Solar will be really be dirt cheap when the government and the utilities aren't between buyer and seller parasitically feeding off every transaction. Open competition in a free market is what brings costs down.
You have some misconceptions about the function of government in regulating utilities. Utilities have a natural monopoly. The government regulates the prices charged to prevent excessive profits at the cost of the rate payer.
The other way the government "interferes" in a "free market" is to prevent collusion between "competitors", ie, price fixing. Pure capitalism without government intervention has never worked. If it did, you could name a society that was the Shangri-law of capitalism excellence. But it doesn't exist and never has. In the same way you can honestly say "pure communism doesn't work", you can say "pure capitalism doesn't work". All successful economic systems in human history have been a harmonious blend of socialism and capitalism. The current pinnacle of economic systems is the blend of capitalism and socialism as found in countries like the US, Iceland, Sweden, Norway, Australia, France, England, Germany, New Zealand and Switzerland to name a few.
Just look at the rapid innovation of LED bulbs. Without any third parties parasitically leeching off of the sales, amazing new products are constantly coming to market at lower and lower costs in open competition for our purchasing dollars.
This is funny coming from a conservative. Who do you think funded the R&D that led to the rapid development of the LED as an efficient lighting method?
A Russian inventor working for the Government invented the first LED in 1927. His research was openly distributed in Soviet, German and British scientific journals of the day. However, no practical use was made of the discovery for several decades.
The building blocks of modern LED's are many and varied but include Gallium Arsenide, Gallium Arsenide Phosphide, Silicon Carbide and Gallium Indium Nitride and others, often mixed together in various ratios. The US Department of defense funded the exploration of these materials and their properties many decades before the current LED boom and before there was significant commercial interest.
Back in 1999, the US Department of Energy realized the great benefits that would result from more efficient lighting, from reduced pollution, less demands on national energy infrastructure, less foreign oil dependence, lowered cooling expense in federal buildings, etc. In December of 2000, the US Dept. of Energy began funding research into SSL (solid state lighting). Also known as LED lighting. In 2000 there were no practical LED lights for the residential/office markets. Since that time, US Government funded research has directly resulted in many discoveries that have lowered production costs, improved efficiencies and fostered the rapid spread of LED lighting. In just 17 years this government funded research has resulted in 274 Solid State Lighting patent applications with 117 of them already granted. Companies participating in this government funded research include Cree, Phillips Lighting North America, GE Lighting Solutions, Osram Sylvania, Universal Display Corp., etc. And of course the federal government made available all the non-classified LED technology developed directly by the federal government over the previous 4 decades during research for programs like Star Wars Missile Defense, all of the moon landing and space programs and NASA research, and the list goes on and on.
And you expect me to believe the rapid innovation that has led to cheap and efficient LED lighting is the result of private industry without government intervention? That's far out, man! Where do you come up with this? We would literally be in the LED dark ages with direct DOD research, DOE funding of research and, of course, the Courts and Patent Offices that provide incentive to commercialize the technology. We wouldn't even have an LED lighting boom without the government taking an active role! Is this the behavior you refer to as "leeching off"? The question is, who is "leeching off" who? You have cheap efficient LED's
because of the government, not in
spite of the government.
This is but one example of how our government was instrumental in the LED boom:
https://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2017/01/f34/patents_factsheet_jan2017.pdf
And for an example of exactly the opposite you have healthcare, where government and insurance companies are between buyer and seller.
No. The Insurance companies are between the buyers and sellers of health care services.
The Government is between the buyers and sellers of insurance. And that's a good thing because before that, they would cancel you if you got too sick! Health insurance is meaningless if they only cover the people who don't need much of it.
Someone has to pay the skyrocketing costs of feeding the cancerous growth of those bureaucracies. Realize that neither government nor insurance actually produce any healthcare products or render any healthcare services. Their purpose for existence is solely as transfer agents which take money away from one person and give it to another while skimming their take off the top for "expenses".
That's true and it's also the reason why the best and most affordable healthcare comes from countries that have single payer healthcare, like France, Canada, etc. The healthcare consumer needs to be protected from companies whose main goal is to collect as much money as they can while paying as few claims as possible. IMO, we need to do away with them like other advanced nations already have. Because, in other developed nations, there are less people in the healthcare food chain collecting your money without contributing to better health.
I think if you would stop listening to the anti-government shills funded by billionaires like the Koch's you would have a more balanced and useful appreciation of how the world actually works. There has never been a perfect government but it's a hell of a lot better than the alternative. Simply neutering the government like the billionaires would like to see will make your life (and millions of others) worse while giving the Koch's and others like them free rein to do as they please. That is diametrically opposed to American principles we hold dear. I'm afraid to say, you've been brainwashed.
My current price is $1.66/gallon, as it is in most of the mid-Atlantic region.
That Locust is very pretty. I have not cut any in a long time but if I run into a large one, I will definitely slab it!!
Sorry was not finished before post. This is a cost comparison with prices in Long Island NY. After you put the current prices you need to adjust for efficiency of your stove they use a 63% efficiency and most stoves today are much higher then that, one is with 75% efficiency the other is my stove with 81% efficiency and wood is much more cost efficient. The only work is stacking 4 cords is about 6 hours.
