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The slow revolt of Western electorates


Altherion

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3 minutes ago, Hereward said:

Yes, but coal related industries are labour intensive and require low or semi-skilled workers. Renewable industries aren't and do not.

They used to. One of the reasons that coal miners are out of jobs isn't just that coal demand is down - it's also that automation has replaced a massive amount of the jobs themselves. Especially in the processing and refining of it after the actual mining. 

Renewable industries do require a lot of low-skilled workers, especially on installing and maintenance. That industry might go away in the future, but for now there's a potentially huge demand for people who can do it. In addition, it requires a lot of skilled labor actually making the stuff - turbines, batteries, solar panels, mining the materials for it, chemical engineers - and all of that is good, too. 

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38 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Most of the components are built and assembled in factories on production lines, and installation is pretty much straightforward manual labour.

Some of the more complicated parts aren't going to be, including things like the powerwall and potentially whatever they do to install the SolarCity roofing materials. There's also some potential for interesting infrastructure work that allows for sharing of power across small and medium-sized areas instead of a centralized node system. But yeah, there should be LOTS of work for unskilled or manual labor, and this was actually one of the things Obama did - he got a bunch of veterans jobs in the solar industry doing roof work. 

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13 hours ago, Rippounet said:

There's no denying that the immediate future will be bad. Trump won in the US, Fillon will win in France. Bear in mind however that W.Bush paved the way for Obama, and Sarkozy for Hollande. This wide swing to the right may very well be followed by a wide swing to the left in 4-5 years. With the hope that someday the voters will recognize demagoguery when they see it and the pendulum stops.

It may be. However, it may also be that the string snaps. The system is robust, but not indestructible. Trump has been accused of being an existential threat to the system, but he is almost certainly not... which is more than can be said for his successors. If the underlying problems remain, sooner or later we will get a genuine fascist or communist or some other revolutionary that really will destroy the system. Alternatively, the same end may be accomplished by mass protests or by an armed uprising.

6 hours ago, Werthead said:

Yeah, I'm not sure how that's obvious at all. Coal businesses can only exist where there is coal. Renewables can exist almost anywhere. Every house and apartment block in the US (or the world) can have solar panels on the roof for starters. Rather than have energy-generation jobs concentrated in a relatively few places you can have them everywhere instead.

There are two issues here. First, coal needs to be dragged from the ground constantly whereas solar panels are installed once and produce energy for decades. Second, automation affects new and established technologies differently. In the case of coal, there is a way of doing things which works and is already implemented on a massive scale so it will only be replaced if the capitalists are well and truly confident that the new way is significantly better. In the case of solar panels, the methods are being designed from scratch anyway so going with a more automated one is a no-brainer.

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Quote

First, coal needs to be dragged from the ground constantly whereas solar panels are installed once and produce energy for decades.

Maintenance and repair of solar panels is quite a business opportunity. They can be damaged by hailstones (or even heavy rain) or unseated by high winds. Checking and repairing them is certainly something that needs to be done on a reasonably regular basis.

There is also upgrade work to consider. The efficiency of panels has improved dramatically  in just a couple of decades and that is set to continue.

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Coal jobs are a red herring.  Appalachian coal wasn't replaced by renewables, it was replaced by cheaper western coal when the east-west rail lines opened and then crushingly replaced in recent years by much cheaper and cleaner natural gas.  Fracking killed coal jobs.  Coal jobs were also killed steadily by better mining equipment, just like tractors replaced farm laborers.  

The invisible hand replaced coal.  You need to create some huge anti-market protectionism to bring back coal jobs in the Appalachians.  How much should tax-payers subsidize dangerous, polluting jobs?  Especially when the U.K. in the 1970-80s already proved that it cannot be sustained. 

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  • 2 weeks later...
14 minutes ago, Matrim Fox Cauthon said:

As an American living in Austria, this has been fantastic news. I was worried. Now my (Austrian) girlfriend should be able to sleep better at night; she has been deeply anxious. 

I'm also relieved. 

It also looks like women more or less decided the election. Most of them cast their vote for Van der Bellen.

Yesterday I friend of mine heard a drunk man(soccer fan) scream "Ich wähle Hofer und Hitler" and I'm glad that most voters decided to vote against a man who attracts such followers.

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Today was an interesting day. In addition to the repeat election in Austria, there was also a referendum in Italy proposed by the government as a means of reforming the constitution and thus, among other things, greatly reducing both the number of Senators and the role of the Senate. The Italian prime minister had promised to resign if it failed and based on the exit polls, it looks like he's going to have to decide whether to keep this promise.

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Pardon my ignorance, but what's up with this guy Fillon in France?  I heard him described as the conservative which would have made me think he's the same party as Le Pen, but apparently that's not the case?  Is Fillon from a more mainstream conservative party like Republicans / Tories and Le Pen's party is something more right-wing and formerly fringe?

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@Altherion: Renzi has apparently resigned.

@Triskan: Le Pen isn't in either of the two big  "establisment" French parties. Instead, she's the president of the nationalist Front National. Fillon, on the other hand, is a member of the establishment conservative Républicains (Formerly UMP). Fillon is in the same party as Sarkozy or Chirac, while the Le Pens have their own political movement.

