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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Joe NYC who wrote (124153)	9/18/2000 7:03:41 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 1571207

You have to look at both sides of the balance sheet. The costs of achieving the the "overall good" can suck all the "good" out of the equation in this process. If the resources are deployed inefficiently, it means that these same resources are withheld from achieving some other "good" somewhere else, probably more good more efficiently. I am sorry that you have such biased view on public solutions. It seems you have come to believe that only the private sector can perform a useful service and closed off to any other possibility. Even with small subsidies, is that not better than out and out wasting of irreplaceable oil? But the oil is not irreplaceable! In fact, it will be replaced by another source of energy within our lifetimes. We can not replace oil and its many uses easily. It will requires numerous other resources to take up the slack. I believe it is better to use it efficiently so that future generations have "the real thing" instead of a 1000 substitutions. There are so many possibilities out there. Fission is here, today, fusion will be here within our lifetimes. The world is waiting; actually has been waiting for some time now. Once you have cheap source of electricity, you can make hydrogen to fuel our transportation, you can make a greenhouse that is 100 stories high and grow plants 3 times per per, resulting in 300 times the food production from the same area of farmland. The rest of the old unused farmland can become woods, parks, meadows or suburbs. You can bring water to deserts etc. You don't think we are capable of making good mass transit but we accomplished the above so easily....spoken liken a visionary scientist, right?!! Just consider how quickly US managed to develop and drop the bomb. If the needed, the development of fusion could be greatly accelerated. I think its easier for us to develop destructive technology. Nothing is being "used up". Everything can be recycled. What may be too expensive to recover from "garbage" today may be a piece of cake tomorrow. The modern garbage dumps will be future "gold mines". Our present "toys" drive the economy. Imagine the economic collapse if everybody just consumed the minimum, just to survive. You are right...what was I thinking?!! I think your view is way too fatalistic, especially considering that you invest in technology stocks, and many of the companies you invest in are developing technologies that people did not even dream about just a few years ago. They are wonderful but they seem to be mostly focused on creating more exotic toys. I am a lot more pessimistic about people than technology / environment. I am too....especially those people who think humanity is all powerful and can heal the wounds inflicted on our ecology with the wave of a semi chip. <g> ted