A Blight to Eat
A number of reports suggest that North Korea may be in internal crisis. The signs are vague but pervasive. The Wall Street Journal reports that pamphlets are circulating in the North disparaging the current Kim and “praising Ri Yong Ho, the former military chief who was ousted in July”. Other telltales include vandalizing of Kim statues, acts which have been blamed on South Korean agents, and orders to the police to round up restive elements.
The North Korean security forces, says the Daily Telegraph, have been instructed to “find those who are only waiting to unleash their hidden daggers and mercilessly crush every one of them” and “expose and foil moves of enemies, internal and external, for undermining the socialist system.”
Some analysts have even mooted the possibility of a North Korean Spring and note that a spike in arrests would suggest the current Kim is losing the power to automatically command respect.
Orders from Pyongyang are not being carried out in rural areas and there have been some complaints against the regime, whose power is weakening,” Professor Shigemura told The Daily Telegraph.
“It is that weakening power that has forced Kim to speak out now,” he said, although he played down suggestions that any protests have sufficient momentum to seriously challenge the regime.
“At the moment, it is simply not possible for North Koreans to rise up like we saw in the Middle East in the Arab Spring revolutions,” he said. “Anyone who spoke out like that would be arrested and all their family would be killed.”
But Professor Shigemura does believe that signs of dissent where there were previously none could be a precursor to the eventual downfall of Kim’s government.
One obvious cause for discontent is privation. One indicator of North Korea’s straitened circumstances are the appeals to members of the Communist Party for “patriotic rice” to feed soldiers and government workers.
Impoverished North Korea has launched a “patriotic rice” campaign to feed soldiers and construction workers, asking farmers and would-be members of the ruling Workers’ Party to donate rice to the state even though many suffer from hunger, according to local sources. …
Those who want to join the party have no choice but to donate their rice, other sources said, but added that they had not heard of farmers volunteering rice to the campaign on their own.
The cost of rice, a staple of the North Korean diet, makes up a significant portion of the average worker’s wages, which for a government worker are officially about 2,000 to 6,000 won (U.S. $0.70 to $2 based on market rates) per month.
In recent weeks, the price of rice had risen to about 6,000 won per kilogram without dropping as it usually does at the end of the harvest season, according to sources in the country.
Yet the article goes on to note that despite the price increases hunger has not bitten as hard as before. One reason may be what Chosun Ilbo calls the “underground economy” — that infestation of capitalist vermin that is turning some North Koreans into millionaires. “Tycoons” operate a bus networks and even some even run industries. They bribe officials not to notice them and have got the money to do it with too. Even menial workers in the private sector earn ten times more than government workers.
The underground economy in Stalinist North Korea is growing rapidly, spy agencies believe. A South Korean security official said, “It seems the planned economy remains in name only while in fact the capitalist underground economy prevails.” …
“A North Korean family needs 90,000-100,000 North Korean won for living costs per month, but workers at state-run factories or enterprises earn a mere 2,000-8,000 won,” the source said. “So North Koreans have no choice but to become market traders, cottage industrialists or transport entrepreneurs to make up for shortages.”
Many stores, restaurants, and beauty parlors are privately owned. Private tutors teach music or foreign languages. Carpenters have evolved as quasi-manufacturers who receive orders and make furniture on a massive scale. They earn 80,000-90,000 won per month on average …
The rationing system, the backbone of the socialist planned economy, has nearly collapsed. Some 4 million people still live on rations — 2.6 million in Pyongyang and 1.2 million soldiers.
What doess it mean when it no longer pays to be in the North Korean nomenklatura or military service? What happens when people are better off working in a beauty parlor or waiting tables than being members of the palace guard who must now subsist on “patriotic rice”?
The world gets turned upside down and this will put increasing pressure on Pyongyang to either adopt the Chinese system of state owned capitalism or to follow the South Korean model. But it will be harder for the Kim dynasty to continue as before. Eventually they’ll run out of even “patriotic rice. And about time too. A book titled Escape from Camp 14 details life at one of the North’s biggest concentration camps and the experiences of a person who escaped from it.
