Capitalism and Democratic Socialism

                                                                                    written 7 December, 2025

                                                                              published 14 December, 2025

            On November 19th and 20th, 2025, Daily Kos (dailykos.com) posted essays under the name Trenz Pruca, excerpted here, clarifying the conversation about capitalism and socialism.  Specific definition of these words is important, as confusion comes from people using different definitions for the same words, talking past each other in circular debates, when trying to communicate.

            A conventional business school definition of capitalism is: private ownership and free markets.  But Adam Smith's theories were an idealized form, assuming such things as equal access to funds and information, which don't exist in the real world.  So, capitalism can't be considered as just mindless commerce, independent of social impact.  It needs human feedback if humans are to survive. 

            History shows that unrestrained capitalistic systems change over time.  They begin with competitive growth, consolidating with maturity, become dominated by financialization with age, and eventually decay into oligarchy, with eventual collapse.  This is a logical progression, not a defect.

            In the early stages, capitalism is typified by small business, entrepreneurship, competition, risk and reward, and a rising standard of living.  In the later stages capitalism is dominated by monopolies, financialization, rent extraction, political capture, and wealth concentration.  Both can be called capitalism, but their impact on society is very different.  

            In a similar way, some people believe socialism means: governmental ownership of everything, a command economy, with bureaucratic central planning.  This is properly called state socialism, and the failed former Soviet Union is an example.

            Recognizing the natural life cycle of capitalism, and desiring to prevent oppressive oligarchy, societies can take actions to keep capitalism from digesting itself.  This takes the form of taxing capital, regulating corporations, investing in public services and unions, and instituting strong anti-trust and anti-corruption laws.  Such regulated capitalism is what the rest of the world calls democratic socialism.  Examples include the Scandinavian countries, and certain eras in New Zealand, Canada, and even the US.

            In the US, we have been taught to associate all socialism with authoritarianism, a result of Cold War polarization and business school indoctrination, a simplicity that benefits the wealthy.  But democratic socialism is capitalism with guardrails.

            The US is clearly in a late stage of unrestrained capitalism.  Almost every sector of the economy has concentrated into monopoly control by a few large conglomerates.  More than half of all rental housing is owned by a few corporations.  The financialization of the economy is overwhelming, shifting from producing quality products to maximizing shareholder value.  Wealth inequity is at a historic high, and labor unions are relatively weak.  Regulatory agencies have been captured, and money influences politics to the level of corruption.  This is not Adam Smith's capitalism, but a system near the end of its life cycle.

            In contrast, Scandinavian countries are working examples of democratic socialism, with vibrant markets.  Individual firms are privately owned, working in competition, encouraging entrepreneurship.  However, essential services are publicly or cooperatively owned and universally available.  Government regulates capital, limiting the concentration of wealth, protecting political equity from corruption by extreme wealth.  Unions are strong, and nobody confuses human rights with "handouts".  Capitalism powers the system, but democracy determines the direction.

            Where we have monopolies and mega corporations, they have a mix of private, public, and cooperative businesses.  Our profits are diverted into speculation and corporate buybacks, while their profits reinvest in social systems like healthcare, transit, and housing.  While our firms regulate politics, their politics regulate markets.  We see concentrated ownership of everything and they have broad based ownership.  Our economy protects capital with public bailouts, they allow poor business to fail without destroying the society.  America falls lower on measures of happiness than Scandinavia.

            The issue is not about markets, but about power.  Who controls the surplus, sets the rules, or avoids the risks?  Who writes the laws, funds the politicians, or decides who fails?  In late-stage capitalism, the answers are: capital, but in democratic socialism the answers are: citizens.

            "Capitalism is like fire, brilliant, dangerous, and transformative, so societies have three choices: let it burn out unchecked (oligarchic collapse), extinguish it (authoritarianism), or manage it (democratic socialism).  The United States choses the first, and Scandinavia choses the third.  The societies that flourish will be the ones that treat economics not as theology, but as gardening: tending the healthy growth, pruning the dangerous overgrowth, and remembering that unchecked systems, like unchecked fires, consume everything."

            Do we have the wisdom, and will, to change?

AI, Salvation Or Destruction?

                                                                                  written 30 November, 2025

                                                                                 published 7 December, 2025       

 

            Artificial Intelligence (AI) is everywhere, and expanding quickly.  Every Google search now has an AI option at the head of the list.  About half of all new entries on the web are now AI generated.  Students have easy access to AI answers for questions, and AI generated essays are now common at all levels of education.  AI bots can do your shopping and routinely handle making reservations, needing only your credit card and login information, allowing you to do other things.  

            AI previews job applications and are increasingly part of online medical advice and psychological counseling.  A significant number of people have AI chat buddies, particularly teens alienated by social media. 

            Computer code is written by AI.  Complex evaluations, such as reading medical images or calculating how a DNA sequence will fold into an active protein, are accomplished more rapidly by AI than by humans.  AI is essential to self-driving cars and trucks, and AI enhanced drones have changed the balance of power in war.  

