Right! And that's really a great point, it can be a positive for individuals. Except that for society it has negative value.
This is like opening a mine, extracting all the resources, and leaving behind a poisonous scab on the earth. (Not coincidentally the way I picture MZ.)
I have not seen evidence to quantify its value to society as a positive/negative. Would society have been worse off or better off without Facebook? I believe that is not an answerable question because it is alternate history.
Making statements as fact does not help to clarify the discussion. Try posing a question instead. You are not adequately informed on reactor design or operation
And, so commonly, oblivious to any of this himself. Next stop Ayn Rand.
I've tried to expunge Walden from my mind, but I'll note that it was pretty useful getting dates in college ("university", said EU)
From a duplication of effort standpoint, how much of this can be combined (-intended) into a single process with the right implement? I know little about farming.... What is the purpose of the mowing? I know that things like alfalfa are often tilled into the soil to improve fertility. <p> Would a mower/tiller/broadcaster (all in one pass) be feasible or is there a reason these things happen separately? It would represent a substantial time & cost savings
Hmm. That’s a really complicated question/answer. It would depend on soil type, crop rotation and the kind of residue we are tilling in...
To be honest, we have great soil in CA and I can’t speak broadly ..but almost every big farm will have their own system. Broadly, there is standard tillage, bed disc system and strip/conservation tillage in CA.
Strip tillage is often conservation tillage and sometimes used near Davis/Sacramento area where our wheat and tomatoes are intercropped..(our most impressive crop) In Salinas valley , our lettuce producing ‘salad bowl’, they have almost always had minimum tillage protocols. A sub soiler/ripper. I know a farmer who rips it in the beginning of the season and discs it FOUR times before listing.
You can’t really make a decision without evaluating soil, moisture and soil microbial activity.
Having said that..I am interested only in small acreage farm automation..that is sub 100 acres ..2-3 times bed flipping vegetable growing farms. I don’t have experience with industrial ag systems. That’s like factory production assembly line. They got all their ducks in the row. My interest is in automation for small farmers and market farms. It’s super sub optimized market.
I would recommend a minimal till-no till approach focused on soil health. Maybe rip the fields every 2-3 years. Single pass implements will reduce compaction due to machinery but when you make a light farm bot, compaction of paths between short semi permanent beds shouldn’t be an issue. The holy grail would be a no toll system. But it’s not without its issues.
So..to your question. A single pass Solution with implements on a gang. Yes. It’s possible. But you have to remember that this would mean higher HP. Upwards of 200-350. At which point, it defeats the purpose of finding automation for small farms. Which small farm can afford those mega tractors? It becomes a scale/$ issue.
If it’s electric, then HP decision is even more complicated because now you have to decide between draft implements or PTO implements. And as that adds up, so does the weight of the tractor/pulling unit. And boom! We are back to ‘size matters’. We can only grow in 1000+ acre farms.
Small acreage automation is a difficult but interesting challenge. That’s why I am interested and also because right now because food crops are mostly Imported and cheap, Agtech doesn’t care. But that will soon change. Sooner than we expect. We should build.
Your farm looks really cool (from the tiny bits I could find online). My dream has been to do something like that but take it up to the next level (bootstrapping a community).
Just liked your FB so I can follow your adventure.
Thanks. I haven’t updated my social media for many months now..just sharing articles and stuff. You will have to go back to see actual farm updates from then..social media is exhausting! I gave up!
That's on the mark! It's also pretty clear that manufacturers did want to utilize this as it reduces tooling costs a lot. But, in attempts to increase fuel efficiency/reduce weight(cost) they lost rigidity and went to unibody.
Composite & battery technology are enabling these types of designs again.
As for the lead comment, it's true that the exact same 'skateboard' isn't going to perform, but keep the board and swap 'trucks & wheels'. There's your sports car cum minivan.
It's about the chassis not the rolling
It will have the effect of increasing premiums for all participants, so I'm inclined to agree.
