- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.bestiver.se/post/693048
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Nothing factually wrong with the article, but it has this sound of “this technology will solve all our problems” to it that I find highly problematic. Seven out of nine planetary boundaries are exceeded, climate change just being one of them. And all of them are exceeded because of our wasteful and growth-oriented way of life.
We can change our technology to be more sustainable or we can regress to a pre-industrial society with 90% of the population dying in the process. Which do you prefer?
That’s a false dichotomy. We can also improve our technology while ditching capitalism.
That’s reductive. Seeing capitalism as the root cause of all problems is disingenuous. The particular ideology oligarchies are using to justify their rule is incidental.
But… It is the root of a lot of problems and it helps the oligarchs… And it just sucks and makes no sense in general?
It makes a lot of sense, but I doubt we can have a rational debate about that. In short, people tend to be motivated by profit, so theoretically productivity goes up when the economic system rewards that.
The root of the problem has little to do with the economic system, and it’s like blaming bombs for war. The real problem is government structures that reward and encourage consolidation of power, both in the government itself and in the private sector. If you strip away capitalism, you just consolidate that power into the public sector, and for examples of that look at China and the USSR.
I would think that people on Lemmy who likely left other social media due to centralization wouldn’t be so enamored w/ more centralization in the government space. We need solutions that look like Lemmy in the public space to decentralize power so we don’t run into this type of problem. I don’t think there’s a magical structure that fixes everything, and I don’t even necessarily think that capitalism has to be the dominant economic system in play, I just think we need to come up with ideas on how to reduce the power of those at the top.
Specific example of the US military
We should dramatically reduce the federal standing military, increase the National Guard to match, and put stricter limits on when the President can use the National Guard. IMO, the only way the President should access the National Guard is if one of the following happen:
- governor explicitly yields control, or the state’s legislature forces the governor to yield control
- states vote with a super majority to declare war
- legislative branch votes to declare war with a super majority
That’s it. The President would otherwise be left with a small standing military that’s enough to deter or perhaps assist in peacekeeping, but nowhere near large enough to invade another country.
I personally think we should embrace capitalism as it’s decentralized by nature, unless forces centralize it, and then create rules that discourage/punish over-centralization. For example, I think small companies should have liability protections, and larger companies should lose it, such that lawsuits could target specific individuals in the organization instead of allowing the organization to be used as a shield. For example, if a company files bankruptcy and it’s over a certain size (maybe $1B market cap? $100M?), then shareholders and top executives become responsible to cover whatever the debts are still unresolved after liquidation. If a crime is committed, it shouldn’t simply result in a fine that’s factored in as the cost of doing business, it should result in arrests. The problem isn’t capitalism, it’s corruption and protectionism.
We need solutions that look like Lemmy in the public space to _decentralize_ power so we don’t run into this type of problem. I don’t think there’s a magical structure that fixes everything, and I don’t even necessarily think that capitalism has to be the dominant economic system in play, I just think we need to come up with ideas on how to reduce the power of those at the top.
It’s worth reminding ourselves that this is exactly what we are at Lemmy to do. Where capitalism produced Reddit, communitarianism produced Lemmy. The best effort of both systems is now live and the two are competing head to head. We win when Lemmy is the superior option for enough people that we actually start bleeding Reddit out.
This argument is very different from the argument I’m talking about. Lemmy isn’t a government, nor does it attempt to fill that role (as much as my instance’s “Agora” community wants to think it does), so whether Lemmy is successful doesn’t give any insight into whether a more decentralized form of government could be successful.
communitarianism produced Lemmy
That’s a pretty generous description.
A more accurate description, IMO, is that two people wanted a safe space for their extremist community (tankies), and they had a working version at the time that a lot of people were frustrated with Reddit. Those two are still running the project, and they moderate their instances very tightly. But many people outside that community came and decided to make something good out of it, which is why additional instances popped up run by people with different motivations from the original pair.
