Rolling Blackouts Coming

[fifthcolumn]

I meant that the right answer includes absolute reduction, such as ditching the car or giving up meat and dairy or insulating the house with scavenged materials, from all of which no money can be made.

Even then you're obviously not as much of a capitalist pig as I am because I can think of ways to make money from your list quite easily.

[emordnilap]

I meant that the right answer includes absolute reduction, such as ditching the car or giving up meat and dairy or insulating the house with scavenged materials, from all of which no money can be made.

Even then you're obviously not as much of a capitalist pig as I am

True.

because I can think of ways to make money from your list quite easily.

I don't doubt it, fifth. But would I spend the money? That's one of the reasons for giving up the car or whatever.

[adam2]

Or rolling blackouts could be used to maintain the same margin we have now?

Yes, rolling blackouts certainly could be imposed in order to keep a similar margin to that available now.

In practice though I rather doubt that this would be done.

in case of shortage of generating capacity it would make more sense to run all available plant at the maximum safe loading, rather to run plant less efficiently at part load, whilst some consumers lacked supply.

It would make more sense to supply 100% of consumers at reduced reliability, than 90% at normal reliability and 10% blacked out.

In the `1970s power crisis significant fuel was saved by not having plant on hot standby or running inefficiently at part load.
Any unexpected breakdown of generating plant, or unexpected increase in load, simply resulted in a slightly greater % of consumers being cut off.

Any unexpected reduction in load, or quicker than expected repairs resulted in a slightly lower % being cut off.

[emordnilap]

I don't doubt it, fifth. But would I spend the money? That's one of the reasons for giving up the car or whatever.

I mentioned this to a friend at the weekend, in a conversation which was basically about the amount of stuff in shops, so I thought I'd have a bit of a rant and stream-of-consciousness thing here. I shake my head in disbelief at what people want to spend their money on.

A new €2 stuff shop has just opened - around the corner from an existing €2 stuff shop - in a high-rent location. Stuffed to the gunnels with stuff from China. Hello?

Apart from buying a getting few basics from a locally-owned wholefood shop, plus a quick skeg around a couple of charity shops (where I only buy total bargains, like this unworn Regatta jacket at 10% of the new price), there is absolutely nothing to buy - but there are hundreds of these shops, full of stuff, everywhere. Who actually owns this stuff?

What happens when people can't buy this stuff? Are we seriously expected to believe that a small town like ours - and this is like so many small towns - can support 14 'chemists' (ha!) which have aisles upon aisles of really slow-selling stuff like lip balm and fake tan?

There is now 1 place you can buy pizza for every 1,000 people in this town. This, I can maybe understand a little as it's really, really, really cheap food in every sense of the word. And mobile phone shops. Crikey, where do people find all the money to keep these places going? There must be 10 places like that, in a town with 15,000 people, a county with around 100,000. And shoe shops! Don't start me. How many shoes do people actually require?

We're overrun with burger joints and Chinese takeaways. You have a choice of maybe 20 different-but-the-same panini places. Remember, small town. The two small bakers are struggling to survive, despite the obvious superiority of the products.

Then you look at the travel shops. OK, Budget Travel has gone, so the competition has eased up slightly. But the ads in the windows talk about big money for holidays - 5, 6, 8 hundred or more euro per person. Is this cheap/expensive? I don't know but it's a lot of money. Are we crazy or what? We're just about to buy zillions of bad debts from developers and banks - people are blowing weeks' and weeks' wages for a tan they can buy for nearly nothing in one of the 14 'chemists'.

We have a shop here called 'Essentials'. Eh? There is not one single solitary thing in the shop that could be described as such, unless human life collapses in the absence of an illuminated ornamental elephant or jars of coloured pebbles.

And, if you're unemployed, start up a hairdressers'. I've lost count of the number there are. Most seem empty on passing. Is this consumer car running on fumes? I actually think the world needs more parsimonious people like myself. What a kick up the backside that would be.

Wake up people. What recession?

Raving not drowning.

Apologies. Quiet day today.

[PS_RalphW]

My IT department is being downsized from 3 to 2. As the only software development guy left, I have dodged the bullet again. We are all middle-life family men, similar experience and skills and responsibilities, I would hate to chose between us. I don't think the person left will want to stay on for long, and I don't see the organisation surviving long without major IT upgrades. It is already held together with string and bluetack.

Anyway, WRT stuff - I am reminded of the Douglas Adams

Many years ago this was a thriving, happy planet - people, cities, shops, a normal world. Except that on the high streets of these cities there were slightly more shoe shops than one might have thought necessary. And slowly, insidiously, the number of the shoe shops were increasing. It's a well-known economic phenomenon but tragic to see it in operation, for the more shoe shops there were, the more shoes they had to make and the worse and more unwearable they became. And the worse they were to wear, the more people had to buy to keep themselves shod, and the more the shops proliferated, until the whole economy of the place passed what I believe is termed the Shoe Event Horizon, and it became no longer economically possible to build anything other than shoe shops. Result - collapse, ruin and famine. Most of the population died out. Those few who had the right kind of genetic instability mutated into birds who cursed their feet, cursed the ground and vowed that no one should walk on it again.

also

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8241193.stm

[biffvernon]

Douglas Adams was so brilliant! Nice to see Fry following his footsteps on telly last night.

