this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2023
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Article doesn't mention what the unit does with the salt waste.
I support this 100%, but desalination presents a unique problem: what do we do with all the salt? Maybe the unit uses it for something, but otherwise it just miniaturizes a problem that we're already working on.
If this works, it's better than anything we have , which costs grid energy and dumps brine all the same. If anything, the smaller scale makes it easier to distribute and dilute the output brine.
If sea levels rise as much as they're supposed to, this will be an invaluable tool for an enormous proportion of the country. My concern comes from capitalism getting its hooks into this.
Capitalism bad, sure, but you can’t deny it has a way of making things scalable and affordable. If some venture co started the infrastructure to mass produce this stuff and make it possible for everybody to afford it would it be that bad?
What? No, my friend you misunderstand. Mass-production makes stuff affordable and scalable. Capitalism makes it so wealth is horded and only the rich get to decide what gets made. You vote with your dollar while a billionaire votes with theirs, guess who wins.
Mass-production is not a capitalism-exclusive unlock, it's a dlc that can be redeemed in any economic system.
Without the motivation to make a profit, few entities are both willing and able to engage in the considerable expense, risk, and effort required to spin up a mass production line.
I think “thirst” and “hunger” predate “profit” as a motive by several hundred million years.
Yeah, Neanderthals were famous for their efficient large-scale manufacturing capabilities
What a fantastic point. You can’t get a lion to chase a gazelle without a credit card these days.
Weird, there was lots of mass production in the Soviet Union. Please explain.
Governments are one of the few entities that are able (and occasionally willing) to spin up a mass production endeavor without the profit motive necessarily present.
Sometimes they essentially do this themselves via federal employees, or contractors. Sometimes they achieve the ends indirectly by incentivizing private companies with subsidies and the like.
Regardless of how it gets done, everyone shows up for work in the morning motivated by something. In the Soviet Union this was often the fear of imprisonment or other such violence, which was a really shitty situation for a lot of people to be in. In the modern world, it’s typically the hope that the money made will pay for food and housing and such.
The capitalist entity was the state, the political elites the ones hoarding wealth, everyone else getting the shaft.
How can the state be the capitalist entity? That makes no sense. The state controlling the means of production is literally what communism is.
when, all of human history must be like 250 years old...
Right. We live in a capitalistic society though, not in another one. So either “capitalism gets its hooks” on this stuff or it stays inconvenient and unaffordable. Then we can speak about fantasy scenarios all we want..