Unviable Technology

We live in a fascinating time where unviable technology is being sold for ideological reasons. Electric cars are not fit for purpose, as Hoovie demonstrates in this short video. Not only are they not fit for purpose they have other problems. They do not help the environment in anyway. They are also very expensive. For the price of a comfortable electric car, you can buy an old V8 and pay for fuel for years, and have money left over. 

Your electric car might be reasonably cheap to charge now, but once demand on electricity increases, and more infrastructure is built to service this demand, prices will go up. In fact, they already are: "The cost of charging an electric car using public charge points on a pay-as-you-go basis has risen by 42% in just four months, according to the RAC."

But for ideological reasons companies are getting rewarded by government to sell these energy inefficient vehicles, that in many cases cannot even fulfil their design purpose. In a sane society people would not go near such products. But we do not live in a sane society. We live in an increasingly ideological self-harming society. 

You see this throughout history, societies technologically or socially hamstringing themselves for religious/ideological reasons. Some of them realize their mistakes and survive, some disappear from the face of the earth. 

The Greenland Norse lived in a cold climate where food was hard to grow. They had abundant fish, but they refused to eat it. We don't know why. We just know that the Greenland Norse saw fish as taboo. In the face of starvation they stuck to this taboo, right up until their entire society just disappeared. Some societies don't come back from stupid, because the driving views of much of its culture is that even if a certain taboo hurts them, it is better to do it, then break their taboos. There are of course wise taboos, which strengthen a society, I am not challenging those. Some things should be avoided. But there are also foolish ones, like the apparent Greenland Norse taboo of not eating fish.  

Fossil fuels are the engine of civilisation, there is no current viable replacement. None. Nada. Zip. But the whole trajectory of our society is to reject them anyway. Which is crazy. Some western societies will wake up from this stupor. Some will go the way of the Greenland Norse.