. Google experimented with such
a system internally at one point. Pure direct democracy is too dangerous, it's
mob rule and would stomp all over minority rights and issues. Representational
democracy is too far removed from the people. Something in between is likely
the sweet spot. But it may never happen. Politicians have no incentive to
dismantle the system that supports them.

I too disagree that alternative systems would work better in Africa, but it's
clear that democracy doesn't work very well either compared to developed
countries.

Well Gates might not be investing in things that people in the US would vote
for, he's doing a great job in service of humanity. One could say that maybe
the people he's actually trying to help, e.g. in Africa should vote on what to
do, rather than him making the decisions - but would they make smart decision?
These are uneducated people who don't know anything about economics, or
science, or anything outside of their day to day struggle for survival. Well
they might be better aware of the issues that they face, they almost certainly
are not well equipped to solve them - democracy is of no help here.

Anyway it's all moot, the money is his, and it's his right to decide what to
do with it. Good on him for using it to help humanity.

------
ZeroGravitas
Gates seems to have bought into the propaganda FUD that renewable energy isn't
today cheaper than fossil fuels. But it is, so why not invest in it. Yes, some
money should go on longshot and forward looking R&D, but there's absolutely no
need for Bill Gates to be talking down the existing solutions that are clearly
better than coal in order to promote his own speculative investments.

Luckily, the free market, despite the excessive subsidies that are granted to
coal and other fossil fuels, has caught on to the trend and more and more
money is pouring in. 97% of economists that publish in this field agree that
doing nothing will cost us more than action right now. But still the "common
sense" hasn't caught up with reality and relentless propaganda has convinced
large numbers of people that solar, wind, efficiency and demand manangement
are the domain of idealistic tree huggers and/or parasitic boondoggles rather
than a pragmatic and cost effective solution.

~~~
7952
> propaganda has convinced large numbers of people that solar, wind,
> efficiency and demand manangement are the domain of idealistic tree huggers
> and/or parasitic boondoggles rather than a pragmatic and cost effective
> solution.

The problem is that renewable energy is very capital intensive. Without some
kind of price fixing (thank you tree huggers) it is excessively risky. When
you have price fixing it is very attractive to speculators who make unpopular
profits from electricity bills.

The best way to make money is to already own a big power station and not
bother reinvesting or maintaining existing capacity (coal). You reach a
situation where no one has any incentive to build anything unless they are
heavily subsidised. The public are stuck renting ever more expensive energy
whilst funding massive building projects that they will never own.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Electrical grids are capital intensive anyway, one of solar and winds big
advantages is how non-capital intensive it is compared with the competition,
that's why it's making up such a large share of newly built generation
capacity across the globe.

As you say in places where demand isn't growing quickly, it's more about
shutting down and replacing existing plants, and that's where it can get
political, see the "war on coal" in the US. But even there, it's an economic
no-brainer to shut the coal plants that are killing people and replace them
with gas and renewable, the only thing stopping it from happening is politics,
not anything inherent in renewable tech.

------
bunkydoo
I don't think Bill Gates has much of a clue about what the world needs, he's
very hypocritical. He lives a very consumptive 1% lifestyle (nothing wrong
with that in my eyes - he earned it) but yet he turns around and preaches that
everyone needs to change. Start with the man in the mirror bub.

Elon Musk is a bit better than him since he doesn't preach - but I would agree
with Gates that he's a little gung ho on space travel. I honestly don't think
it is humanity's place to leave earth, we are fish in water. Whatever comes
after us (speaking in terms of evolution) will be the alpha in terms of space
travel.

~~~
Artistry121
How do you mean whatever comes after us?

We are the only form of life we know of that can get into space using
ingenuity. The alpha could be our descendants or created by tying our
ingenuity in with the genetic background of other creatures.

We are the best chance known of getting life off of one small planet - I think
it is our place to expand life through the universe.

~~~
noir_lord
> I think it is our place to expand life through the universe.

Not sure if it's our "place" but for damn sure it's a good goal, getting life
off the Earth and becoming sustainable in space massively reduces the risk of
humans going extinct.

The solar system is rich in resources we are going to need at some point.

