Well, if we fail to "grow", we're all screwed - we need to transform our power generating technologies fairly rapidly. Instability would be an issue, but hey - brownouts are gret motivation for people to install a few hours of power-buffer in their home, one more step in the right direction.

But in reality I think you're mistaken - yes, decentralization reduces the effectiveness of central planning, but it also reduces peak loads - copper wire doesn't care which way the power flows, only what the average and peak flow rate is, and for the most part the capacity is already built out. Large-scale power generation or buffers would obviously require cooperative planning with the grid, but home-scale development, not so much. Unless peak generation is greater than peak demand the upgrades are only needed for power stations and the like, which may not be designed to handle significant backflow. And there you get plenty of warning - a few more houses installing solar this year aren't going to cause any surprise problems, any problems are pretty clear evidence that the line company has been neglecting its responsibility by ignoring production trends and declining to upgrade systems that have obviously needed it for a while.

I will agree that yes, the line company will be in a position of considerable power, and may need to make frequent investments with no immediate profit potential - for that reason I would lean towards making them a government agency, not unlike road construction and maintenance for the physical transportation network.

Inefficient how?

If every car on the planet were a grid-tied EV, we still wouldn't have enough buffer to weather a couple days of decreased production from a heavily solar-based grid. Meanwhile, EV batteries have a very different set of design priorities than grid-buffer - low weight, low volume, and crash safety are all high priorities for EV batteries. For grid buffers though, pretty much the only thing that matters is dollar-per-kWh-per-year and some degree of fire safety, so something like Aquion which has a high weight and volume but low cost, lack of rare materials, and ridiculously high endurance has far more long-term potential - not to mention gravity storage, liquid metal batteries, and various other technologies that are being developed specifically for stationary applications.

I agree the monitoring potential of a smart grid is a bit off-putting, but even a few hours worth of power buffer in your house would virtually eliminate the invasive detail that could be extracted, in addition to allowing consumption shifting to non-peak hours.

That's irrelevant, as the justice system is not to be a method for taking revenge, but to make society a better place to live in, with less crime.

This is just a bald assertion of the purpose of the justice system, with no source or explanation. Some people do see the justice system as a method for taking revenge, which is better than having the victims of crime and their families take revenge. I know I feel a need for revenge when someone wrongs my family members. Everyone knows where that leads.

The rational decision for them is to do anything not to get caught, including more murders.

This might be true, but taking the death penalty off the table will not make this problem go away. If the maximum penalty is life in prison, and a person has already committed crimes to warrant a life sentence, isn't the "rational decision for them is to do anything not to get caught, including more murders."? So this was a flawed argument.

Unless there's a way to bring people back to life again, that in itself should be enough to put a stop to it.

Again, changing the punishment to life incarceration doesn't make the problem go away. If you put someone in jail for life, and then at the end of his life, find out he wasn't guilty, what do you do then? Press the reset button? No, the person's life is just as wasted, and there isn't much anyone can do. And if no one ever determines that the innocent person is innocent, then their life is completely wasted in prison, in my opinion. So, because we might punish the innocent, do we stop handing out long sentences? There is no perfect system, period. If we want to punish anyone, we have to accept a level of mistakes. Is 4% to high? I don't know. What about .4%? All of that said, I do agree with arth1 that executing one innocent person is too many, just not for the reasons arth1 gives.

Yeah, we couldn't build them overnight - but it needs to be done. No time like the present to get started. We've got the Tesla Gigafactory being built, and there's others like Aquion building non-toxic long life batteries specifically for grid applications. And some locations have options for pumped water and other very large scale power buffers.

Yes, we could put them in peoples houses, but that greatly complicates the system and makes it more expensive - economies of scale apply. Personally I think a time-varying electricity market would be a wonderful way to help level the system out - let many somebodies with money independently invest in a large power buffer, and then buy power when it's cheap (high net production hours) and sell it for a substantial profit when it's expensive (high net demand). Heck, you could add batteries to your house without solar panels, just to level out your demand and save money that way. Maybe even make a bit of profit if you built large enough. Seems like a great way to gradually decentralize the power system more organically, rather than via some big central planning project with all the... "inefficiencies" that tends to accumulate.

