Hasbeen old mate, before you go on bagging Ted as a latter day/closet commie, please study the historical evidence on whether private or public energy is cheaper!

I ask you to compare the difference for business and or local enterprise almost exclusively!

Similarly, compare private/public communications/air travel!

Please compare us and our debt levels, as opposed to those of a smaller Singapore, the darling of many PRIVATE ENTERPRISE multinationals.

How can a much smaller resource poor, war ravaged and bankrupted Singapore, with barely a resource to bless herself with, so massively outperform us economically?

I mean, we have mountains of iron ore, veritable underground oceans of coal, (locked away) oil and gas; and a much larger population; and therefore ought to be able to beat the pants off of a socialist Singapore!?

Or for that matter, any part of socialist Scandinavia, who build/manufacture small arms, small engines, chainsaws, motor mowers, trucks, trains, tractors, ships, subs and planes, just to mention some?

We have people just as smart too?

Just not in any of our parliaments or positions of power and influence, apparently?

Or could it be we are just overburdened with too many Nay Sayers, who as usual know all the reasons it can't be done; or why we can't compete, or need to sell our souls to foreigners, for the right to exist/consume?

I for one am puzzled as how that example actually allows us to compete in the global market place! Do we need somebody's permission to once again become a country that makes things?

Hard to blame labor costs, (16% averaged) when professional salaries in any of the aforementioned (high tech?) economies could be 2.5 times our Australian average?

Maybe the real problems are the (privatized) costs of fuel, power, water and transport, the multifaceted nature of industrial production or processes here; all compounded by the tyranny of distance?

Whadda you think old mate?
Rhrosty.

Rhosty, read my comment in the Revitalising Manufacturing thread before you go on digging an even deeper hole!

Where did you get the LUDICROUS idea that half the power we generate is lost in transmission? The actual figure is more like a twentieth. I don't have the exact figure for Australia, so maybe it's an eighteenth or nineteenth, but that includes all the losses in transmission and distribution. Which means that all of the conclusions you came to based on the premise the grid's a white elephant are invalid.

Nuclear power, whether from thorium, uranium or plutonium, is expensive not because of high fuel costs but because of high staffing costs and high equipment costs.

The small modular thorium reactors you advocate DON'T ACTUALLY EXIST! The reason it's sometimes regarded as 1950s technology isn't that it was perfected in the 1950s; rather it's that development of it was largely abandoned after the 1950s! The dream that these modules can be mass produced and trucked wherever they're needed is unlikely to come true any time soon, and when it does their running cost will be high. The electricity cost will probably much higher than from wind power here; certainly much higher than Iceland (with its very abundant hydroelectric and geothermal resources).

Combined heat and power from ceramic fuel cells (whatever the source of the methane) could be very useful, but because they're only able to operate at high temperatures the economic advantages aren't anywhere near as strong as you seem to think.

Actually Aidan, the Indians have built a few Thorium reactors, and I understand from earlier posters, the Chinese may be building one a week?

Transmission line losses are on average around 17%, whereas distribution losses are 50%, or a combined total of 67% averaged!

I would ask other posters to ignore nay sayer Aidan and simply google transmission line losses, and observe what the electrical engineers KNOW having spent many years actually studying and working on the subject.

Which might suggest to some not allowing the likes of Aidan to do their thinking for them, and do a little independent research for themselves.

And no I'm not advocating any of Aidan's links; and for the most obvious reasons!

I myself worked for a power authority in a science related position, which ought to be enough for most posters to go take a look see for themselves, if only to see how much egg Aidan is wearing?

Ceramic fuel cells have an energy coefficient of 80%; or if you will 4 times better than coal fired applications.

And given they're sited where the power is consumed, are not subjected to the usual transmission and distribution losses, which according to my electrical engineering friends, averages around 67%.

And as such locally sited Aussie invented ceramic fuel cells produce the cheapest domestic power in the world, even more so, when the fuel source is domestically created waste to methane, scrubbed biogas!

Or put another way, endlessly sustainable and virtually free fuel!

It also might be of some interest to you Aidan, that thorium has allowed large scale solar thermal energy, to become base load energy, that successfully competes with coal, now today!

The only ludicrous thing here Aidan is your endless obfuscation; and on subjects you obviously know zero about or pushed way off into a distant future?

We're are competing for our very livelihoods here with all the emerging economies, and shouldn't be reluctant to ape some of their best examples?

Perhaps all we need are a few Indian and Chinese electrical engineers to show us how they've done it!
Rhrosty.