North Korea is isolated and hungry, bankrupt and belligerent. It is also armed with nuclear weapons. Between 150,000 and 200,000 people are being held in its political prison camps, which have existed twice as long as Stalin’s Soviet gulags and twelve times as long as the Nazi concentration camps. Very few born and raised in these camps have escaped. But Shin Donghyuk did.
In Escape from Camp 14, acclaimed journalist Blaine Harden tells the story of Shin Dong-hyuk and through the lens of Shin’s life unlocks the secrets of the world’s most repressive totalitarian state. Shin knew nothing of civilized existence-he saw his mother as a competitor for food, guards raised him to be a snitch, and he witnessed the execution of his own family. Through Harden’s harrowing narrative of Shin’s life and remarkable escape, he offers an unequaled inside account of one of the world’s darkest nations and a riveting tale of endurance, courage, and survival.
It has survived this long by extorting aid from its neighbors. But now it is facing a different, internal threat. Perhaps in the end the only places in the world where a “socialist planned economy” will be taken seriously are in the ivory towers of Western universities which are the Camp 14s of the mind.
The story of Oh Kil-nam is perhaps the most dramatic example of their effects. Oh was a graduate of a German school of Marxist economics and was persuaded to go the North Korea because he imagined it to be the worker’s paradise. He was in for a big surprise. Note how even the story of Oh has been sugar-coated to remove all unfavorable references to Marxism.
Probably the most interesting segment of the video above is where an “international composer living in Germany” cruelly tempts Oh to return using his family as bait. There are worse crimes in this world than mere murder and that “international composer” committed such an act just then. If you ever doubt the existence of hell, just remember this: there has to be a place where people like that go.
But apparently the people of North Korea have just about had it with Kimcare and Food Stamps. Of all the arguments against a system widespread hunger is the most eloquent of all.
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Wretchard – that last sentence sums it all: “Of all the arguments against a system hunger is the most eloquent of all.”
Dubliner cheese. I have two.
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/507137
An underground economy… we’ll be getting more of that here, too, as Kleptocrat statist policies instigated by our Dear Leader Obama take hold. A cash payment or other gratuity may catapault one to the head of the line (or thru a secret door) for a visit to the doctor while those with “free” health care queue up in the waiting room.
Just a thought… unintended consequences….
A North Korea collapse would be good in that it’s probably the nastiest regime out there. But what would be the aftermath? Reunification with South Korea? It would be extremely expensive, SoKo couldn’t do it on its own. Not to mention you’d have to deal with about 20 million coming out of a cult atmosphere.
And China wouldn’t be happy with a unified Korea, allied with the US, right across the Yalu. Though I’d be happy with an agreement that keeps non-Korean troops south of the 38th parallel.
It has survived this long by extorting aid from its neighbors.
But their fooling around with rockets and nukes, and attacking South Korean boats and islands, has finally queered their game.
Also their not being Muslim (nor golfers), perhaps Obambus is not quite the sucker that Clinton was. We shall see. Maybe after Rice is named secretary of state she can patriotically go over and volunteer herself.
“So North Koreans have no choice but to become market traders, cottage industrialists or transport entrepreneurs to make up for shortages.”
Capitalism is what you get when you leave people alone – and what you get if you don’t leave people alone.
When the USSR collapsed, one Russian offcial said that the World needed to bail out Russia as payment for conducting an 70 year long failed experiment, one that proved Communism does not work. Interesting attitude – “Some of what you have is mine” versus “Some of what you have should be mine as a result of me mistakenly thinking that some of what you have is mine.”
When have there ever been good times in the DPRK? Is there a period called normal that we can compare their present to?
How can the Islamists explain North Korea? The Norks are miserable without any Jooos to blame. They could import the Palestinians and PA, and consider it a move towards good government. They could even see Obamacare as an improvement.
I wonder what people in the socialist paradise of North Korea are entitled to? Free speech-probably not. The right to keep and bear arms-I don’t think so. Free condoms-if not they might want to purchase an hour of Fluke time. Hunger and misery-maybe they are entitled to that-always nice to be entitled to something there’s an abundance of.
I’m willing to bet that there is a smaller percentage of Bubble People among the common people of N Korea than there is among the good citizens of Detroit.
I can see Obama telling Helicopter Ben to crank up the presses so he send a few billion to North Korea so they can buy rice “for the children.”