So I don’t think communitarianism produced Lemmy, at least not initially, but it did help turn Lemmy into what it is today.
We win when Lemmy is the superior option for enough people that we actually start bleeding Reddit out.
I don’t think that’s necessarily true. I think we have already won in that people choose to stay here over returning to Reddit or whatever social media platform they came from. That said, active users on Lemmy seems to be steadily dropping, which is a bummer, but I’m still able to have decent discussions here, so it’s working for me.
No, it’s not. Not seeing that it’s capitalism is the reductive view. Instead of trying to type down a huge text while I’m tired, I’d like to introduce a 112 year-old text that still seems extremely relevant today:
Moreover, capitalist production, by its very nature, cannot be restricted to such means of production as are produced by capitalist methods. Cheap elements of constant capital are essential to the individual capitalist who strives to increase his rate of profit. In addition, the very condition of continuous improvements in labour productivity as the most important method of increasing the rate of surplus value, is unrestricted utilisation of all substances and facilities afforded by nature and soil. To tolerate any restriction in this respect would be contrary to the very essence of capital, its whole mode of existence. After many centuries of development, the capitalist mode of production still constitutes only a fragment of total world production. Even in the small Continent of Europe, where it now chiefly prevails, it has not yet succeeded in dominating entire branches of production, such as peasant agriculture and the independent handicrafts; the same holds true, further, for large parts of North America and for a number of regions in the other continents. In general, capitalist production has hitherto been confined mainly to the countries in the temperate zone, whilst it made comparatively little progress in the East, for instance, and the South. Thus, if it were dependent exclusively, on elements of production obtainable within such narrow limits, its present level and indeed, its development in general would have been impossible. From the very beginning, the forms and laws of capitalist production aim to comprise the entire globe as a store of productive forces. Capital, impelled to appropriate productive forces for purposes of exploitation, ransacks the whole world, it procures its means of production from all corners of the earth, seizing them, if necessary by force, from all levels of civilisation and from all forms of society. The problem of the material elements of capitalist accumulation, far from being solved by the material form of the surplus value that has been produced, takes on quite a different aspect. It becomes necessary for capital progressively to dispose ever more fully of the whole globe, to acquire an unlimited choice of means of production, with regard to both quality and quantity, so as to find productive employment for the surplus value it has realised. From Rosa Luxemburg: The Accumulation of Capital, Chapter 26 - The Reproduction of Capital and Its Social Setting
This passage is kind of an introduction to Rosa Luxemburg’s definition of imperialism. Back then, capitalism was not yet developed in the whole world and she argued that simply because it’s a question of survival for companies, these companies will push for the right to exploit the whole world. And now, 112 years later, I’m pretty sure we can agree that happened. And in the past few decades, when they can’t expand spacially, now it’s all about squeezing every last bit of profit from nature, the workers and the consumers.
The particular ideology oligarchies are using to justify their rule is incidental.
Here, we have a point of agreement. The USSR developed into something that was no better than capitalist states. In my opinion, that’s because it’s bureaucracy developed into something very similar to the burgeoisie in capitalism, resource hoarders led by self-interest.
But I believe your answer built on another false dichotomy here. The alternative to capitalism I have in mind isn’t a one-party state with central planning and communist aesthetics. I’m more of a proponent of decentralized power, dismantling the state and people governing their surroundings cooperatively.
Question: would I have to give up my exploitative companies that fuel my bid to become the first King of Internet? Because that’s kind of a dealbreaker for me.
What are you talking about, you filthy usurper? I’m the only legitimate king of the internet!
Are you inviting me to a money fight? I do love those. Let’s both put in ludicrous bids on some AI company and fight over ownership to pump it’s value in the market, I haven’t done one of those in months. Winner buys the next yacht we sink in the Bermuda Triangle to appease the Elder Ones, Respect upon their Unknowable Names. If only the poor knew how hard we worked to prevent this puny planet from being eaten by elder demons, they would be grateful.
