Green Energy Boom/Bubble

[kmo]

Following up on yesterday's poll:

link: http://www.scott-edwards.com/2007/04/30/new-investment-bubble-forms-in-green-ventures/

excerpt:There were several side effects from the first dot com crash that shaped the way the internet

Comments

[subdermal]

I hope it pans out that green technologies become competitive in the marketplace without their investors going bankrupt.

No sympathy for capitalists

[kmo]

I doubt any of the venture capitalists who have had to turn away investors with more dollars than ideas about what to do with them will have to take up manual labor or even start flying coach when their investments tank. They'll still enjoy a measure of privilege and luxury unknown to the overwhelming majority of humanity.

Just as in the dot com bust, fabulous sums of sequestered capital will enter the economy and be transformed into jobs and technological innovation. I will lose no sleep nor shed any tears over the losses of venture capitalists.

What I hope is that we can avoid a repeat of the housing bubble where regular people got swept up in the money-for-nothing bubble mentality and went into enormous debt in an effort to join the free money bonanza and ended up saddled with debt they could never pay off

Re: No sympathy for capitalists

[subdermal]

Then I think you and I have basic disagreements that will not be sortable in any reasonable amount of time. I will leave you with just two thoughts:

I am a working schmoe who is investing in green tech. I have bills and kids to feed and I fly coach, when I fly at all.

If it weren't for capitalists, both of the wealthy and the working kinds (as well of course of the wealthy, working kind), you would have neither green technologies to look forward to nor a computer on which to type your opinion thereof.

expected utility

[kmo]

I am a working schmoe who is investing in green tech. I have bills and kids to feed and I fly coach, when I fly at all.

Then all ideology aside, you might want to re-think your goals and intentions as they relate to your personal investments in green tech.

[Edit] Actually, you "goals and intentions" are probably correct. I won't presume to offer financial advice, as I'm broke as a bum, and I certainly wouldn't take financial advice from someone who had less money than I do. I'll just state that I think that individuals who trade the hours of their lives for just enough money to get through the month should avoid involvement in bubbles of speculation and that the rush to invest in green technology and energy seems to have some of the hallmarks of a bubble.

[tragemorph]

I was just about to say something to this effect... that the dot-com bust was horrible for people who lost their jobs or the value in their stock portfolios, but in terms of infrastructure, it was quite a boon.

Similarly, assuming this "green bubble" is true, it's bad news for investors in those companies, but it doesn't mean that the technologies themselves aren't quite viable in the long term- any more than the dot-com bust meant that the whole "Internet" thing was just a flash in the pan.