Given attitudes within the South Korean military establishment China is walking a dangerous road with regards to North Korea.
Buck O’Fama,
“A cash payment or other gratuity may catapault one to the head of the line (or thru a secret door) for a visit to the doctor while those with “free” health care queue up in the waiting room.”
In a nation where many have ready access to firearms, “jumping the queue” could well have tragic and deadly results. People have regularly whacked each other for a lot less than line-jumping.
And I’m speaking as a responsible owner and user of firearms myself……
A magazine calls Kim Jong Un
The hottest man on Earth
Or so says NKs famed Un Yun
Which never deals in mirth
Whose latest issue’s cover shows
Young Kim in all his glory
Surrounded by his fawns and does
But that’s another story
And still another story line
The Un Yun doesn’t mention
Insist they must that all is fine
Or face lifetime detention
But showing now are regime cracks
As hungry men are arming
And cries get Un off of our backs
Grow more and more alarming
The Un Yun though, like US chums
Still kiss the man in power
And glory in their ill gained crumbs
Despite the late late hour
I wonder if the good father has rethought his adherence to Marxist economics?
I also wonder how he believes that a letter from the U.N. working group or any amount of people outside the worker’s paradise calling for the release of his family will move Dear Leader to admit that his whole world and his life work is a complete fairy tale.
And on a slightly strange tangent, What happened in his life to cause that huge scare on his cheek? He clearly didn’t have it in his early life pictures.
#3 Buck O’Fama
That is part of the plan. TWANLOC are infinitely bribable. They are just not honest enough to stay bribed for any reliable period of time.
But on a related note the asking of whether there is a discount for cash payment, and the offering of such a discount, provided that the transaction is written on air, are acts of true patriotism in these post-American days. Did you ever think that we would be trying to catch up with North Korea?
Subotai Bahadur
The ‘go-to’ website for the most incisive coverage of North Korean is:
http://freekorea.us/
It would ‘make my day’ if Wretchard would add this to his blog roll.
Wretchard – congratulations on the new banner!
OT:
Famine also comes by acts of God. There’s growing evidence that the ancient Sumeria died out including the people and the language because of a
two century long drought from 2200BC to 2000 BC. (In other articles this drought is reputed to have taken down the old Kingdom of Egypt. You read about long droughts too in Genesis. )
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/50073177/ns/technology_and_science-science/#.UL_icoZ5F1M
Almost as unreported was a big drought in the US Midwest corn-belt this past summer talked about in this article http://phys.org/news/2012-12-stress-early-picture-drought.html There’s a very cool US map time lapse of the drought growing over a two year period in the article.
Why didn’t that massive drought have more of an impact than it did. For the US, there is still a very large food design margin.
But Egypt will soon face a very big problem with food. They have no design margin because their government is just as incompetent as that of North Korea.
In our last discussion on desalination someone mentioned eating sweet cherry tomatoes made from a lake of brackish water under the Negev desert in Israel. Here are some Google links to that project. http://bit.ly/YQp7X1
Apparently the Negev farms will add significantly to Israel’s food supply in the coming decade as they replicate the model over larger acreage there. The secret appears to be that they mix brackish water with fresh water. They have computers that orchestrate the mixing automatically. The farming methods are being taught to students from China, Vietnam, and Myanmar, who work in the Ramat-Negev farms.
There are currently brackish water farms along the east coast of Eritrea and the west coast of Mexico.
If the Israelis have a lake of brackish water under the Negev, the Egyptians have an ocean of brackish water with pockets of fresh water–under the Sahara. Likely the Egyptians will have to starve and the technology will have to become ubiquitous worldwide — before the Egyptians will do for Sahara brackish water what Nasser did with his dam on the Nile.
OT:
Goldman is now saying the obvious. But the consequence of this stuff is that the democrats will get away with both the borrowing and the tax increases–for the same reason that the incompetence socialists in Brazil get away with it. They are energy independent. The US is not independent yet but growing production will cause unwinding of events since the first oil shock of 1973.
GOLDMAN: The Shale Oil Revolution Is Real, And It Will Have A Massive Impact On The Global Economy
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-on-the-shale-revolution-2012-12#ixzz2EFC7GZav
http://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-on-the-shale-revolution-2012-12
OT: The Wall St Journal sets out the case we’ve discussed on and off again for the last two years for how fraking tight oil will affect the dollar.
