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

To: Brumar89 who wrote (387387)	5/30/2008 1:56:57 PM
From: Road Walker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1575523

When shortages develop, the economic incentive will be there to find solutions - however good or bad they may turn out to be. Um, the price of oil is up 600% since Jan '02. Ya think a shortage might have developed already?

To: Brumar89 who wrote (387387)	5/30/2008 5:28:41 PM
From: RetiredNow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1575523

Agreed on what we should all do personally. I am personally holding off on buying a new car until I can buy a fully electric one from GM or Th!nk or whoever gets me one in a price range I want to spend in ($35K or less for a car that I use primarily to get me to and from work). However, the thing I think you are missing is that alternative energy is a booming business and the US is currently not aggressively pursuing being the leaders in this industry. Now to be sure, businesses in the US are aggressively pursuing alternative energy investments. Silicon Valley VCs have shifted the bulk of their new investments into this category the likes of which we haven't seen since the Internet's heyday. However, all new industries need an incubation period. VCs do this all the time with new businesses, where they invest in them, recruit seasoned leaders for them, and otherwise provide those businesses with the resources and contacts to make them multi-bagger successes. Our government can help play a major role in the nascent alternative energy industry by adopting uniform rules and laws, encouraging governing bodies like EPA to take a proactive, friendly stance toward the industry, and helping to spur private sector investment by providing incentives in the form of mandates for alternative energy consumption through utilities and leading in investment in alternative energy vehicles in their own fleets of cars. The VCs in Silicon Valley have estimated that the alternative energy investment opportunity is greater than the opportunity created by the Internet by an order of magnitude. Our government was a full participant in paving the way for a national proactive stance towards the Internet, by doing things like opening up Telecom competition with the Telecom Act of 1996, and calling for ubiquitous broadband, and passing a moratorium on Internet sales taxation, as well as a host of other things. It is simply foolish for our government to stand by and do nothing as this industry starts to take off. We as a country are missing the greatest investment opportunity since the Internet, and are allowing other countries like Germany to take the lead. Sounds pretty stupid to me. Again, from a national security perspective and an economic perspective, investment in alternative energy and a national priority on alternatives is a no brainer.