[cbacba]

Twig6,

Actually, there's no attempt to compare prices of beta vs vhs, only vcrs early, mid and late. VHS won because they realized several things about why the customer wanted them. Uses were movies, soaps and tv shows and sports. Longer tape length with dreadful quality trumped better quality tape with short time length. Advanced timer ability with multiple recording times beat a single timer and finally rental movie availability won out for vhs.

There's always some fraction of the market composed of those to whom pricing is irrelevent - they can afford it if they want it. There is also the segment of early emplimenters who have to have the latest - whatever the heck it is - gizmo. The rising peak of demand is then composed of those who need something they don't have. Finally there's the change-over as transition from whatever to whatever replaces it followed by the saturated market where replacement dominates.

Typically, tax credits help reduce overall expense but seldom if ever cover the expenses or bring one to break even. There are of course significantly out of the mainstream applications where some new technology such as solar may be cheaper than say the costs of bringing in grid power to a remote location.

Note your example as a factor of 10x error. A $100 / mo, 0.12 / kw means about 800 kwh not 8000 (or 10,000kwh / mo) that's the yearly usage.

Leaving out general inflation keeps things a bit simpler and leaves things comprehensible and perhaps requires a simple correction to adapt to a newer and lower value of money. Cost increases of energy not part of inflation is yet another unknown that may or may not actually happen. Depending upon inflation to provide return on investment generally means there isn't much of any real return. 5% compound interest for 20yrs should be worth about 2.5 times the initial investment.

Your $25k investment may or may not be similar to the same sized power gen system as I guesstimated. I think I guesstimated a system putting in about 8 or 9 kwh per year including prospects of cloudy days. I was guessing costs typical of 50-65 W panels with a rough rough guess of installation and switchover circuitry. Whether serious savings may be had from buying systems vs. individual retail for panels is simply a question left for more serious study.

I can't agree with you on the private sector being subsidized. The relationship between the private sector and the gov. is more like a an emaciated goat trying to remain standing while being crushed by a giant leach sucking its blood.

There are some companies that couldn't continue to exist without special favors from the gov. usually permitting them to compete against other companies which don't receive such favors. An example might be a company that hires illegals at low wages secure in the knowledge that no fine or punishment will happen to them and giving them a competitive advantage over those companies that do not hire illegals as they would be fined severely when caught.

As for people from the private sector, they are usually much more competent than one finds in the public sector for leadership. Typically, an elected official is competent only in or mostly in the realm of getting elected - that is the only job requirement. Since one needs to earn a living before and after being in public service, working in the private sector tends to be a necessity.

I've seen little difference in this administration versus any other.

Much of the problems I've seen have been failures of business to deal effectively with unions, allowing themselves to be walked all over and promising significantly beyond what can be delivered. There's been several notable failures/exposures of wrong doing and a few examples of stockholders asserting their control over executives run amock.

The only cure for that is to prevent the political hacks from having sufficient power and control over wealth. Most jobs now are small business related not large business. Of course the small businesses don't have political clout of big ones.

Biggest problem in oil is foreign demand - like china. It doesn't help to have gov. restricting domestic drilling in a big way either.

If you're referring to driving a french fry mobile usuing deep fry oil, that's cheap but not available in qty. I understnd the new zealanders have some prototype commercial sewage to biodiesel test going on. So far, BioWillie's truck stop (willie nelson is the spokesman?) hasn't made it within 100 miles of here and the last one I saw was noticeably more expensive than petroleum diesel prices in the vacinity.

I'm not sure if bio-willie is more unsustainable subsidized food burning like corn ethanol or if it's something real with a big future.