Posted by Scott Ellis (216.87.95.64) on December 31, 2001 at 20:17:24:
In Reply to: Re: Two Questions... posted by Christopher on December 26, 2001 at 13:13:40:
Christopher, thanks for your response.
OK, "eradicate poverty" may be overstating it. But I do believe that the discovery would raise everyone's standard of living a great deal. It is true that energy is relatively cheap now, but my heating bill last month was about $150. Lots of people could not afford that.
Energy, I believe, is at the very bottom of the economic food chain. Thus if it were (basically) free, it would completely alter the economic landscape for everyone. (I say "basically free," becasue there would always be an upfront cost and maintainance costs for a Bessler wheel. But as it ran, the real cost of the energy it produced would approch zero.) In a capitalist society, there will always be an uneven distribution of wealth, so some part of the populace will always be "poor." But the conditions that define "poor" vary widely. The poorest people in the US have a standard of much living higher than, say, the poorest people of Nigeria. So I think that while the Bessler Wheel might not eradicate poverty, it would redifine the whole scale, so that poor people the world over would be much better off than they are today.
As for a Bessler Wheel's usefulness, you are right that it would probably not be able to power a car directly. Bessler said that the power was directly proportional to the diameter of the wheel, and even his largest wheels (~12') could only do relatively light work. I think Bessler Wheels would be used almost exclusively for generating electricity, and possible some other specialized applications like pumping water, for instance.
But by making electricity production almost completely free, and totally pollution free, I think it would quickly usher in the age of the electric car.
The reasons why Bessler took his secret to the grave are many and varied. I don't know exactly how it happened, I'm not sure anyone does. One thing is sure, Bessler was adamant that he was not going to be robbed of his secret. This is why he was always destroying his wheels. Somehow, a combination of
- Bessler's personality,
- the state of patent protection laws of the day,
- the general shift in popular thinking away from the possibility of PM,
all combined to bring about the bizarre chain of events surrounding Bessler's life.
: Would this make the world lazier than they are already
: getting, and if so would the benefit be worth the penalty?
I think the whole point of technology is to make people's lives easier. The lazier people can be, the better, because "the people" includes me!
: There are those would would have you believe the gov't and
: it's agencies would send covert units to your house in black
: helicopters to remove all traces of you and your family...
I don't tend to agree with the conspiracy theories surrounding PM. But who knows...
: I learned in a business law class once, taught by a
: copyright/patent lawyer, that in legal patent disputes the
: company with the mo