            Hundreds of billions of dollars are pouring into AI data centers and their support infrastructure.  Over the last 6 years, this river of money has about doubled the stock market valuation.  The heart of this frenzy is NVIDIA, now the most valuable company on the planet, which produces the complex chips essential to AI progress.  On average, over the last 6 years, NVIDIA stock price doubled each year.

            It is indeed a brave new world.

            However, there are down sides, even as AI works apparent miracles.  Students focus on obtaining an answer, rather than cultivating the process of deriving an answer themselves.  The more a person depends on AI for answers, the more their capacity for creative thinking diminishes, with measurable deterioration in brain structure, reducing IQ, leaving them more stupid.  The displacement of workers, ranging from vehicle drivers to computer programmers, is creating turbulence in the economy.  Mid-level management positions are disappearing.

            Furthermore, AI tends to hallucinate, or fabricate (lie!).  Experts in the field say this is endemic to the structure of AI, not just a bug.  AI generated governmental reports, full of misinformation, have made headlines.  Numerous lawsuits have been filed claiming AI chatbots encouraged suicides.  AI medical assessments are biased against women's health issues.   

            As more socially critical infrastructure systems, such as power, water, and telecommunications, are turned over to AI, humans become less involved in operations, and are therefore less prepared for any problems that emerge.  Hackers, from bored teenagers to malevolent nation states, use AI to enhance computer scams, malware development, and fraud.  There is concern AI itself could turn on humanity as a logical conclusion.

            AI data centers demand massive amounts of power.  The industry is growing rapidly, but constructing power capacity takes time, so AI boosters submit multiple power claims, unsure where an actual site will be developed.  Estimated power increases range from 15-50 percent, stressing power providers who must make long term plans.  With so much money behind it, power prices are irrelevant to AI, but real people living near proposed centers see electricity rates increasing by double digits.  Because AI needs uninterrupted power, other uses may face rolling blackouts.

            It is proposed this power surge will be supplied by natural gas and nuclear power.  But natural gas is becoming more expensive, and large turbine delivery is slowed by supply chain constipation.  Billions are being poured into nuclear: restarting decommissioned reactors, building new conventional pressurized water reactors, and the promise of Small Modular Reactors (SMR).  However, there are only a few nukes to restart, new conventional construction takes a decade, and SMR's are still mostly nonexistent.  Since the AI power demand is immediate, the AI boom is thrown into question.  

            Fear Of Missing Out on the expected trillion dollar economy means many companies are trying to be first, in an industry that has yet to show it produces an economically viable product.  80 percent of AI companies have never made a profit, yet still ask for billions more.  Talks have begun to get government guarantees: socialist support for this capitalist adventure.  

            Each week there are more articles suggesting this economic surge is a bubble, doomed to pop.  Since the basic economy is already struggling, when the AI economic bubble collapses, the economic shock will be widespread.

            If AI succeeds, our people become more stupid and unemployed, and if it fails the economy goes into recession.  It's a 21st century miracle.

  

 

 

 

 

 

What We Know

                                                                                  written 23 November, 2025

                                                                              published 30 November, 2025

 

            At a Science and Non-Duality conference, a UC Berkeley professor of mathematics once said, "There are two things we can know for sure: I am, and something is happening.  Everything else is just a story we tell ourselves."  

            The two things are direct personal experiences.  By our belief, we make the stories we tell ourselves into a potent reality that shapes our experiences.  But the infinite nature of the universe, and the finite limitation of any story, means all stories are either wrong or incomplete.

         Mark Twain said, "It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so."

            Dr. Gabor Maté, who works with trauma survivors, defines a trauma as something bad happening to you, or something you need, not happen to you.  He figures as many as 90 percent of the population has suffered trauma.  What keeps people stuck in dysfunctional behavior is the story they told themselves at the time, imperfectly trying to understand their situation, which is still active after the actual event is long gone.  His successes involve helping people rewrite their internal story.

            Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroanatomist who suffered a massive aneurism in her left brain, the primary seat of the ego, describes the event in her book "My Stroke Of Insight".  She experienced losing all her personal history and capacity for sequence or language, but became aware of a profound peace and connection to everything everywhere.  She got medical attention in time, and over her eight years of recovery, she was able to examine the stories that had once controlled her life, editing out most of those that no longer served her.  

            We are all a collection of stories, some laid down even before birth.  Our native language sets patterns of perception below our level of consciousness.  Our family dynamics, our culture, our religious orientation, all tell stories that draw lines, make definitions, and shape our experience of what is going on.  Across the globe, one of the most fundamental stories is the illusion of separation, which often expresses as greed, hatred, and violence.  

            Religious organizations, even those founded by prophets preaching unity and love, eventually accumulate material wealth, and to preserve it, often shift to promoting separation and domination.  Hundreds of millions have died, and many more impoverished, because religious groups claim to have the exclusive truth, ordained by God, thereby justifying slaughter and oppression of the other.

            Men feel entitlement over women, a story of misogyny thousands of years old, even embedded into religious dogma, disempowering half the population, and traumatizing children for hundreds of generations.  Superficial skin color is the root of racist entitlement stories, because anyone different is considered suspicious.

            Our economy proclaims the rich are entitled over the poor, insuring wide spread misery, anger, and rebellion, making enduring peace just a dream.  To sell products, businesses tell lies in the form of advertising.  To protect profits, businesses tell lies to cover corruption and defects.  

