this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2025
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Sigh, all I see is panacea thinking....I want dank memes.
But here's some reality for you that'll destroy my karma.
The market naturally drives energy toward the lowest price because buyers choose the cheapest reliable option and producers must compete. Inefficient sources fade while the most cost effective ones grow. This happens automatically through supply and demand.
Many green technologies, depend on heavy subsidies and huge upfront costs. They promise clean and limitless power, but the real costs of materials, storage, and maintenance make them far more expensive than they seem. This makes them feel less like practical solutions and more like a comforting promise being sold as a cure for everything.
If your energy company could create very cheap energy it would. It would mean higher profits.
Lmfao you speak with authority despite it being complete bullshit.
"Heavy subsidies and huge upfront costs" applies far far more to oil and gas than to anything else. It's only due to the massive amount of technological and economic inertia behind oil and gas that it is still around.
For building new power generation, utility-scale solar and onshore wind are now almost universally cheaper than new coal, oil, or gas-fired power plants. This threshold was passed in most of the world around the mid-2010s and has become undeniable in the 2020s.
Solar is now often cheaper than existing fossil fuel plants: In many regions, it's now cheaper to build and operate a brand-new solar farm than to just keep running an existing coal or gas plant.
"The market" doesn't operate like you get taught as a child. The vast majority of economic decisions are made by those in power to ensure they stay in power. It makes little sense for a business person to cannabalise their own industry. They have vertically integrated and are invested in the supply chain from start to finish, and there's no benefit to them for things to change. It's far easier to just impede competitors than change the course of behemoth corporations.
You opened by insulting me instead of addressing my point, which says more about your argument than mine.
Claiming solar is automatically cheaper ignores system level costs. Wind and solar need storage, backup, and major grid upgrades, and those costs are still high. That is why renewables depend on large subsidies and mandates, just as fossil fuels have historically.
If solar were truly cheaper in a complete sense, companies would switch on their own because profit is a powerful incentive. The fact that adoption still relies on policy pressure shows the picture is more complicated than the simple claim that fossil fuels only survive through inertia.
You wanna mention fossil fuel subsidies too?
Im open to hearing your argument.
Energy (read: oil) companies don't invest in "green energy" for the same reason pharma companies don't research cures
You forget capitalism is about making money first and foremost. Ask your self if there's money in a cure for anyone in the market.
The perfect drug would cost exactly as much as a patient can produce while maintaining themselves. This is not an original or hypothetical example. Treatment is more profitable than cure.
That example is old, overused, and rarely true. For example: How many old filament lightbulbs do you see on the market today?
Many cures have made a lot of money in medicine. Iron lungs used to be expensive to maintain, but vaccines made them unnecessary.
There is plenty of fast and lasting profit in actually curing diseases. The demand for cures is enormous, so successful cures become some of the most valuable medical products ever created.
Examples from medical history where cures were profitable: 1) polio vaccine, 2) hepatitis c antiviral, 3) small pox vaccine, 4) antibiotics, and 5) H. pylori cure for stomach ulcers.
Interesting such an old, trite example went over your head. Classic for a reason and very true imo. Filament lightbulbs were engineered to burn out regularly and require replacement, that doesn't make the point you're going for. Broad spectrum antibiotics breed resistant strains and require new formulations, especially when aggressively marketed and overprescribed because more use=more money. Again not a great example. Vaccine development has historically been funded and promoted by government as a cost-effective way of maintaining a workforce, not exactly a shining endorsement of profit motive. I'm genuinely having a hard time believing you're dumb enough to make these arguments in good faith and kinda done here
Classic move—attacking me because your argument ran out of steam.
Your philistine viewpoint is still under researched and, frankly, unknowledgeable.
Your points don't make sense. Let's dig into bulbs, antibiotics and Vaccines from a $ perspective.
Filament light bulbs are gone because someone else sold a more efficient bulb and changed the market...and made boat load of cash and literally made filament bulbs extinct. $
Penicillin and later antibiotics cured deadly infections that once required long hospital stays. These cures transformed modern medicine and became some of the most profitable drugs ever sold.$
Lastly my Vaccines example, Smallpox required endless isolation facilities and caretaking. The vaccine eliminated an entire global disease. It was also massively funded, widely purchased, and financially successful for its creators.$
I really hope you're at least getting paid to post this badly my dude
"He who lives upon hope will die fasting." Benjamin franklin