From FT Alphaville:
Bernanke weighs in on robot wars; brings Keynes for backup
The writer is Alphaville's Kate Mackenzie who surprised me with the robot, Keynes etc. pickup. She does give the nod to Izabella Kaminska for doing some of the early "Connections" (science historian James Burke is still alive, who knew?) in this regard but we know Kate more for founding the FT's Energy Source blog (still on the blogroll at left, as an archive).Many factors affect the development of the economy, notably among them a nation’s economic and political institutions, but over long periods probably the most important factor is the pace of scientific and technological progress.That’s Ben Bernanke addressing a graduating class at Bard College at Simon’s Rock, Massachusetts, on Saturday. He goes on to say that not everyone believes this advancement is going to continue at such a great pace.
Yes, he is talking about Robert Gordon and Tyler Cowen, and their arguments that much of the low-hanging fruit has been plucked and we face a lower-growth future, as evidenced by the incremental advancements of recent years. Here’s Bernanke again...MUCH MORE
And that's where it gets interesting. She (gently) pokes at some parts of Bernanke's speech and then rolls out the heavy guns:
"...Secondly, we’re not completely convinced that clean-energy technologies, at least ones such as wave power, can be lumped in with developments in, say, robotics and communications. Changes in energy are just harder: the barriers are higher; infrastructure is an issue; path dependency is a problem...."That's a fact, Jack.
There is no Moore's Law in energy and the people who, 5-10 years ago were acting as if there was are being shown to be at best naïfs and more probably as rentseekers and liars, but of course I repeat myself.*
Folks who argue that the solar biz demonstrates price declines similar to Moore's Law either don't know about the Chinese plan to bankrupt the industry by selling below cost (akin to what they did in rare earths) and should be kindly corrected or they do know and make their spiel in spite of knowing and should be shot.
* Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
- Mark Twain, a Biography
The entire Connections series is online.