            A person locked into the story of separation works only for their own gain and has few, if any, true friends.  Our current president typifies this, and our county, and even the planet, suffers as a result.  But we all manifest some of this same separation story, because this is how we have been raised to a great extent.  We know we can do better.  

            We can begin by examining the stories we have accumulated over time.  Some near the surface may be easily examined, and changed.  Deeper stories are like the water we swim in, and not easily noticed.  However, if we pay attention in life, reality reflects our stories back to us as we encounter the world, for life is like a mirror.  We get back what we put out, both from our conscious and unconscious being.  

            At the least, we can apply critical thinking, and begin examining stories as they are presented to us, rather than just embracing them whole.  This is good advice for dealing with Internet scams, and it applies to life in general.  Does this story actually help me, or improve my experience of life?  Does this story align with other information I have come to trust?  Does this make me feel better, or more at peace in this moment? 

            We are expressions of an infinite world, and are much more than we have been led to believe.

 

 

 

 

Learning From History

                                                                                  written 16 November, 2025

                                                                              published 23 November, 2025

 

            Black swan events have low probability, but very high impact.  Because the frequency, magnitude, and duration of these events are uncertain, it is difficult to plan for resilience, or calculate the cost.  However, we can get some information from history.

            The Cascadia subduction zone stretches from Ferndale, CA, north into British Columbia, Canada.  This is an area of geophysical plate motion where part of the oceanic crust is being forced under the lighter weight continental mass of North America.  Subduction zones, due to the physics and scale of the masses involved, produce the largest earthquakes on the planet. 

            The entire Cascadia fault last ruptured 324 years ago, estimated as a magnitude 9.2 event based on Japanese tsunami records.  Geophysical investigation has found that over the last 10,000 years, the entire length has ruptured 20 times, with intervals ranging from 110 to 1,150 years.  The southern portion has ruptured twice as often, with intervals ranging from 40 to 720 years.  We have now gone longer than 93 percent of the known times between earthquakes in the last 6,000 years.

            Large earthquakes make the planet ring like a bell for several days.  Seismologists report a Cascadia event could trigger motion on the San Andreas fault.  The northern portion under San Francisco hasn't moved since 1906, and the southern portion under Los Angeles hasn't moved since 1857, both were magnitude 7.9 events.  A Cascadia/San Andreas combined disaster could affect the entire west coast of the United States, costing hundreds of billions, requiring years to recover.

            Beginning in the December, 1861, two strong atmospheric rivers hit both northern and southern California dumping 10 feet of rain over 4 weeks.  The central valley was flooded 20 feet deep, which didn't clear out for 6 months.  164 years ago, the area was relatively unpopulated.  Such an event today could cost a trillion dollars, displace millions for the duration, and take untold time to recover.  These inundations have occurred before, with intervals ranging from 51 to 426 year, some greater than the 1861 flood.  On a warming planet, storms carry increasing water content, making inundation events more frequent and extreme. 

            In September, 1859, the Earth was hit by a strong solar flare: an electromagnetic storm known as the Carrington Event.  When a magnetic field passes through a loop of wire, an electric current is induced in the wire.  This is why electric motors and generators work.  166 years ago, telegraph systems were just being installed, creating loops of wire many miles long.  The solar flare induced such large currents in these loops, that sparks flew from the telegraph keys, and the system was able function without any batteries.

            Since then, the national electric grid has been constructed, with many more miles of wire forming loops.  If such a flare was to hit the Earth today, the induced currents could blow out the large transformers that are essential to the operation of the grid.  A modest geomagnetic storm knocked out power across a wide area of Quebec in 1989.  There are about 55,000 transformers in the US grid, and destroying as few as 9 critical ones could black out power across the country.  These transformers are all custom built for their specific location, and delivery time is measured in years. 

            Society today has the expectation of constant electricity, but is dependent on an electrical grid which is ageing, fragile, and occasionally stressed carrying even the normal load, in a world that can change very quickly.  Systems that worked before electricity no longer exist, or are unable to carry a civilization of so many people.  If electricity went away completely, 90 percent of the population would die. 

            Any of these three natural disasters, without even considering hostile human activity, could disrupt our electrical supply for an unknown duration.  These natural events have already happened, and we know they will happen again.

            While atmospheric river and space weather forecasting can give a few days warnings of flooding and solar flares, earthquakes are essentially unpredictable.  We could have a quake before you finish reading this article, or not for another century.  In the face of this reality, it is prudent to prepare for what is possible, even if we can only lessen the magnitude of the impact.  The technology for local power resilience not only exists, but is the cheapest power to install.  

            Do we have the will to act while we still can?

 

 

Blessing The Rain

                                                                                    written 9 November, 2025

                                                                              published 16 November, 2025

            My entire life, I have been a left brained, plan-acholic, living primarily in the world of concept.  I have been educated in science and trained as a mechanical engineer, with a rewarding career.  But I am also driven by curiosity about the world.  Over time, I became aware of the limitations within the western scientific paradigm, specifically, the consideration of consciousness.

            I define consciousness as the combination of awareness and volition: input and output.

