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Politics : Politics of Energy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RetiredNow who wrote (870)	7/23/2008 2:05:13 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 86355

Very few businesses start out profitable on day one, but very many business get investment when they are initially unprofitable, because the business owner or outside investor sees the potential for future profit. If you have subsidies you can get investment whether or not the investment has a sufficient positive real rate of return, or whether the return is higher than the opportunity costs, because the owner or investor doesn't depend just on the actual return of the project, but the return on the project + the subsidy.

To: RetiredNow who wrote (870)	7/23/2008 4:50:30 PM
From: Brumar89	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 86355

Incubation is fine. But the things being incubated are gonna have to hatch and grow on their own eventually. I'll be excited when I see that happening. As it happens, I've seen close up some investments in what were new businesses for a particular company. Therefore, I know from experience that new ventures don't always succeed. In fact, going on what I've seen, most of them fail. The government is underwriting a massive investment in corn-based ethanol right now which looks to be a politically driven boondoggle with no grand economic future. I hope that our subsidies for wind and solar don't end up similar wasteful boondoggles. I don't think we have a situation where we know we can switch our whole economy over to solar (or wind or whatever) and it'll be as economical as what we have now ... if we just muster the political will to do it. The barriers are technological and economical and maybe they'll be overcome in the future and maybe they won't. And if they are, we don't know when that will happen. There is no plot against solar power or wind power or anything else new. Its a technical/cost issue, not a political will issue.