Particularly for insurance such as LTC, if you can determine (for yourself) definitive need for the insurance - you will absolutely buy it. But at that point you are not seeking insurance because you have certainty. Rather, you would be cheating everyone that has purchased "insurance". All other participants will soon cease opting for LTC insurance due to expense unless they too have knowledge of definitive need.... LTC companies pay operation costs, salaries, bonuses, become inslovent, file for bankruptcy, and no one else gets anything.
There will always be insurance companies as long as they can formalize a bet where they expect people to pay more in premiums than what they expect they need to pay out.
As long people get a feeling of security, there will also be people willing to pay more in premiums than what they expect to get out.
If people start gaming the system, and DNA testing become very accurate in predicting the future (current commercial DNA testing is not even close), then what will likely happen is that big payouts will go away. It will have enough limits, caps, restrictions and conditions in order to rebalance the risk assessments in favor of the insurance company.
>> Rather, you would be cheating everyone that has purchased "insurance".
That is a very north american definition of insurance. But insurance companies are not collectives. They are for-profit corporations, probably with a PO box in Delaware. Buying an insurance plan isn't like moving into a commune. It is a risk-shifting arrangement with a corporation, a formalized financial hedge. When I buy insurance I don't much care about other customers. They aren't part of my transaction. Maybe I am the only customer for a product. That does happen. It doesn't impact the obligations of the parties.
The point the parent is making is that if you know in advance that you, will need to use the insurance, and you decide to buy it on this basis, then the premium the insurance company charges will need to increase to account for this, or the insurance company will lose money.
Since the premium has increased, the only people who will still pay the higher premium are those that know they will need to make a claim. The premium will therefore rise to the point where _only_ the ones with that extra information will pay.
Insurance markets cannot survive with this kind of information asymmetry.
This is not a North American definition. This is what insurance is.
> When I buy insurance I don't much care about other customers. They aren't part of my transaction. Maybe I am the only customer for a product. That does happen. It doesn't impact the obligations of the parties.
Unfortunately that's not actually how it works with shared pooling of insurance resources. You pay a monthly fee that gets bundled with the fees from other customers and paid out when there are claims against insurance.
If your care was only paid out of your pool of money you've paid into the insurance system, your first month of payment would cover essentially nothing.
The "local pool" is irrelevant. The care is paid out by the insurance corporation. How and where they get the money is thier business. They could get it from selling chickens. All that matters is that they pay.
What about one-off custom policies with a "local pool" of one customer? Such products are made every day.
> How and where they get the money is thier business.
> They could get it from selling chickens.
Insurance is a regulated industry and those statements would be terrifying. You have to prove to the state that your mathematics will work into a functional business and have to maintain certain liquidity requirements.
> All that matters is that they pay.
Yeah, and that's one the reasons companies don't like paying since it can dip into their liquidity.
That's beside the point. Insurance is basically just another way to invest wealth. An insurer simply needs to have cash somewhere safe to cover the possible payouts they might reasonably need to make. It still can be a single customer.
This is a very North American discussion, dunelover, though Canadians might have a bone to pick with you concerning your categorization. While I don't imagine that insurance companies will cease to exist, I do imagine that benefits of these plans will become next to nonexistent and the cost will increase dramatically. Though it may end with differentiation and one plan might be available for traumatic injury and one for genetic disorder, exclusively. Regardless, the point stands, if the party that's supposed to pay the bill for my party has even greater incentive to litigate, then I likely will be SOL. And, you're absolutely right, it isn't very much like a commune. However, my insurance rates in North America keep going up because people are unhealthy & overweight and we've subsidized corn sugar into everything edible. For-profit insurance companies are what 'we' have and they have formalized the average cost of care into their hedges. You are not in an insurance bubble, you are in a world of statistics and actuarial science.
The references there mislead - The article concerning the ships states "minor salvage is still carried out to recover small pieces of steel" - "Primary" is an overstatement.
In reality, a steel manufacturer can produce low background steel by using virgin ore for the smelting, but must know in advance of the run and be advised not to incorporate recycled material (including alloying agents). Some are willing to accommodate such requests for additional cost.