Pathetic! My penis rocket is much bigger than your penis rocket!
How tf does this dumb shit get 15 upvotes?
Yes.
Because of
our wasteful and growth-oriented way of lifecapitalism.FTFY.
I don’t doubt for a moment that humanity can be extremely wasteful in any economic system. But capitalism sure embraces and enhances our worst tendencies.
Partially. It’s more that people don’t click unless the headline is sensational.
As bullish as I am on Sodium-ion batteries, only very recently did researchers figure out how to boost the charge capacity, making any attempted commercial models in use so far nice, but not the final form where normies are buying them from Home Depot.
The Sehol car mentioned is a niche configuration of a common model, because the Li-ion model goes farther between charges. Other than the launch in 2023, and articles recycling the same info, find me 1 article that doesn’t use words like “could” or “will” or “might” about sales of this model? Same thing for the BYD Seagull with Na-ion batteries. It’s all greenwashing news where if you dig at it even slightly, you see how not real any of it is.
It’s closer than it was 5 years ago, but it’s still not a “revolution” by any means.
No, it actually hasn’t. It’s also not any better than any other battery tech out there right now. Longer term but less volume storage is a trade off.
What happened to these Graphene batteries and capacitors we were supposed to have by now?
sodium-ion is better than acid-lead in every use case (theoretically, when the tech reaches maturity), unlikely to beat lithium ion and others for the high-capacity/low weight type stuff but far as cheap/environmentally safe batteries goes sodium-ion should quickly dominate the field.
Yeah, this kind of tech can actually be groundbreaking.
10.000 charge cycles? You can imagine lot’s of new things with that. Maybe not a capitalistic quick buck but something bettering society.
Also for what I have understood it’s wildly better than lipo etc when it comes to resource use, especially “rare” earth.
10k charge cycles isn’t revolutionary. LFP do 8k and even then they just drop down to 80% of original capacity.
For that price and energy density it IMO is
You could load up your car at work (just a silly example) and use it up at night at home, without thinking of degrading your expensive batteries.
Here is hoping.
More durable, cheaper, can be operated at a wider temperature range and much safer, but at a cost of lower energy density.
They look like a big step forward for uses where density matters little, like grid energy storage or small scale home backups.
Sodium ion is great, but
While batteries have enabled passenger car developments, they have been somewhat stymied in large mobile power applications like shipping and electric trucks. That day is gone now. At these costs, electric shipping is achievable and the debate over alternative fuels will fall off quickly as applications are realized.
heavy transport is not the right application. Very heavy, and LFP has similar advantages while only being medium heavy. heating vehicle batteries is a solved problem.
Great that you can get a home power 48v 33.6kwh system for well under $3000. (afaik, it comes with connector plates for 112x100ahx3v for $2340. Don’t know about shipping or a box)
For 10% more, on that site, LFP is 33% lighter. Can affect shipping costs.
Sodium ion has extra applications/advantages. Not requiring a heated space could place them under solar panels in the field.
At $100/kwh or less, “retail”, offgrid even oversized solar+ batteries is far cheaper than any utility service. At low charge/discharge rates (4+ hour charge from solar, and 16 hours of discharge (even with 0.25c peak discharge), 10000 cycles is achievable with both chemistries. $0.01/kwh/cycle.
I got a LIPO4 battery to run my tiny plastic boat or canoe with a trolling motor, most amazing performance I’ve ever seen. Hours of full thrust, never dropped below 20% power. So what’s up with that tech?
10.000 charge cycles.
And cheaper, hopefully.
I think it will displace lead acid use case first where its lighter in the same form factor and more resilient in cold. Already seeing small engine batteries. You can buy a car battery today on amazon but i understand it doesn’t play welll with alternator regulators, but that can change with retrofits or automakers adapting smarter regulators.
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