H.G.Wells wrote, in 1905, a pamplet called 'This Misery of Boots', in which he uses footware as an illustration of political economy. It's available on-line at
http://www.archive.org/stream/thismiser ... t_djvu.txt

[emordnilap]

My IT department is being downsized from 3 to 2. As the only software development guy left, I have dodged the bullet again. We are all middle-life family men, similar experience and skills and responsibilities, I would hate to chose between us. I don't think the person left will want to stay on for long, and I don't see the organisation surviving long without major IT upgrades. It is already held together with string and bluetack.

Anyway, WRT stuff - I am reminded of the Douglas Adams

Many years ago this was a thriving, happy planet - people, cities, shops, a normal world. Except that on the high streets of these cities there were slightly more shoe shops than one might have thought necessary. And slowly, insidiously, the number of the shoe shops were increasing. It's a well-known economic phenomenon but tragic to see it in operation, for the more shoe shops there were, the more shoes they had to make and the worse and more unwearable they became. And the worse they were to wear, the more people had to buy to keep themselves shod, and the more the shops proliferated, until the whole economy of the place passed what I believe is termed the Shoe Event Horizon, and it became no longer economically possible to build anything other than shoe shops. Result - collapse, ruin and famine. Most of the population died out. Those few who had the right kind of genetic instability mutated into birds who cursed their feet, cursed the ground and vowed that no one should walk on it again.

also

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8241193.stm

Excellent

[Kieran]

My IT department is being downsized from 3 to 2. As the only software development guy left, I have dodged the bullet again. We are all middle-life family men, similar experience and skills and responsibilities, I would hate to chose between us. I don't think the person left will want to stay on for long, and I don't see the organisation surviving long without major IT upgrades. It is already held together with string and bluetack.

Anyway, WRT stuff - I am reminded of the Douglas Adams

Many years ago this was a thriving, happy planet - people, cities, shops, a normal world. Except that on the high streets of these cities there were slightly more shoe shops than one might have thought necessary. And slowly, insidiously, the number of the shoe shops were increasing. It's a well-known economic phenomenon but tragic to see it in operation, for the more shoe shops there were, the more shoes they had to make and the worse and more unwearable they became. And the worse they were to wear, the more people had to buy to keep themselves shod, and the more the shops proliferated, until the whole economy of the place passed what I believe is termed the Shoe Event Horizon, and it became no longer economically possible to build anything other than shoe shops. Result - collapse, ruin and famine. Most of the population died out. Those few who had the right kind of genetic instability mutated into birds who cursed their feet, cursed the ground and vowed that no one should walk on it again.

also

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8241193.stm

If he'd written that today he'd have substituted mobile phones for shoes. In Leeds virtually every other shop is devoted to selling these damned things.

[emordnilap]

If I can be said to have a goal, it is simply to be on record after I die as one of the people in America that tried not to be complicit in the empire’s crimes: shakedown of its people; its murders of dark skinned children in the Middle east and elsewhere; its debasement and defiling of human culture for profit; its propagation of a malignant and destructive financial system around the globe; or any of the terrible things I have witnessed done in our names.

I like that.

[Quintus]

If he'd written that today he'd have substituted mobile phones for shoes. In Leeds virtually every other shop is devoted to selling these damned things.

Ah, the wonderful Douglas Adams.

Add to the list Tanning Centres, hair dressers and betting offices.

You'd think it would be the things we REALLY need that thrived in a recession - and the rest would wither away. Strange.

[emordnilap]

Betting shops! Yes! There's been a rash of them in the last year.

We're swamped with estate agents too but it's significant that they're keeping going when house sales have stalled: it shows how cheap their business is to run - and how much profit they make - when they're coping with, ahem, 'one sale a fortnight'.

[Ludwig]

If he'd written that today he'd have substituted mobile phones for shoes. In Leeds virtually every other shop is devoted to selling these damned things.

My ex-job was devoted (indirectly) to selling the damned things. I can verify from personal experience that the mobile phone event horizon has been passed.

[biffvernon]

Ah, the wonderful Douglas Adams.

Add to the list Tanning Centres, hair dressers and betting offices.

He certainly had hair dressers sussed, along with telephone kiosk sanitisers.

[JohnB]

I've bought a couple of pairs of trainers recently that haven't lasted 5 minutes. The first pair were from a shop I've used for years, at about the same price as I usually paid, and they started to split within weeks. The latest pair were more expensive and from a supposedly better quality shop, and they're showing signs of wear too.

So we need more shoe shops, so I can easily replace them whenever I need to

[Ludwig]

I've bought a couple of pairs of trainers recently that haven't lasted 5 minutes. The first pair were from a shop I've used for years, at about the same price as I usually paid, and they started to split within weeks. The latest pair were more expensive and from a supposedly better quality shop, and they're showing signs of wear too.

So we need more shoe shops, so I can easily replace them whenever I need to

Welcome to mature capitalism...