Well, you could start by removing subsidies. And special privileges (like having your company offices protected by government troops).

I believe his claim is that pumping out the aquifers is causing land subsidence. This is a VERY reasonable claim. Pumping out oil caued much of Southern California to experience subsidence several decades ago, and aquifers, being closer to the surface, could be expected to have more dramatic (though more focused) effects. And I believe that there are many other cases where that is not in dispute. IIUC it's causing subsidence in California's San Joaquin Valley. Which, in turn, renders the San Joaquin Valley more threatened by sea level rise. I really doubt that the Tethy's Sea will reappear, however, unless much of Antarctica melts.

No, but it does mean you risk going bankrupt fighting an invalid patent.

You can tell me that, but I have noticed that as soon as a particular good investment becomes available to those not "well connected", it stops being a decent investment. E.g., CDs and Treasury bond consistently produce less than the rate of inflation. Back when they were only available to a few they produced quite good rates of return. (And actually, for a few years after they were opened up they still beat inflation...but not for long.)

Willingly is an interesting term. In Rome some people sold themselves into slavery to feed their families. Did they do so willingly? They certainly ended up being slaves.

Well, if your production code is open source, then storing your code on GitHub seems like a reasonable approach ... for backup.

While you are correct, I defy you to come up with an example of a form of government (that has been in use) that doesn't/didn't lead to authoritarianism.

In the US it took less than 10 years (see "The Whiskey Rebellion"). The only thing that slowed down the process was the existence of an "open border" along the west. Closed borders foster authroitarianism, whatever the form of government.

Actually, I believe that there ARE forms of government that don't necessarily drift towards authoritarianism, but they would all have the characteristic that desiring power didn't increase your chance of getting it.

Unfortunately, bankruptcy law allows, and often requires, companies to break a lot of promises. I'm no lawyer, and all I know about bankruptcy law I learned from GrokLaw, but it has all kinds of wierd little "kludges" designed to allow the maximum amount of money to be pulled out of a corpse...usually for the benefit of the lawyers, as they get paid even before the creditors.

IIUC, bankruptcy laws require them to sell anything they can make money on unless it's illegal. And the people managing the bankruptcy aren't the people who were running the company before. (Usually, maybe they are in this case.)

Keep this in mind whenever a business asks you for information.

Real marriages are the ones that give you a tax advantage/ health care saving/etc.

Warning: I'm a prrogrammer, not a physicist.

IIUC, one interpretation is that "yes, it's a particle, but it only has a probable location/velocity/momentum/etc.". So it is simultaneously both a particle (as an object) and a distribution of probabilities as characteristics of the particle. It's the probabilities that move as a wave, but it's only the particle that we can detect.

N.B.: I studied this quite a long time ago, so not only are things a bit fuzzy, the "best" way of looking at them may have changed.

Also: Please note that this is just an interpretation of the data. The data appear to be such that multiple (wierd) interprations are possible, and no-"non-wierd" interpretation is possible. My favored interpretation is a variation of the Multi-World (EGW) interpretation modified to include multiple pasts as well a multiple futures so the the universe becomes a directed graph with a (possibly unique) origin and a (unknown) limit. But most state transitions though probabilistic don't make the universe larger because the multiple pasts of each instant-instance merge an (essentially) equally large number of world-lines to the divergence towards the future. So the number of world lines stays approximately constant. Think of it as a really huge state transition table with probabilistic transitions being processed on a system with a truly huge number of independent threads. And all exits from each state are taken with a weight equal to the probability. This is already pretty messy, but then you need to start worrying about the light cones, and the fact that information transmitted via light only experiences time when and absorbtion/re-emission even occurs. (I haven't yet figured out how to handle light slowing down when not traversing a vacuum but also not being absorbed. Does it start experiencing time?)

OK. Possibly I misunderstood what was required to allow a push connection to the electrical grid. OTOH, it was a couple of decades ago that we put in solar panels (with a grid connection, and, obviously, not Solar City), so also perhaps the rules have changed.

The bank would also want security for the loan, perhaps you could get better terms from them. If the Solar City salesman you contacted said they don't do "off the grid" installations...that doesn't seem to be what the company currently says. Maybe they didn't, maybe it's flim-flam, maybe your salesman didn't want to do it. From your description he was clearly lousy at his job.

OTOH, this http://www.greentechmedia.com/... might be related to your experience. However this http://blog.solarcity.com/put-... seems to bolster your point. But this http://cleantechnica.com/2012/... disagrees with that. These were all published at different points in time, so quite possibly the position is in flux. Their site doesn't seem to address the question directly for residential customers.

So I think you are basically correct, if you want an "off the grid" solar installation you should go with someone else until they are ready to make a clear statement. But for the larger installations that they are talking about in this Press Release, attaching to the grid appears to be an afterthought. (It couldn't really be an afterthought, but it seems designed for locations where good grid connections cannot be assumed.)

Thinking of them as a utility company is actually more accurate than thinking of them as an installer. But they aren't regulated the way most utility companies are (which has both good and bad points). They are a utility company because they own the generation plant that they install on your property. You are just the only customer of that plant. I'm sorry the salesman you dealt with was unpleasant, but that's not a basis for deciding that the *company* is a bunch of hucksters. (I'm not saying they aren't, they could be. I'm saying that isn't a valid basis for deciding.)

As for your "Any electrician..." comment, yes. But most electricians don't have agreements with the power company to allow them to connect their devices to feed power into the lines. Most solar companies do. Now if you want total grid independence that shouldn't matter to you. So in that case what matters is that Solar City supplies long term financing that most electricians won't give you. If you don't want it, fine. Some people do.

Your result clearly depends on local electric costs from the grid. For others it may well not make sense. And perhaps they have more than one package to choose from...with different contracts. (Also, perhaps they offer different such packages in different areas.)

I'm glad you've been having a good experience. I hope you continue to. But realistically you're dealing with a large corporation in a monopoly situation (i.e., you're locked into that contract for a long time). So be sure you understand what the contract says, and what your remedies are if they start defaulting on their obligations.

Perhaps not, but how long will the salt stay molten without additional energy input?

(OTOH, for a city sized plant that might well be a reasonable choice. Small packages have a higher surface/volume ratio. OTTH, last time I posted this someone told me that insulation was now good enough that this wasn't a major problem. Perhaps he's right.)