            Western science had to dig out from under the lethal dogma of the Church.  In order to thrive, science limited itself to just objective reality.  This perspective of the physical world eventually prevailed, but abandoned serious consideration of subjective reality.  Consciousness, if considered at all, was described as nothing more than a consequence of material complexity, a view still widely held in western biology today.

            A little over a century ago, two revolutions in western thinking shook the world: psychology and quantum mechanics.  Psychology recognizes that what we think affects our experience of life, and that our waking, self-conscious, mind is but a small part of a larger constellation, containing individual and collective subconsciousness, and an overriding super consciousness.  Quantum mechanics recognizes material reality is both a particle and a wave, arising from a vast unity of energy.  We experience particles or waves depending on how we choose to examine the world.  Consciously observing physical reality changes it, challenging the assumption that consciousness arises from matter.  

            Eastern science understands consciousness transcends material reality.  I suspect this is because eastern religious thinking is more inclusive, accepting there may be many understandings of the divine.  This is not to say there are no eastern fundamentalist fanatics, but there is more institutional tolerance than in the west.

            Our experience of material reality can be described by four dimensions, three of space and one of time, but modern physical theories consider 10 or more dimensions, most of them beyond our direct experience.  Chaos theories of disordered physical systems postulates stable patterns in higher dimensional fields.  There is more to the world than just our waking experience.

            Each level of dimension has a new quality associated with it, not available to lower dimensions.  A line (one dimension) has extension, while a plane (two dimensions) also has area.  Volume has density, and time adds endurance.  We can consider consciousness the quality of a higher dimensional form, which transcends and includes all the lower dimension forms we experience as matter.  Thus, material reality resides within consciousness.  

            Remember, what is normally considered consciousness is really only the small self-conscious part of the larger quality of consciousness.  Whomever we think we are, that is actually only a part of something much larger.

            But this is all just words: logic chopping.  Is there any objective proof of any of this?  

            In 2004, Masaru Emoto wrote the "The Hidden Messages In Water", which chronicled his efforts to demonstrate that proof.  As described in Wikipedia, "his water crystal experiments consisted of exposing water in glasses to various words, pictures, or music, then freezing it and examining the ice crystals' aesthetic properties with microscopic photography".  The resulting pictures showed water exposed to positive thoughts and words formed elaborate, symmetrical crystals, while water exposed to negative thoughts and words formed asymmetrical, relatively simple crystals.  He found the two most positive words were Love and Gratitude, qualities that show up in all spiritual traditions.

            Of course, mainstream science has dismissed this work as pseudoscientific and eccentric, the same dogmatic rejection early scientists received from the Church, but without the lethal consequences, which shows some form of progress.

             I have chosen to embrace Emoto's work, and live my life as an experiment.  I am grateful to live where it still rains each season.  I feel drawn to experience the rain as often as I can, especially after the long dry summer.  This last week, during our first strong rainfall, I sat on our covered deck, thanking the rain with each inbreath, and blessing it with each outbreath.  I could hear the rain pounding and experience the energy of the storm.  I imagine this blessed rain flowing into the groundwater, and on downstream, enhancing everything it touched, and could feel my connection with all life.

            Does it matter?  Who knows.  Objective proof is impossible.  But I feel better, perhaps helping heal the planet, if just a tiny bit.  Imagine if we all did this?

 

 

            

Crispin B. Hollinshead lives in Ukiah.  This and previous articles can be found at cbhollinshead.blogspot.com. 

 

Antifa

                                                                                    written 2 November, 2025

                                                                                published 9 November, 2025

  

            My father was antifa (anti-fascist) years before my birth.  He was one of 50 million Americans trained and armed to fight against the previous malignant narcissistic authoritarian, who was then stomping around the globe.  They were victorious.  While my father survived the war and procreated our family, he died from consequences of his fight 10 years later, and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.  He would be sad to see authoritarianism now waving the American flag.   

            But capitalism and fascism share the same illusion of exclusive gain and control.  Hitler rose to power in 1933, and many US companies profited doing business with him, ignoring the morality of his social activities.  Even after Pearl Harbor, a few still did business in Germany.  

            Exclusive gain is an illusion because the world is fundamentally whole.  It is significant that every spiritual tradition on the planet has some form of the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have done unto you.  This is not about morality, but describes the appropriate actions to take in a unity reality.  

            The quantum mechanics of western science has come to the same conclusion, understanding material reality is not just particles, but has a wave form manifesting from energetic unity.  This is validated by technologies like nuclear weapons, computers, and solar panels.  

            Since everything is constantly arising from the same energy field, how I treat the so-called other, affects me as well.  The pursuit of exclusive gain requires ignoring that fundamental unity.  The resulting adverse impact eventually corrodes the entire society. 

            In our country, the stock market reaches new heights each week, but most of the value accrues to the few at the very top.  Meanwhile, more people are out of work or underpaid, food and energy prices are rising, and health care is becoming unaffordable, if it even exists.  When essentials become more expensive, all other consumption decreases, and the economy becomes unstable.  This is further driven by the changing global energy and climate realities.