Every western style economy rests on just two support pillars, and therefore any fool in his right mind should look for and accept the cheapest energy and the lowest costing tax system!

Yes people are sometimes hurt financially by economic change, as occurred when we ditched our clothing and textiles manufacture, only to see the importers soak up obscene profits, rather than see consumers get a better deal, the intended outcome!?

Albeit some of that changed when some of the bigger retailers started importing directly from the factories, to cut out all the usual middlemen.

Simply put, cutting out all the profit demanding middlemen (inclusive of money burning state governments) and their markups/management fees, could halve the cost of living, and with it, destroy the wages/cost/price spirals; all assisted by a long overdue return to the inflation beating gold standard; and all essential service rolled out as more reliable, government supplied (cheapest possible )models!

We just don't need paper shuffling middle men, be they the usual money for nothing business broker barons, empire building bureaucrats, (diabolical do it double dithers) or corrupt/serially incompetent state parliaments!?

All of which could be replaced by an elected, single winner takes all state governor, with a staff of around a dozen competent administrators!?

And as such only constrained by the budget, genuine whistle blowers and people power, rather than an extremely expensive obstructionist opposition! Thereby saving as much as 35 billions+ per?

People with powerful vested interest, or anything but the national interest, genuine entrepreneurial economic opportunity, and we Australians in mind, can go argue differently! Or better yet, go take a running jump!
Rhrosty.

Rhosty, I stand by my claim that the small modular thorium power stations don't exist yet. I'm aware India's building thorium reactors – it's something that they had a strong incentive to use thorium because of uncertainty about uranium availability. But neither they nor China are nearly as far along the process as you seem to think. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power to find out where countries are really at.

Whatever you did for that power authority, you were obviously quite isolated from the technical side of it, or you'd know that 17% and 50% losses in series add up to 58.5% not 67%. But of much greater concern to your credibility is the fact that you got those numbers from an unsourced claim on a website, whereas more reputable websites show much lower figures and their sources.

So I'd encourage you to follow your own advice and do some proper research.

Ceramic fuel cells are, as you say, very efficient (whether the gas comes from biological, geological or synthetic sources). So why aren't they in widespread use yet? If you look at the case against, instead of just looking at the case for it, you are likely to gain a much better understanding of the issues.

I'm puzzled as to what you think I've been endlessly obfuscating? I thought I was pretty clear, but if you want something explained better, just let me know!

But your claim that it's the only ludicrous thing here is a blatant lie. IF IT WERE TRUE I'd be extremely interested that thorium has allowed large scale solar thermal energy, to become base load energy, that successfully competes with coal, now today! But you've confused two completely different molten salt technologies.

No western style economy rests on just two support pillars! Things of more advantage than the cheapest energy and the lowest costing tax system include:
• The rule of law
• Good infrastructure
• A highly skilled workforce (therefore a good education system)
• Cheap (and fairly easily available) credit

That last pillar rules out a gold standard.There are better ways of controlling inflation anyway.

I generally try not to raise to the bait when the well-off and opinionated suggest “everybody knows socialism doesn’t work”. But sometimes a call to order is appropriate, particularly when a protagonist suggests that the market is the main cause of our problems. In this instance this is Ted Trainer.

Due to the restrictions placed on this blog, I need to explore this issue in 3 parts.

It is just too easy to blame the market, instead of tackling whatever motivates or constructs the market. Under capitalism, even if there was no market and goods were distributed according to politics, the faults that Ted identifies would be much, much worse.

Poor people do not simply have “little or no effective demand”. This is not caused by markets per se. The restricted “effective demand” of different social groups is as much caused by politics and various non-market economic practices than whatever exacerbation may arise from markets. Markets are where poverty is felt – not where it is caused.

I found Ted’s excursion into domestic communism, both strained and vexatious. Domestic work produces use-values, not exchange-values – utilities, not commodities. Our problems arise through faults within commodity production and distribution, not through Mum’s and Dad’s providing meals to their kids.

Excluding direct violence and fraud, you can only create rich and poor through interfering in the production, distribution and consumption of commodities. If everyone lived like Robinson Crusoe there would be no rich and poor even though different groups would have different standards of living.

But more importantly – if these Crusoe groups exchanged some goods on a free market based on socialist principles, the differences in standards of living would decrease. On the other hand if such goods were exchanged on some other market basis, feudalism, mercantilism or capitalism, huge disparities and exploitation could arise and probably would