There is a huge difference between buying a solar panel once and having it generate energy for the next 30 years vs. buying a barrel of oil now and consuming it by next week.

It's the same difference as buying a house now and owning it until it collapses vs. renting a house and being at the mercy of your landlord, or buying a piece of shrink-wrapped software and using it for the next 18 years vs. renting a SaaS subscription that provides a different product next month.

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ChrisMarshallNY 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> buying a piece of shrink-wrapped software and using it for the next 18 years

I'm wondering how that works. I have written software that was still being used, 25 years later, but it was pretty much a "Ship of Theseus," by then.

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throwup238 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Old hardware or emulation of old operating systems on new hardware.

Quite common on old industrial machinery and other capital equipment like lab equipment. San Francisco BART for example has to scrounge eBay for old motherboards that still allow DMA to parallel ports via southbridge because it’s too expensive to validate a new design for controllers.

	▲	geerlingguy 38 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I have a G5 with a bunch of old boxed software that runs as well as it did the day I bought it. And an Xbox 360 with the same. Not everything has to keep up with the times.

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aucisson_masque 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Beside, on the rate earth materials, it just happen that China is able to exploit it cheaply but other countries also have access to them and could very well exploit.

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chasil 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The oil products are needed by many industrial processes.

My secret suspicion is that Trump knew of Israel's attack on the Qatar/Iran natural gas in advance.

If the Persian Gulf is closed for a long period, shale oil in North America will do very well.

Israel also has new natural gas reserves that will be in high demand.

Is the loss of market share of the Persian Gulf nations an unintended side effect?

	▲	UncleMeat an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Full solarization will not eliminate our need for fossil fuels. But it would reduce it so dramatically as to render our current market unrecognizable.

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bossyTeacher 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

>It's the same difference as buying a house now and owning it until it collapses vs. renting a house and being at the mercy of your landlord,

I always take issue with the expression "buying a house now" when you actually mean "pay a mortgage for a house now". With a mortgage, you are at the mercy of the bank and whatever contract you signed. With a rent tenancy, you are at the mercy of the landlord and whatever contract you signed. A landlord will wake up tomorrow and tell you to leave, you have some notice period. Your fixed period deal ends and you can only get a deal that triples your rate.

It's like when people say that self-employed people have no boss, your customer becomes your boss. And you always have one. Everyone that exchanges services/products for money has one.