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Yes, it looks like the results of the vote are even worse for the government than the exit polls suggested and Renzi has said that he will resign tomorrow (BBC, CNN). This appears to be a significant victory for the anti-establishment parties, but it's not clear which one of them (if any) will benefit. BBC suggests that the President may try to appoint a caretaker prime minister and try to wait things out (the next scheduled elections are not until February 2018).

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2 hours ago, theguyfromtheVale said:

@Triskan: Le Pen isn't in either of the two big  "establisment" French parties. Instead, she's the president of the nationalist Front National. Fillon, on the other hand, is a member of the establishment conservative Républicains (Formerly UMP). Fillon is in the same party as Sarkozy or Chirac, while the Le Pens have their own political movement.

Merci beaucoup!

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But note that Fillon seems rather rightwing within his party so they might hope that he will fair better against Le Pen than a more mainstream conservative. He seems most likely to win and if I understood his stances correctly this will be a considerable shift to the right, not only compared to the social democrat Hollande but maybe even compared to Sarkozy...

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10 hours ago, Triskan said:

Pardon my ignorance, but what's up with this guy Fillon in France?  I heard him described as the conservative which would have made me think he's the same party as Le Pen, but apparently that's not the case?  Is Fillon from a more mainstream conservative party like Republicans / Tories and Le Pen's party is something more right-wing and formerly fringe?

Le Pen is the leader of the Far Right National Front. Fillon is likely to be the candidate of the Center-Right. The French Presidential election will likely be between these two as the Center-Left headed by the Socialists are predicted to fall to a bad third place in the First round of the Presidential election (if no-one gets 50% of the vote then there is a runoff with the top two candidates facing off). Le Pen has a good chance to finish first in the first round and would normally lose in the seocond round as a large percentage of the Left would be expected to vote for anyone but Le Pen. That Fallon will likely be the Center-Right candidate complicates the matter as his views are decidedly to the right of even the last couple of Center-Right candidates and  much of the left might not be able to bring themselves to vote for him and thus not vote in the second round of the Presidential election which  makes a Le Pen vicotry concievable. 

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10 hours ago, Altherion said:

Yes, it looks like the results of the vote are even worse for the government than the exit polls suggested and Renzi has said that he will resign tomorrow (BBC, CNN). This appears to be a significant victory for the anti-establishment parties, but it's not clear which one of them (if any) will benefit. BBC suggests that the President may try to appoint a caretaker prime minister and try to wait things out (the next scheduled elections are not until February 2018).

Prolem is not who can take advantage of the fall of Renzi but whehter any caretaker administration can be coppled together after what looks like a defeat of the centerpiece of Renzi's program by a margin that will likely be 20% or more. Moreover, the real problem is that the Constitutional Plan that went down to defeat was being recommended as a way to more effectively block the growth of populists movements in the seperate regions of Italy and to permit the Federal government to bail out the banking sector that has been in very shaky grounds for several years. The defeat of the proposed constitutional reforms and collapse of the government might very well lead to a run on Italian banks and a major finacnial crisis in the EU (which might be one of the silver linings for the British in Brexit as they will not be as directly affected by a loss of confidence in the EU banking systemn). 

 

Further, if the Italian banks start to collapse the EU Central Bank will have to step in and the Northern Europeans (mainly the Germans and Dutch) will have to foot the bill. This of course will likely have an impact on the German elections that are scheduled for later in the year. I think that you have a snow ball that started going down hill and becoming larger with Brexit and will likely reach a critical level with the result of the Italian referendum and the fall of the Renzi government. I am not tauting that the Far Right or other Populist parties will come to power acroos europe or that the EU will collapse but Far Right and Populist (anti-Eu parties) will almost certainly become major players in most of the important EU member countries so if nothing else further moves at centralizing the EU or the coordination of large scale economic programs and/or reforms which are likely to be necessary to save the Euro over the medium term will likely be impossible.

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I unoriginally predict that the German conservative (Merkel) party will move somewhat to the right after Xmas when the campaign really gets going and recant their "refugees welcome" talk (they did so already to some extent), so they will still remain the strongest party and in the worst case lead a three-party coalition (with either Greens or Liberal/libertarians and the toothless social democrats who might fall under 20% I am afraid), so even if the rightwing populist AfD gets 15+% some kind of status quo will be saved for another time. Unless unpredictable stuff happens in Italy and maybe Le Pen and whatever...

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38 minutes ago, Jo498 said:

I unoriginally predict that the German conservative (Merkel) party will move somewhat to the right after Xmas when the campaign really gets going and recant their "refugees welcome" talk (they did so already to some extent), so they will still remain the strongest party and in the worst case lead a three-party coalition (with either Greens or Liberal/libertarians and the toothless social democrats who might fall under 20% I am afraid), so even if the rightwing populist AfD gets 15+% some kind of status quo will be saved for another time. Unless unpredictable stuff happens in Italy and maybe Le Pen and whatever...

I generally agree with your view of the likely outcome in  Germany my only quibble is that I see Merkel as fundamentally unable recant the "refugees are welcome" rhetoric. It's too much of her make up. I can see her remaining silent and other party leaders refuting the language, how that is going to play out with the electroate is less then certain in my view.  the AFD getting 15% and members in the Fedral Parliament will be a schismic event in and of itself even if as we both suspect they will be shut of a leadership role.

 

Moreover, if Italy really goes south and the Germans are required to bail them out I think that all preconcieved notions of likely outcomes might have to be seriously reassessed.

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