            At the individual level, the illusion of exclusivity is the foundation of our ego.  The stronger the ego, the more detached we become, disconnecting from others, our community, and the natural world we depend upon.  This has been a human challenge for thousands of years, having the inertia of a life time of programming from families, cultures, and religions.  

            We can see a cautionary example at the very top of the federal government, a man driven so exclusively by his ego, moment to moment, that he has no constancy, no enduring commitment to an ideal or any other person or group, taking credit for everything, but responsibility for nothing.  The destructive consequences are already apparent, and are growing worse with time.

            Hitler died when he was 56, still physically and mentally in his prime.  But he was so identified with his ego, that he believed his personal defeat should be reflected in the whole country.  Shortly before he killed himself, he ordered his generals to destroy all the remaining civil infrastructure, essentially killing what was left of Germany.  His generals, motivated by compassion for the future of their people, disobeyed.

            Our leader is older, nowhere near good physical or mental health.  In his deterioration, rather than accepting his failure, he might also decide to destroy the country.  Unfortunately, technology has advanced, and he has unimaginable destructive power at his disposal.  Perhaps our military leaders will have enough compassion to avoid this fate.

            Despite our efforts and desires, we can't insure a positive outcome on the national scale.  But in unity, we are each a reflection of our leader, affected by our personal ego.  Although this disconnects us from the larger reality, each individual has the power to choose how to respond in every moment.  For however much time we might have left, we can choose to follow a different path.  By choosing to intentionally practice kindness, compassion, and respect, we cultivate a conscious connection to not only other people, but to all living beings, even the inanimate physical world.  

            Despite the apparent chaos we see today, there is an evolution of human consciousness already in process, as people increasingly experience the wholeness of reality.  As more people know this, experience this, and align their lives to practice this, the world changes.  It may be easier for some than others, but we can all do this.  Without such a cultural change, nothing else really matters.

Valuing Power Resilience

                                                                                      written 26 October, 2025

                                                                                published 2 November, 2025

    

            When day to day life seems to be working, it is tempting to assume it will always be like this, with no need to make any significant changes.  But this is a false assumption.  Change may be the only constant.  But preparing for change takes effort and expense.  Furthermore, the frequency and magnitude of an event we are preparing for are essentially unknowable.  At best we have probabilities, and emerging trends.

            Yet we have examples where society has changed behavior toward preparedness.  Every car now has seatbelts, and laws require their usage.  In earthquake areas, building codes demand more expensive construction methods to survive the expected shaking.  Fire resilient construction methods were the beginning of the building codes. 

            However, these all resulted from repeated experience of how expensive car crashes, earthquakes, and fires are for the individuals and the community at large.  Preparing is more difficult when the event we imagine hasn't happened yet, especially when the preparations are expensive.  In risk/reward terminology, Black Swan events are very low probability with very significant consequences.  It is easy to dismiss these, since they seem not very likely, but when they happen, the entire system can be destroyed.

            For example, nobody thought the housing market could collapse, so the financial world was unprepared when trillions of dollars were lost in 2007.  Only a few saw it coming, though in retrospect it was obvious, given the fundamentals of highly levered funds, poor loan quality control, combined with financial herd mentality thinking.  The challenge is to see what might be coming before the fact, and taking steps to change the situation, or at least minimize the impact.

            So far, Ukiah has never had a prolonged electrical power blackout.  The 2019 PSPS event lasted only four days.  Based on history, why should we worry about power resilience?  But in a rapidly changing world, history is an inadequate guide.

            People are becoming aware the transmission grid is antiquated and operating close to capacity, but grid system changes are expensive and slow.  Climate related events are increasing, adding stress to the system, but the federal stance violently denies reality, leaving us unprepared.  The AI building frenzy is creating huge pressures for increased power demand and delivery from a system already at the brink.  In the face of these growing trends, the likelihood of grid failure is increasing.

            Since electricity is essential to everyday life, when is goes away everything is disrupted for the duration.  Studies of electrical power resilience estimate 10 percent of our normal power consumption is designated critical, without which people die.  Another 15 percent is designated priority, supporting core community economic functions.  In Ukiah this level of basic power resilience requires 75 megawatt hours per day.

            Almost none of the power used in Ukiah is produced locally.  Fewer than 3 percent of the homes have roof top solar, and fewer still have any battery storage.  The dam at Lake Mendocino has two generators, but they aren't able to stand on their own without a grid signal for stability, even if there is water flow available.  Many individuals and businesses, as well as some essential community functions such as the sewer and water plants, have emergency generators.  These are all fossil fueled, with finite capacity which must be replenished if the blackout lasts more than a few weeks.  Combined, they represent only a fraction of the power needed for complete community power resilience.

            Building local power production and storage is possible, but will take investment and the will to make it happen.  The good news is hardware prices continue to drop, even with the current tariff insanity, and the cost is on the same order as the $60M purple pipe sewer project Ukiah recently completed.  Furthermore, the electricity produced is fixed cost, without inflation for the next 25 years, an increasingly attractive economic value.  

            Investor-owned power systems are dominated by short term profit above all else.  In contrast, our municipal system is primarily focused on service, providing reliable, affordable power to everyone.  The point of power resilience is the heart quality of keeping people alive and keeping our community economically functioning, essential values that are difficult to quantify.  Combining these subjective values with the beneficial hardware cost perspective makes power resilience economically and socially sensible, and therefore more likely to happen.