How Fracking Could Save the Dollar
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324640104578161082565899210.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Charles, here’s one for ya:
http://engineering.stanford.edu/news/stanford-scientists-build-first-all-carbon-solar-cell
It’s just a curiosity now, but a BUNCH of huge new possibiliies!
Of course I agree with your points on water and fracking.
Hey, so what happened to Gaddafi’s big fresh-water project in Libya anyway, as events have transpired the last six months?
–
It just shows the whole NorKo thing is a side-show, self-imposed pain and lunacy.
It must be some cosmic rule, as the world gets indecently rich and comfortable, we manufacture our own grief.
…appeals to members of the Communist Party for “patriotic rice” to feed soldiers and government workers.
I imagine the soldiers may have the means to collect their own patriotic rice, but the government workers might be up a paddy without a chop stick. Of course, the more Lil’ Kim distrusts his soliders, the less weapons he’ll let them have, and the less effective their, ahem, arguments for rice will be. Better shoot him now, boys, while you still can…
But what would be the aftermath? Reunification with South Korea? It would be extremely expensive, SoKo couldn’t do it on its own.
Well, who’s got the money to pitch in? We’re broke. Europe is busy bailing itself out in an Escher-drawing of a financial scheme. China is trying to keep the lid on economic catastrophe and is one large mistake away from famines again. We don’t think of Japan as having economic problems any more because they’ve opted for a long, slow, dignified collapse instead of the fiery, exhibitionist debacles the US and EU are hatching…
Re-integrating East Germany was a massive financial burden on West Germany, but they were prosperous at the time and could afford it. One of the luxuries of living within your means is you have the means to do a good deed when the chance comes. Spending ourselves down the crapper means we pretty much have to shrug our shoulders and say “sorry, we’ve got problems of our own” when folks are starving.
Behold the glorious morale superiority of Liberalism – nothing in your wallet but slogans when a brother is in need.
I keep telling everybody that we have no business in that kimchi-ridden place.
Time to bring the boys home.
Have them report to the Yalu river for transportation home.
Of course they can bring their Yobos with them. Just charter enough cruise ships
for doing it in style!
Nice Stayfree® commercial. Twelve minutes was a bit long though.
Notice North Korea’s flag is red contained by blue barricades. Reminds one of the rotating Fox News logo, representing a giant blue millstone grinding away at a red base.
Okay, let us get serious. I favor invading the place. It should be a comparatively easy thing to do. Secure most of the country with blitzkrieg then
take the capital (where the big shots are) by sitzkrieg. Then send said big shots into exile for a decade or so. Do NOT indulge in war crimes trials. After 40 years of Japanese rule followed by 70 years of Stalin-with-Attitude those people know no other standard of conduct.
After securing the country comes the hard part. Occupying and getting them started
on genuine self government. Appoint an American Governor-General for the task.
Establish local governing units and once this is done have THEM establish a national government. Then and only then start talking reunification.
And how do you pay for this? Simple. Wherever you have a platoon establish a Brigade-sized PX and POL point and open same to general public. (A privately owned mint will be attached and issue bank notes until a banking system establishes itself.
As to standards of behavior: Do not underestimate the abilities of Korean evangelicals. In fact they are a major reason why the regime is crumbling.
The mineral and hydroelectric potential of the north will attract firms that will
give an industrial base and get the north self-supporting and self-respecting.
Establish a 12 to 15 year time frame in which to get everything done. You should be able to beat it by a few years at least.
As to that Northern border. If China cleans up its hegemonic act one light infantry battalion on each side will be sufficient border security. Probably Americans on this side as China will probably prefer us to Koreans.
If China continues to misbehave, keep a full armored Corps in place with one Division in instant-go-without-a-windup counterattack mode at all times. Chinese behavior modification will follow.
Now that ought to cover all bases. On the other hand, I did forget to mention
the first step. Sink the Pueblo. It is their good luck charm, their symbol of invulnerability. Puncture that myth and you will have them by the short hairs.
Well, what the heck are we waiting for? We already have the authority under existing treaties. If South Korea just suddenly announce that the Armistice is now OFF, we got the green light to cure a bothersome problem.
