Technology to save the world

A recent Salon article claims that concentrated solar power could be the solution to our energy woes.

"The key attribute of CSP is that it generates primary energy in the form of heat, which can be stored 20 to 100 times more cheaply than electricity -- and with far greater efficiency.
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CSP costs have already begun to decline as production increases. According to a 2008 Sandia National Laboratory presentation, costs are projected to drop to 8 to 10 cents per kilowatt hour when capacity exceeds 3,000 MW. The world will probably have double that capacity by 2013.
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Solar thermal plants covering the equivalent of a 92-by-92-mile square grid in the Southwest could generate electricity for the entire United States. Mexico has an equally enormous solar resource. China, India, southern Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and Australia also have huge resources."

Sounds great, but I'm a little skeptical. Still, relative to the politically-tenable options, CSP sounds waaaaay better than ethanol (hat tip, pete). I will be on the look out for corroborating research papers and articles in support of CSP. Who knows, maybe CSP cities in the Southwest will be the new coal towns...
Read more!

This and That: From McCain to the Acharnians

McCain advisor speaks, Friedman, Smith, et. al roll over in graves
As I've written before, my vote will depend greatly on my faith in the Presidential nominees' advisors. It's been pretty even in my book for a while, but lately Obama has been pulling ahead (though he has a way to go), and this latest comment by a McCain advisor is a MAJOR negative, especially given the fact that McCain has admitted he doesn't have many economic ideas of his own.

“What really happens is that the economy grows more vigorously when you lower tax rates,” said Kevin Hassett, an adviser to the presumptive Republican nominee, John McCain, and the director for economic policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. “It is beyond the reach of economic science to explain precisely why that happens, but it does.”

Wow. Now, the first part of this statement isn't always true, certainly many economists on the left disagree, but it's a reasonable position. However, the fact that Mr. Hassett believes this phenomenon is unexplainable by economics is insane. Dani Rodrik dubs it's "faith-based economics." When one of your advisors can't explain Econ 101 concepts you may be in trouble; if you don't know anything about economics either, you are DEFINITELY in trouble.

On the plus side, McCain's kid is joining the Marines, which should allay SOME of the fears that we'll be in Iraq for 100 years. I do respect that he also refuses to speak about it and politicize an issue he could certainly score some easy points on (please spare me any psycho-babble about him NOT talking about it to get even more attention; would you say that if Jimmy Obama was joining the Marines?)

Still, McCain's stock is definitely down. He'll need to bring on some heavyweights.

More on the internets, innovation, and the development of the market economy under the fold...

Will the internet soon be obselete?
From the creator of the internet, Al Gore (just kiddins!), "The scientists who pioneered it have now built a lightning-fast replacement capable of downloading entire feature films within seconds. At speeds about 10,000 times faster than a typical broadband connection, “the grid” will be able to send the entire Rolling Stones back catalogue from Britain to Japan in less than two seconds."

Why are the Social Sciences Backwards? (Pt. II from Econlog, Pt. III from MR)
Why were the Ancients able to take such huge steps forward in the fields of philosophy and astronomy, while economics (and history, among other studies) wouldn't *BEGIN* to receive serious treatment until the 16th century. The title question harkens back to the previous post about the steam engine, and Cowen has a useful take, "No one really cared [about economic thought] because they could not yet see how important those contributions would turn out to be. This is a central theme in why the growth of economic thought took so long.

It also suggests that today we might have some very important ideas amongst us, we simply cannot yet see how fruitful they will be. Their own proponents may not even know it."

Did the Ancients have market economies?
A personal interest of mine, here are a few different perspectives on whether the Athenians had a market economy, or if all economies were really plunder-based until the Dutch Republic. The blog debate is particularly enlightening. I agree with the posters who suggest it's more helpful to judge where an economy fits on a continuum of "marketness" (or "marketousity," if you're feeling crazy). Why does this matter? It is a large part of the puzzle to how and why societies evolve from plunder-based economies caught up in zero-sum conflict traps to exchange-based economies that thrive in peace time.

Hopefully, I'll come across a few more articles/books on the subject and sort out how political economy/technology/geography/other factors explain the development of market economies and liberal rule. Not today though. Read more!

Jesus would have done a lot less walking

Did you know that the steam engine " was first created by Heron of Alexandria in the first century A.D. The device created by Heron was truly inspired, unlike anything else that came before, but never considered to be anything but a toy with only very limited practical application.

As a result, Heron's steam engine, and its potential, was lost to the mists of time until James Watt's creation of the modern steam engine helped spark the Industrial Revolution."

Whoops. I find developments like the above fascinating. I stumbled across an old blog post exploring the story of innovation, and it once again got me thinking about lost discoveries, such as cement.

Why does this happen?

The Political Calculations blog has this to say:

The answer lies in the networks (the paths) connecting each inventor to the world in which they lived. When you consider that the Greeks had invented rail tracks in Corinth nearly 700 years before Heron's invention of his steam engine, it was literally possible for Heron or his contemporaries to go the next step and develop a working locomotive. It didn't happen because Heron's invention was essentially isolated. Neither he nor his contemporaries could make the leap from his invention to truly useful application, despite having many of the pieces that only needed to be put together.

By contrast, Watt was much more tightly linked to the other inventors and developers of his day than Heron could ever hope to be. Watt's invention was quickly disseminated, adapted for use in new applications and constantly refined and improved. It's no accident that Watt's steam engine powered the development that came afterward - it was the network of people interested in the opportunities made possible by Watt's invention that made it possible.

In the past, I was interest in coming up with a comprehensive list of lost discoveries and searching for a pattern in their stories. Network effects is certainly a logical theory. Read more!