            No other community in the county has this opportunity.  Let's work to keep the lights on!

             

 

Stranded Assets

                                                                                      written 19 October, 2025

                                                                                  published 26 October, 2025

 

            Wikipedia describes disruptive innovation as the creation of new markets or values that eventually displace previous products.  For example, cars were originally expensive luxury items, until Ford introduced the modestly priced Model T.  A 1900 picture of downtown New York City showed one car surrounded by horses.  By 1913, a picture of the same street had only one horse surrounded by cars, as the entire economy shifted.  A similar disruptive innovation is happening today in the world of energy.

            The US produced 4,292 terawatt hours of electricity last year (one terawatt hour equals one billion kilowatt hours).  The sources were: natural gas (44 percent), renewables (23 percent), nuclear (18 percent), and coal (15 percent).  With the exception of renewables, all these sources consume finite fuel resources. As these resources are used, the cost for extracting new fuel increases.

            Electricity from natural gas seems economically affordable because the adverse climate impact is never included in the cost.  Most US natural gas comes from domestic fracking, which can be distributed by pipeline.  As these fields deplete, which has already begun, consumption will have to shift to imported liquified natural gas (LNG) which costs 2-5 times as much. 

            Nuclear is already the most expensive electricity on the grid, without even including costs for radioactive waste disposal, decommissioning retired reactors, or any risks from accidents.  The Fukushima cleanup is optimistically projected to cost one trillion dollars and take a century.  

            The US has extensive coal reserves, but coal is not very energy dense, making coal powered electricity some of the most expensive on the grid.  

            As these consumption power sources become more expensive, electricity rates keep rising, with a 50 percent increase in the last 5 years.  This will get worse as more AI data centers get built, increasing demand.  Communities near these centers have seen rates more than double.  

            In addition, consumption power sources have to be large to be economical, which requires an extensive transmission grid.  As electricity demand grows, grid limitations affect not only affordability, but even availability.  A year ago, the September heat wave in California caused air conditioning loads to stress the grid almost to the point of failure, avoided only by extreme efforts to shed all possible loads.

            In comparison, renewable power is becoming cheaper each year.  Wind power costs half what it did a decade ago.  Solar panels, which cost $129/watt 50 years ago, cost $0.24/watt today.  Grid scale ground mounted solar installations currently cost $1.50/watt in the US and half that in other parts of the world.  

            Renewable power requires a new perspective on energy.  Since it was first commercialized, electricity has usually been produced by burning something when power is needed.  The renewable model collects free energy when and where available, which must be used immediately or stored until needed.  Each year, battery storage systems are getting cheaper, and lasting longer.  Six years ago, a shipping container with a megawatt hour of lithium battery, including inverter and battery management electronics, air conditioning, and fire suppression, cost $0.50/watthour, and would last 10 years.  Today, the same system, with an improved lithium battery costs $0.25/watthour, and lasts 25 years.  Within a year, the same system with a safer sodium battery will cost $0.15/watthour and last 50 years.

            While large wind farms and solar arrays support the grid, these hardware installations don't have to be massive.  A single home, business, or community can install solar and storage wherever there is available sunlight.  Even though the smaller scale systems cost more per watt than grid scale, the resulting electricity is still cost competitive with grid power, especially if the power provider is investor owned.  The economic burden results from essentially prepaying for decades of electricity, though the price is fixed, proof against inflation.

            Renewables are already changing the world.  Africa and Pakistan are seeing explosive growth in solar and storage, as poor people are able to cook without burning fuel, have efficient indoor lighting, pump water, and have refrigeration for food and medicines.

            Fossil fueled power is losing economically, and becoming an irrelevant, stranded asset.  But in the US, the owners of these existing power systems don't want things to change.  Our president denies the climate reality, kills domestic efforts to build renewable power, uses tariffs to make imports expensive, and supports the most expensive electricity on the planet, without regard for consumers.  Under this plan, the US becomes obsolete as the world changes.

 

 

 

Full Speed In Reverse

                                                                                      written 12 October, 2025

                                                                                  published 19 October, 2025

            For the last two centuries, modern civilization has been built on the availability of abundant affordable energy from stored fossil fuels, deposited millions of years previously.  But these resources are finite, and humanity is now dealing with a peak in global production: a point of maximum extraction prior to an inevitable decline.  This was forecast decades ago, but ignored by true believers who deny any limits to reality.

            Domestic oil production helped the US lead the world after WW2, changing everything, making America a powerhouse on the planet.  But domestic oil production peaked in 1972, initiating a decade of uncontrolled inflation, and shifted the balance of power to the middle east.  An eventual agreement to denominate all global oil sales in US dollars brought a measure of stability for a while.  But consumption kept increasing, and global production eventually peaked in the early 2000's, amplifying the 2007 economic crash of an over extended housing market.  Since then, diesel has become more expensive than gasoline, adversely affecting the entire transportation economy.