Charles…
I’m afraid that you’re on a slippery slope with your oil mountain.
While I agree that a reduction in our OPEC tab will help…
It’s reasonable to expect that Barry’s ‘project’ in the Orient is going to have the Wogs of War dumping their US Treasuries at quite a clip.
So…
We’ll be, net-net, swapping our fresh production of light, sweet crude for our old moldy US bonds.
If we don’t stanch up that flow with the world’s biggest styptic… the blood will be all over the trading screen.
The daze of our being able to merely export Barry’s sanitary papers has come to an end.
This trading stress is going to take out the ummah as collateral damage. When the two economic engines compete for commodities — the ummah get hind teat.
{ In this, the ummah is a fusion of Eloi and Morlock: lay-abouts with murder intent. Wells missed this conflict. }
Funny, I always thought that the solution to NoKo’s massive problems would be en masse conversion to Islam.
Thinking outside the Qaaba? To understand is to forgive?
There’s probably no pigs left in the country, anyway….
OT
The Co-Chairmen of the President’s Oil Spill Commission, Sen. Bob Graham and William K. Reilly, have been accused of lying to Congress during their testimony before the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Jan 26, 2011.
http://tinyurl.com/aj89m9g
http://tinyurl.com/aowbbx5
CHU LIED, DOLPHINS DIED!
Now is South Korea’s opportunity: sit down with mini-Kim and the Chinese and offer this deal: reunify with South Korea to form the United Republic of Korea. South Korea will bear all the costs of the reunification, and the North Korean elites can retire to China instead of waiting to wind up at the end of a rope.
10. More likely, cash or other gratuity will get you seen after-hours, on house call if need be.
Mark @ 10: “In a nation where many have ready access to firearms, “jumping the queue” could well have tragic and deadly results”
In a nation where people are clamoring to punish the “rich”, and where the organs are purchasing hollowpoint by the trainload, it’s more likely that the crime of wrecking or the onset of sluggish schizophrenia will be dealt with severely.
Many kulaks, I mean, doctors, are becoming wreckers already. Just ask any HMO Medical Director or QIO bureaucrat. Just you wait until Obamacare starts a real collapse of services. Who will the pinheads who just reelected Dear Leader blame?
“Who will the pinheads who just reelected Dear Leader blame?”
Are you kidding? Obama ran on the lie that GWB’s wreckless tax policies and laisse faire capitalism nearly destroyed the US economy. It’s Bush’s fault like a boot on the throat for eternity.
A friend I had a banter at lunch recently over a “powerball” lottery that was 400 plus million. I said that I’d buy North Korea if I were to play and win. If someone were to feed those people, give them basic utilities, then what wouldn’t they do for their new “benevolent leader”? There are few weak among them now thanks to goverment sponsored Darwinism, all that’s left is fine metal, it’s just being improperly utilized.
They could move mountains.
If the Norks are truly in crisis, the South Korean and US governments should pounce on them while they are weak and get every concession they can. But the USG won’t because the Democrats are in charge. Every time this happens to one of our enemies, the Democrats fearfully announce that they value stability above all else and warn us of the dangers of making them desparate. But at home, the Democrats will even create a crisis (the fiscal cliff being only the latest example), just to force concessions from conservatives. How can a party that so ruthless at home be so weak abroad? Is it that they loathe conservatives and sympathize with foreign enemies just because those enemies hate the same people? Or do they only know how to bully civilized people, while truly lethal thugs like Vlad Putin, the Chi-Coms and the Assads really scare them?
23 -Dave,
Sinking the Pueblo would be a good psyops message. Plunk it with a couple of those concrete-filled LGB’s like they used on Saddam’s suburban-sequestered MIG’s. Dropped from a stealth drone like RQ-170, there wouldn’t even be a lot of risk. Invasion would be expensive, why intervene when they are crumbling? Getting inside their head and nudging them over the precipice wouldn’t cost much either. Patience, play a longer game, like Asians.
“Patriotic Rice.”
I see “patriotism” being turned on its head even here, with Obama trumpeting “Economic Patriotism.” The Left has even stolen the original American narrative and twisted it into clown-balloon shape.