But for it to work properly, I think we need to get the grid out of the hands with a vested interest in generating power - keep the grid managers less conflicted and focused on distributing power efficiently according to the emerging power-generating realities of the system.

You're making it way too complicated. The power-line company can buy power from whoever is providing, and sell power to whoever is consuming. Just like they do now with home solar power. They can make whatever agreements they like with generating companies as to who gets what share of demand, what response times are required, etc. Add some grid-scale power buffers, even just a few minutes worth, and things get even simpler. While the electrons are on the line they belong to the distribution company, just like while products are in Walmart's distribution channel they belong to Walmart.

Ask the unicorns.

Who said anything about death? I thought we were discussing non-existence. How many unicorns died to establish their non-existence?

For that matter, how many people have you barbecued? We should be delicious - biochemically similar to pork, and nice and tender since so few of us engage in significant amounts of physical labor.

And entitled assholes existing is a good thing because...?

Nah, should be theoretically possible - the heart will keep beating no problem, and removing it shouldn't kill the person until oxygen deprivation starts setting in - people survive heart transplants ll the time. Drug someone enough that the shock doesn't kill them, and they should be capable of surviving at least until the oxygen in their brain is used up.

Of course without the blood pumping they won't have long - as a reference point nitrogen (or other inert gas) asphyxiation can cause unconsciousness within a few breaths as the oxygen is pulled from the blood, I imagine a cessation of blood flow would be similarly rapid. With powerful enough stimulants though you might be able to keep them conscious a bit longer - nitrogen asphyxiation usually takes a minute of two to actually kill someone, though permanent brain damage starts much sooner. Probably not long enough to eat their own heart, but maybe long enough to take a bite or two. Though WHY they would do such a thing is an entirely different question.

Not necessarily - start high enough, with a favorable wind and a paraglider-style chute and you could possibly make it from non-restricted airspace, especially on a nice hot day with the heat-island effect was providing a strong updraft. Or you could be launched from a catapult/cannon/etc.instead, if you could somehow get it close enough avoid raising suspicion ahead of time...

Then again, Wikipedia at least classifies paragliders along with hang gliders as aircraft, and a determined lawyer could potentially get even a standard 'chute recognized as such, should a really lucky parachutist manage to make it. Now you've got me curious as to the legal classification. I'd think they'd be classified as ultralight aircraft, at most. But that seems rather generous.

Yes. And the basic act was some dude landed a personal lightweight aircraft on the lawn of one of his employees in order to drop off some mail (and create a media spectacle). Seems he even called ahead, and took care to avoid the flower beds. What a monster.

Did he even need a pilot's license? The article doesn't seem to mention anything about licenses, and the 'copter looks like it *might* full under the weight limit to be classified as an ultralight, which does not need a license to operate (~250 pounds unloaded, not counting safety equipment)

Of course if he was honestly attempting to deliver mail then that probably wouldn't count as recreational usage, at least not if it was mail he was supposed to deliver for reasons other than his own satisfaction, so I suppose he'd need a license anyway. But then he had to know he'd be stopped, he even called ahead, so clearly he didn't actually intend to deliver the mail - rather he wanted to create a media spectacle, which I think could be argued as recreational.

The point is not that no one else has problems, obviously they do. It's just that if everything else were the same, and you were *also* black, you'd almost certainly be even worse off. Being a white man is kind of like being born with a +10 ring of luck. Doesn't mean you didn't also get saddled with a -60 luck modifier, it just means you have it that much easier than you would have otherwise.

But that part's okay - the house was clearly guilty of containing suspicious items, and declined to plead innocent of criminal intent at trial.

I'm fairly certain dead people have no legal rights, nor do hypothetical new copies that might be created at some point in the future. That money belongs to whoever controls the fund, not the corpses - so I suppose as long as they can be trusted not to enrich themselves at the expense of a bunch of slowly rotting meat, sure there might still be funds available. But nobody is being reanimated, at best they're being copied.