            In 2005, new forms of oil production were developed, designated as unconventional oil.  This oil was more expensive to produce, increasing the cost of everything.  The most productive sources were deep sea ocean and tight rock (fracking).  Fracking extracts thin layers of oil from rock that must be fractured open under high pressure.  The reserves are small and the wells deplete in just a few years, requiring constant drilling of new wells.  Exploiting these expensive unconventional sources, the US has again become a leading oil producer.

            However, the oil industry now acknowledges US fracking resources have peaked.  All global production from any source is now flat or in decline, with an estimated $500B investment needed annually to make up the decline, let alone power any new growth. 

            Discovery of new global oil reserves peaked half a century ago.  While there are still oil resources to extract, these are smaller, more difficult to produce, increasing prices and driving inflation.  Without even discussing the adverse climate impact, the economics of our finite fossil fuel resources threaten the stability of our fragile, highly leveraged financial system.

            Our economy is further destabilized by the erratic application of tariffs, which increase prices, and the authoritarian activities of the government, causing an increase in gold prices, and a down grading of US debt.  Efforts to avoid the dollar in global trade are growing, and concerns of an economic crash are increasing.

            Rather than seeing what is coming and embracing effective changes, US leadership is incoherent, moving full speed in reverse.  They kill technologies that can help, and instead push further fossil fuel development and a resurgence of nuclear power.  But oil production is unprofitable for the corporations at low prices, and unaffordable for the consumers at high prices.  The nuclear buzz, expected to power the growing AI frenzy, is attracting billions in investment, in part due to massive taxpayer subsidies.  But the reality of supply chain limitations, finite fuel sources, and unproven designs means this may be just a financial bubble, which could pop with a single messy accident, resulting from hasty construction.

            Though the US refuses to take action, the rest of the world is beginning to respond, slowly shifting to renewable energy, collecting free power from the sun and wind.  China is leading the way, producing most of the global supply of solar panels, batteries, and affordable EV's, while installing half of all the wind power last year.  But the push in on everywhere.  Globally, a gigawatt of solar is installed every day, and the pace is increasing.  

            Even though the sun only shines for part of the day, a gigawatt array collects about the same amount of power as a modest Small Modular Reactor (SMR) operating full time.  But the solar arrays being installed today cost $1.2B, while reactor salesmen suggest a SMR will cost between $3-$7B.  However, nobody knows what a SMR will really cost, since none exist yet in the real world.

            The Post Carbon Institute suggests oil depletion shows our current industrial civilization is unstable, incapable of endless growth in the way we use energy and resources.  Depletion demands we begin prioritizing those social features we really need.  We must start to live with the planet, not in spite of it.  It calls for us to imagine a more localized energy future, and start adapting now, while we still have some opportunities.

  

 

A Fool In Charge

                                                                                        written 5 October, 2025

                                                                                  published 12 October, 2025

    

            Once upon a time, a king demanded the tide stop coming in.  But this was not a foolish act, for the king was actually trying to show his foolish advisors the limits to power.  Unfortunately, our self-proclaimed king not only has foolish advisors, but is foolish himself, believing whatever he says must be reality.

            He foolishly believes the climate crisis is a hoax, so he props up aging fossil fueled plants and destroys efforts to address, or even monitor, climate changes already happening.  Coal, a 19th century energy source, is expected to power 21st century AI data centers.  Operating a coal fired plant costs more than building new wind/solar with storage.  The Big Beautiful Bill cancels funding for wind and solar, mostly in Democratic-led states, unsettling the financial underpinnings of the entire U.S. energy industry.  Without even considering the adverse climate impact, consumers will annually pay an extra $3 billion power bills.  Electricity rates increased by nearly 7 percent in the last year, with more rate increases on the horizon.   

            After the mindless DOGE staffing purge, the Energy Department doesn’t have enough lawyers left to carry out the project cancellations ordered by the White House, and will instead have to spend millions on outside counsel. 

            There have been no major domestic nuclear accidents since Three Mile Island, partially due to Nuclear Regulatory Commission oversight.  Now, hundreds of people have been fired from the agency and only three of the five NRC commissioner positions are filled, making the recent push for more nuclear power increasingly risky.

            Our king foolishly believes raising tariffs and excluding workers will make the country richer.  As a result, the economy is suffering the highest tariffs in a century and consumers pay higher prices.  John Deere, producer of machinery for many American farms, says sales are down, with higher tariffs increasing costs by $600 million.  Tariffs on steel and aluminum led to losses of thousands of manufacturing job.  Instead of reducing drug prices, tariffs have increased prices on almost 700 prescription drugs so far this year.

            Farmers face a slump in crop prices and worsening credit conditions.  Corn prices are down 50%, and soybean prices are down 40%, as overseas markets for crops are lost due to tariffs.  With the massive assault on undocumented workers, farmers are caught in the middle of a 155,000-worker shortfall across the national agricultural sector, which means lower supply and higher prices.

            Tariffs have weakened consumer spending, as jobs are evaporating, with sharp drops in home construction.  One indication is a 9 percent decline in containerboard-production capacity in eight months, twice the capacity that was lost during the recession in 2009.  