Progressives have messed with “patriotism” before. The Pledge of Allegiance was created and promoted by proto-progressive Francis Bellamy, who called himslef a “Christian Socialist.” School children originally used the Fascist salute to address the flag during the reciting of the Pledge. We as a people have been herded and manipulated for over a century.
What happened to the sidebar links? BC acted as my “portal” to all those other great sites. I’m not happy about this at all. I consider that to be a major design blunder.
People get all excited about solar cells but won’t do the math on them. They have very severe limits. You can’t run them 24/7. Even at 100% efficiency you run into an energy density per square foot problem, pave over a couple of States to power the rest of the US. You end up having to connect them to batteries to run them at night and overcast days. They get more inefficient the farther north you go. The material used for the most efficient batteries at the present time (lithium)is mostly sourced from outside the continental US. The last I looked it was Boliva.
They are at best a minor supplemental power source for low amperage, low voltage demands. When it comes time to run a high horsepower machine tool they won’t cut it.
Dave & firecapt,
Satisfying as it would be to sink the Pueblo, and we may need to, the gold standard would be to retrieve it. We need a Stephen Decataur to lead a team in. Fortunately there are thousands at all grades in the US Navy eager to volunteer for the job. Unfortunately we have Obama.
Fatboy Kim should probably be worried about falling from balconies and windows and down stair wells.
“Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses and all the King’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again.”
I think that China wants to keep N. Korea as their very own buffer and as a surrogate mischief maker. As long as it doesn’t cost too much to keep N. Koreans barely alive and docile, my guess is that China will be happy to pay the bill and to keep their arms wrapped tightly around N. Korea.
Of course China can always continue to lend Obama a bunch of money for Obama to send on to N. Korea.
t @ 36: People get all excited about solar cells but won’t do the math on them.
True, but power is power, if solar power were cheap enough it would find its niche, like checkered paint the idea of cheap and easy paint-on solar (more likely print-on solar) even at modest efficiencies, remains a target. Just file this under it-could-be-important-some-day.
dr @ 35: What happened to the sidebar links?
I dunno, they’re always hacking PJM, I assume these will soon be back, welcome to modern web-site software development processes.
BTW, the when the edit widget comes up it gives me an error box, “Stack overflow at line: 2″, and the text box is narrower (and shorter) than it should be, but it seems to function OK, this started a week or so ago.
Me on my antique IE8 32bit, which is almost obsolete, apparently.
39. Josh, you’re still not getting it. Solar CAN’T be cheap; it’s economically impossible given the necessary inputs. The laws of thermodynamics are unforgiving, as are the laws of economics. Solar panels can never repay the vast amounts of land, water and rare earth metals that go into producing them. It illustrates perfectly the delusion of the so-called progressives that they insist America can be powered by toys like solar panels.
#37 Blast from the Past: I seriously doubt the Pueblo could be recaptured
without first capturing the city of Pyongyang. She ain’t what you could call seaworthy and capable of self-propulsion. In fact I doubt she could even be towed
by this time.
Additionally, I believe that capturing her would degrade from the PSYOP to one degree or the other. (not fatally though) Trying to rescue her tells the Norks that she is of use value to us and that they hurt us materially by hanging on to her. Sinking her tells the same Norks that since she is worthless except for their
own ego gratification—which we just permanently disrupted.
#33 firecapt: Whaddya mean be patient? It has been 40 years since I killed any commies and I am tired of waiting. No matter how that evil regime falls, a well thought-out occupation will be most necessary. And while there will be no barriers to trade and travel, NO reunification should be attempted until the North is self-supporting, self-governing and self-respecting. Can you come up with dynamics equivalent to my post-invasion scenario? If you can’t then I fear that the North will remain an underclass who can only loot for a living. Me? I just as soon go ahead and clear the decks in one swell foop thereby opening the door to what comes nest.
#38 stevesmith An full armored corps on the Yalu, coupled with a Republic of Taiwan and a few other things concerning the Spratly’s etc and I daresay the All Under Heaven will have second thoughts. China seems to be following the same economic/logistic path Imperial Nihon did. I wish to disrupt that chain of “thought”. After all, there are imperializers and imperializees and Joe Chink needs to be reminded of his proper station in life.
Myth…
The maladministration has everyone installing PV arrays per Sci Fy: on rooftops.
