It’s an unprecedented – and massive – experiment: Since 2017 the U.S.-based charity GiveDirectly has been providing thousands of villagers in Kenya what’s called a “universal basic income” – a cash grant of about $50, delivered every month, with the commitment to keep the payments coming for 12 years. It is a...
The belief that poverty is caused by incompetence, laziness or rogue spending is still very widespread. A lot of aid programs are based on the idea that it takes western wisdom, education and discipline to really lift people out of poverty. Teach farming techniques to people who have been farming that land for generations. Give water saving advice to people who use a tenth of what westerners use. “Teach a man to fish” when that man has been living at the coast for all his life but never been able to afford a fishing boat.
It’s good to see clear evidence that it’s not a lack of education, discipline or intelligence that causes poverty, it’s that the system is rigged and people who start out in poverty can never escape it because you need to have money to make more money.
We do in Germany, every two years. It’s not helping and I don’t know why. Maybe people are aligning their headlights correctly just for the test. Or the test is garbage. Next time my car is due, I’ll ask the guy.
I find it hard to imagine a future where fusion power would be cheap. The reactors will most likely be highly complex, with very expensive materials and lots of custom parts. Fission reactors are much simpler and even they have become too expensive to run without subsidies. ITER is supposed to cost 22 billion, but the US DOE estimates it will be closer to 65 billion. And ITER is a tiny test reactor that will still draw energy from the grid while running. If we ever get a fusion reactor that can actually produce energy, it’s going to be so much bigger and more complex than ITER. And it will have a maximum output and operating life, so a finite amount of energy it can produce during its lifetime. Divide the cost for R&D and construction by the amount of energy produced, and it will most likely come out as much more than solar/wind + storarge.
As a counter point, fission power did not really get cheaper once the initial difficulties were worked out. They are still highly complex machines that require a lot of engineering, custom parts and precision manufacturing. The same is true for fusion reactors, we still don’t have the technology to build one that actually produces power.
By comparison, solar and wind are pretty low-tech, so it’s easier to reduce cost by scaling up production and using automation.
Here’s hoping Sodium batteries provide some effective respite for that in the near future.
Yes, I have my hopes up for that one as well. Lithium-Ion was never meant to be cheap, it only got more affordable due to the massive scale of production, but it still uses expensive chemistry. If we could apply the same scale of production to a battery technology that uses cheaper materials and maybe less complicated processes, it would be a huge win.
It's one of the biggest experiments in fighting global poverty. Now the results are in (www.npr.org)
It’s an unprecedented – and massive – experiment: Since 2017 the U.S.-based charity GiveDirectly has been providing thousands of villagers in Kenya what’s called a “universal basic income” – a cash grant of about $50, delivered every month, with the commitment to keep the payments coming for 12 years. It is a...
Ahhh my eyes (lemmy.ml)
U.S. lab says it repeated fusion energy feat — with higher yield (www.washingtonpost.com)