Belo Monte Dam approved :(

[applejuice]

Originally Posted by auroraglacialis

Thats nonsense, frankly. Government institutions are very successful, they built the german railroad and postal system and telecommunication network and electric power heavily relied on government help. Basic science is widely government funded, the resulting innovations then are picked up by industry "for free". In Europe, in many places education is government funded and we are among the best educated people. And as "evil" China is, a lot of their big projects are government funded.

Yes, certainly, but those government institutions are run by private institutions under services contracts. In countries where the government holds all the control in those institutions, chaos is a normal thing.

The point is also not if they can do it effectivley or cheap, but if they can do the right thing, the will of the people, the sane thing, the moral thing and behave ethically. And that usually involves doing things that do not make a profit and that are more expensive and thus things that private entrepreneurs would never do.

That is interesting. There are better ways of obtaining power with minimal impact on nature. What might that be? Solar? No, very inefficient. Aeolian? still unreliable. Tidal? Possible. Nuclear seems to be a good solution to the problem. Brazil could opt for nuclear power without damaging the Amazonian area, but then the environmentalists would tear their robes and would boycott such solution. Geothermal is also a good solution, but it is not available worldwide.

I say that the needs of the few outweigh the desires of the many. The kings feastes were desires, not needs, while the people in that country really had needs that were not fulfilled. I think to have a land to live on, to be able to make a living with it, to keep an existence and to survive is much more a need than a soccer world cup entertainment for the other people. In fact - it is in this context a bit funny that you brought up the Frnch King and his feasts - given that in this case it is just halfway turned around in that the majority wants to have a feast and the minority has to suffer from it.

I think that having water and electricity at affordable prices should not be a desire but something guaranteed to every citizen in the Earth.

The next thing is that the needs of the few can outweigh the needs of the many in some cases, like if they are an independent entity, like self-sufficient small states, groups of people, indigenous tribes. Otherwise, the needs of 1 billion Chinese certainly outweighs the needs of 280 million Americans, so they should be free to take away everything from the USA because it serves more people?

That's what is happening, oil prices went up because of the growth of China. The price we are paying for each oil barrel is covering the costs of extraction and refinement of a product that will be consumed somewhere else. The price is the same in all the world, despite the fact that nobody uses the same amount as China.

And in the end your logic even bites itself in the tail as you believe in capitalism, a system in which the "needs" (again more likely desires) of a few rich are valued high compared to the needs of the many. If you hold true to your idea that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, under your definitions, the wealth of that few who have private gulf courses and jets and yachts should be distributed to the many who are in need of food and shelter and clean water, isn't that right? And in this case I would even agree

Name a socialist country that has banned capitalism and has had success. Capitalism has its evils, but those evils are more tolerable to the evils that Communism and Socialism bring.

Even under an utilitarian approach like that "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few", the "needs" have to be valued. Certainly the "need" of someone to have cheap power does weigh a lot less than the need of someone else to survive...

We're heading to the second decade of the 21st century. I think it is common sense to argue that having electricity is a right and no longer something optional. The people affected by the construction of the dam will be provided with full assistance from the government of Brazil (at least that's the position of the government of Brazil, all we can do is to observe that it will be done properly).

That remains to be seen. I seriously doubt it because in ALL cases that I know about in the past, this kind of promise was made and then broken. Usually in form of building more classic power plants closer to the cities to fill that demand and putting industry near the dams because of course the loss by transportation is not desireable.

There is a common misconception about power consumption around the globe. About one third of electricity is used in residencies, the other third is transportation use, the last third is industrial use (check the IAE website). The green trend is making the power demand to be electricity from renewable sources: Hydropower is the best option yet.

PS: Regarding private investment in Science, without going too far I'll name just one invention that has revolutionized our world that has come from private hands: The transistor, developed by Bell Laboratories.