            Nearly 30 countries have suspended postal services of packages to U.S. over import tariffs, including Australia, Japan, India, and Europe.  After September 21, no H-1B worker will be allowed to enter the US unless the sponsoring employer pays a $100,000 fee.  These are workers with specialized knowledge that no one local can fill.

            Employment fell by 13,000 jobs in June, marking the first net loss since December 2020, with another 32,000 jobs lost in September.  Last month, jobless claims surged in one week, when 263,000 new people filing for unemployment insurance, 10 percent higher than the previous week.  Unemployment rate is 4.3 percent, the highest level since the pandemic.  Rising unemployment and higher prices threaten economic stability.  But instead of dealing with what they created, the administration fired the record keepers.  

            Billionaires benefit from tax cuts, while MAGA voters are bearing the brunt.  A majority of Republicans now think he's on the wrong track when it comes to the economy and tariffs.  He promised tariffs would fill the U.S. Treasury, create millions of manufacturing jobs, and be paid by foreign countries.  He insisted he could impose these tariffs without an act of Congress, and he would complete trade deals with 200 countries.  He promised to end the war in Ukraine on Day 1, that Putin really wants to make a deal, and would soon stop attacking.  He promised to reduce prices on Day 1.  

            None of this happened.

            It doesn't really matter whether the president knows he is lying, or is just delusional, believing whatever passes through his mind in any given moment.  He is acting like a fool.  What is more disturbing is the entire leadership of the Republican party seems willing to go along with this.  It won't end well.

 

 

The Nuclear Stampede

                                                                                  written 28 September, 2025

                                                                                    published 5 October, 2025

 

            In the rush to build more nuclear power, billions are being poured into advanced reactors, and billions more into expanding the nuclear fuel chain.  The published reason is the massive power demanded by data centers and artificial intelligence (AI).  Disregarding the social risks of AI, the real attraction is the money to be made, as nuclear power is some of the most expensive on the grid.  Nuclear is the perfect capitalist power source.  The price tag is huge, significant taxpayer subsidies are involved (corporate welfare), monopoly power guarantees return on investment, liability is limited, power is centralized, and a few dozen corporations control the industry.  This isn't about affordable electricity, it is about maximizing return on investment.

            Even before Fukushima, nuclear development hadn't been robust for years, as they are economically unaffordable in the face of cheaper renewable power.  Among other delusions, our president believes the climate crisis is a hoax, so renewable energy must be squashed.  Consequently, the nuclear rush is based on fiction, like all the financial bubbles throughout history.

            It is fiction nuclear is clean energy.  During normal operations, a nuclear plant emits no carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.  However, plant construction and nuclear fuel production have a significant carbon footprint, even without considering disposal of nuclear waste and decommissioning aged reactors.  

            It is fiction nuclear can deal with climate change, which has been ignored for so long that only rapid change will be sufficient.  Reactor construction takes twice as long as projected, so building traditional reactors can't happen fast enough to be relevant.  

            The new hope is small modular reactors (SMR), which are promised to be cheaper, faster to construct, and safer than current reactors.  These promises are fiction, unsupported in reality, since no SMR is in operation today.  Though SMR construction has begun in several locations, none of the designs are complete, nor approved.  

            The president is pushing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which is tasked with nuclear safety, to rubber stamp these designs to make things happen faster.  But there is a reason for safety concerns.  Nuclear reactors are complex, and the consequences of failure are impactful and expensive.  All the reactors in operation today evolved from a few basic designs that have been updated over decades as new concerns came to light.  Even then, the unknown unknown can show still show up a fatal weakness.  SMR's are a new design, with no track record and no guarantee safety will be anything like what is promised. 

            Safety is expensive, and cutting corners saves money in the short term.  The US military has a long history of nuclear safety in the navy, because cost savings were never a priority over safety.  This is not the case in commercial nuclear power.  At Chernobyl, the Russian design was thought to be so safe a containment structure was considered an unnecessary cost.  That failure was felt over 1,000 miles away, and the exclusion zone is still hazardous to life 40 years later.  At Fukushima, General Electric saved money placing the emergency backup pumps close to sea level, despite evidence of large tsunamis in the past.  That failure was a trillion dollar disaster they said could never happen.  Safety will be sacrificed in the current rush for profit as well.

            The economics of nuclear power are constrained by the scale of manufacturing.  No matter how many SMR's are built, the total quantity can't compete with the scale of creating solar panels, where improved manufacturing over the last 50 years has reduced the cost per kilowatt hour by a factor of 1,000, while reactor costs keep getting more expensive.

            Nuclear power consumes uranium, a finite fuel source, which is mostly imported.  But it competes with renewables, which collect free energy.  Some of the SMR designs expect to use High Assay Low Enriched Uranium (HALEU): uranium enriched to 20 percent, much closer to weapons grade.  Domestic facilities for this level of enrichment do not yet exist.  Other SMR designs intend to reuse existing spent nuclear fuel, which will have to be reprocessed before being useful, creating even more radioactive waste in the process.

            Nuclear power produces radioactive waste on a good day, and radioactive contamination on a bad day, neither of which have ever been successfully dealt with since the beginning of the atomic age.  The driving force is making money, not affordable energy.  The public pays for nuclear mistakes and electric bills keep increasing.