The ONLY places that make any sense would be where running wire is too costly. So PV actually makes sense in the Alaskan gold fields, Nome, and the high Sierras of California.
Running power, even overhead, is brutally expensive there.
Ironically, Solyndra actually had a viable product. It was just marketed all wrong. (The company was sold to the Pink House.)
Rare earths are as rare as copper. Indeed, they were discovered, in Sweden, in ores adjacent to a copper mine. (Down the road, as it were.)
What makes them expensive are the chemical manipulations required to separate the blends.
Outside of a laboratory, no-one isolates rare earths into elemental purity. In this, they’re unique.
When you see an outrageous quote for this or that rare earth — it’s the separation.
What actually would work, hydro-power from Peru, receives no ink, and is pushed off the table.
=========
As for collection area:
A minor fraction of New Mexico would suffice to collect enough power for all of North America — as long as the Sun shines.
However, the batteries and capital cost put such a scheme entirely out of reach as base-load power.
Rooftop installations will come to be regretted. They will, ultimately, subtract from real estate values. Just you wait.
@Dave, Military conquest of the North would probably not be that hard but it would depend on agreement from the South. AFAIK, the South has never shown any interest. It would also be best if the Chinese agreed or at least acquiesced. Don’t really see that happening.
I always thought that the right plan was to flood the country with black market goods for a period of time, say a year, and then cut it off completely. Make them dependent on a corrupt system and then simply stop it. It sounds like that’s kind of what’s happening anyway.
“Solar CAN’T be cheap; it’s economically impossible given the necessary inputs. The laws of thermodynamics are unforgiving, as are the laws of economics. Solar panels can never repay the vast amounts of land, water and rare earth metals that go into producing them.”
Pardon me while I point out that you’re not “thinking outside the box” to parrot a meaningless corporate buzzphrase.
Solar will become wildly popular and will take over all of our power needs and then some. There are only two problems to solve: 1) how to build a space elevator and 2) working out the issues with beaming the power down through the atmosphere.
Land-based solar has its place, but has all the issues that others here have noted. Space-based solar has no limits once we get materials science to the point where we can use carbon nanotubes or whatever to handle the tensile stresses a space elevator would induce. Lift the collectors up VERY cheaply, launch them into orbit for nearly nothing, lay the smackdown on whoever bleats about the power beams killing birds (and frying the occasional neighborhood unfortunate enough to be located near a receiving station when things go wonky) and we’re golden.
Consider it…everybody talks about the next 20 or 100 years. With fissionables make it maybe 500 to 1000. What about the next 100,000 years? The next million? Sooner or later, unless we have a major breakthrough with fusion, it’s going to HAVE to be solar and hydro. Or else horses and wood (and a MUCH smaller population). Take your pick.
@Utopia Parkway: As to the South going along, it only takes a notice that the armistice is no more. A few bribes ought to accomplish that. The Chinese? After reassuring them that we have no plans to invade Manchuria—-yet—-, we should remind them that we could repudiate all those bonds they have been buying. Excessive debt is a two-edged sword you know.
As to your proposed technique, I have nothing inherent against it, or other proposals made on this thread for that matter. What I would like to know is what would you propose doing after your plan works? I fear that a lack of followup
on military invasion or internal collapse would result in a very disastrous state of nature up there. Got any ideas?
@Dave, Well the reason that the South and China aren’t interested in things changing much is they will have to do all the heavy lifting. China is afraid of millions of refugees coming across the border. The South will end up spending boku dollars and maybe taking a generation to rebuild the North.
I think that if an American president really really wanted to solve this China would acquiesce but I’m not sure the South would go along. The people in the North are very different from those in the South. No money, hardly any food, no democracy, no internet, etc. etc. They’re like stone age people. I’ve read they suffer from being physically stunted from lack of food and mentally stunted also. I’m sure it will be no joy to attempt to rehabilitate them. It will be a job taken on almost wholly by the South I expect, even though the US and the West will probably kick in some money.
The point of changing this is to remove a bad bad actor from the world stage. The North is a nuclear proliferator and ally of other bad guys. It can only be a good thing to remove the North and reunite the country. But the cost will be high.
@Utopian Parkway
anything done or not done is going to cost.
I do believe I mentioned ways and means of paying for all this??????