Hypothetical: A monopolized commonity solving world energy..

Nephtys · Post by **Nephtys** » 2007-04-29 09:34pm

Somewhere in far off RAR Land...

People constantly worry about peak oil, the dwindling of fossil fuels and our other portable sources of electricity. For national scale generation, this is a lesser concern given the availability of other sources, even though fossil fuels remain the leading generator of power.

So here's the situation, as completely stolen from Heinlein's novel 'Friday'. A small company/brilliant inventor produces a battery that can store massive quantities of power, be scaled to any size and is easy to both transport and develop engines to use it. It is very cheaply assembled and prohibitively expensive to reverse-engineer by act of magic. So it'd be produced by a single company, in a complete monopoly at 'fair-ish' prices.

Since the real issue with power for many common applications is how to store and move it. This doohickey allows a car with a shoe-box sized battery to run for tens of thousands of miles on a relatively cheap charge, or gives a plane the ability to fly intercontinentally on this one battery that renders fossil fuels effectively obsolete as portable sources of power. We'd still be generating electricity from nuclear/coal/oil/hydro/etc sources, but most likely be switching energy production towards those with more ample stockpiles (such as nuclear).

What are the effects? Both in terms of our reliance on a single entity for cheap power, and other consequences? What if it happens now, or perhaps decades later after peak oil during a global recession?

Lancer · Post by **Lancer** » 2007-04-29 11:01pm

What country is the company/brilliant inventor based in? That makes a world of difference in determining the outcome.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2007-04-29 11:02pm

Patent protection only lasts for 17 years, so there is obviously no harmful effect "decades" down the road. And if the patent owner is a complete prick about it, someone will just make a minor modification to the patent and then claim it as a new patent.

Of course, if it's just a trade secret instead of a patent, then it would only be exclusive as long as the company can maintain perfect security, which is a stupidly laughable idea for something so important.

ThatGuyFromThatPlace · Post by **ThatGuyFromThatPlace** » 2007-04-30 01:50am

and besides, as long as we're ignoring the circumstances of the hypothetical question, such a device would be prohibitively expensive to manufacture, and would take too long to charge up.

and prohibitively expensive to reverse-engineer by act of magic

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2007-04-30 02:02am

ThatGuyFromThatPlace wrote:and besides, as long as we're ignoring the circumstances of the hypothetical question, such a device would be prohibitively expensive to manufacture, and would take too long to charge up.
and prohibitively expensive to reverse-engineer by act of magic

Oh wow, you really nailed me there, smart guy! It's not as if reverse-engineering and industrial espionage are, like, two totally different concepts or anything

Keevan_Colton · Post by **Keevan_Colton** » 2007-04-30 12:10pm

Wherever they are, if they try to dick about they're likely to be taken over for the national interest.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2007-04-30 12:22pm

I'd sure hate to crash a car with one of these things in. If it follows the laws of physics still, that's an awful lot of energy that's going to be released somehow.

It does all hinge on our energy sources changing soon though. Great as a storage medium this dense would be, we've long since trailed behind everything else with battery capacity, I don't think it'd change much given it's the sources that require attention, not so much the storage thereof.

Lord Zentei · Post by **Lord Zentei** » 2007-04-30 12:40pm

Darth Wong wrote:Patent protection only lasts for 17 years, so there is obviously no harmful effect "decades" down the road.

It's really only 17 years? I thought it was at least a generation.

Admiral Valdemar wrote:I'd sure hate to crash a car with one of these things in. If it follows the laws of physics still, that's an awful lot of energy that's going to be released somehow.

Depends on the realease mechanism, of course: for instance nuclear fuel only releases its energy under set conditions. Not that this is would be a nuklear generator, but still.

Speaking of nukes; there's the future energy source.

Starglider · Post by **Starglider** » 2007-04-30 12:54pm

Lord Zentei wrote:It's really only 17 years? I thought it was at least a generation.

17 years is an inter-generation gap. If you mean 'human lifespan' you were probably thinking of copyright.

Lord Zentei · Post by **Lord Zentei** » 2007-04-30 01:03pm

Starglider wrote:
Lord Zentei wrote:It's really only 17 years? I thought it was at least a generation.
17 years is an inter-generation gap. If you mean 'human lifespan' you were probably thinking of copyright.

No, I was thinking of 20-25 years, actually.

Keevan_Colton · Post by **Keevan_Colton** » 2007-04-30 03:48pm

Starglider wrote:
Lord Zentei wrote:It's really only 17 years? I thought it was at least a generation.
17 years is an inter-generation gap. If you mean 'human lifespan' you were probably thinking of copyright.

Lifetime + 80 Years in most places now...and thanks to that whacky legal fiction of corporations as people there is the little issue that corporations dont die...they just keep on applying for extensions.

Post by **Beowulf** » 2007-04-30 04:57pm

Keevan_Colton wrote:
Starglider wrote:
Lord Zentei wrote:It's really only 17 years? I thought it was at least a generation.
17 years is an inter-generation gap. If you mean 'human lifespan' you were probably thinking of copyright.
Lifetime + 80 Years in most places now...and thanks to that whacky legal fiction of corporations as people there is the little issue that corporations dont die...they just keep on applying for extensions.

I think it's the content creator's lifetime + 80 years. The problem isn't that corporations don't die, it's that the corporations continually lobby to extend the copyrights, so they never actually expire.

Starglider · Post by **Starglider** » 2007-04-30 07:48pm

Beowulf wrote:I think it's the content creator's lifetime + 80 years. The problem isn't that corporations don't die, it's that the corporations continually lobby to extend the copyrights, so they never actually expire.

Corporate copyrights last for 95 years in the US at present - it was 75 years until the 'Mickey Mouse' act in 1998, roughly a human lifetime. For individual copyrights it is now remainder of author's lifetime plus 70 years - again, it was author's lifetime plus 50 years until the 1998 legislation. Other countries vary, but the US seem to be seen as the template these days (and is trying to push other countries to mimic its laws via TRIPS and successors).

The original term of US copyrights was 14 years, plus an optional extra 14 years if the author was still alive to claim. If that was still the case I would have much less of a problem with modern copyright enforcement methods.

Apologies for the topic drift, but it doesn't look like there's much more to be said on the original topic.