It took a huge war in Europe (1914), a pandemic (1918), the great depression (1929), and a technological revolution (cars, telegraph, mass production) to invert politics and give the US a minimum wage... It will probably take something like a war in Europe (2022), pandemic (2020), market crash (2021), and technological revolution (EVs, AI, Automation) to do the same again... I'm sure that will never happen again!

You're painting with a broad brush, which got sone others' backs up, but anyway it's an interesting conversation starter.

There are two things to bear in mind which will help form an opinion. First, it is in the interests of industry to have customers, from Henry Ford paying a minimum salary (thus diving up salaries to a level where he had more customers) to the modern versions Bezos and Musk who do the same source despite their rivalry. This seems at first like it should be a shared goal between unions fighting for higher salaries, and minimum wage proponents, but here is where we get into politics.

Since the turn of the century there have emerged two parties in most Western countries, one representing industry, and the other the labour unions (side note, this is in contrast to the preceding political landscape which was drawn more along the lines of city vs country, the British Tories and both US parties seemingly "inverted" at this time as the world changed around them). It is worth noting that these political parties are usually completely funded by their respective bases.

The industrialists support a minimum wage commensurate with their target customers, but want it to be enforced on their competitors even to the detriment of their competition. Imagine Ford trying to sell more Model Ts, your town of 1000 workers, which has nobody earning his $5 minimum to afford it (only the bosses) if he pushes for a minimum wage some businesses will fail under this burden, others will thrive, so he sells 500 cars to wealthy workers and creates 500 unemployed workers, great success, until they vote for unions.

The unions push for higher salaries also, but their goal is also maximum employment, they calculate the maximum each business can sustain and negotiate for this, maybe, in the example above, only 100 cars are sold, but employment is maintained.

In this 1912 example a UBI results in something in-between, taxing companies, however not pushing them out of business, and leaving wages low but supplemented, ideally results in the maximum number of cars sold, by limiting both wealth (with low wages) and poverty (with UBI).

If you add a load of technology redundancy to this situation the maths becomes even more extreme, requiring a UBI for the major companies (the ones with the technology) to survive.

How strange that modern industrialists would want something so socialist, but it must be Universal to work, they can only go so far on their own, for this they need a political party to do their work. For the industrialists this is most likely the GOP, so socialist! It's almost as if political parties have never "inverted" based on disruptive technology... Oh wait!

This is my hypothesis: Amazon, Tesla, Apple maybe even Ford (the company) need a UBI to survive the technological revolution we're in, the unions must resists this technology, and therefore resist the UBI. Ironic that the "socialist" parties of the left must resist literal socialism. The GOP will rebrand itself as a champion of the free market's success story, an "innovation dividend" or whatever they call it, paid for by those that pioneer technology, and punish those that don't (especially unionised businesses). Sold to the traditional voters as a way to have smaller government and empowering individuals to choose how they spend their own taxes. Looking at demographics and reading Strauss - Howe's Generational Model, the boomers and gen X are already mostly republican, so the battleground must be fought over the millennials, so I think they need a charismatic "leader" - a front-person to bring in the millennial vote by targeting them directly. To do this they will also need the press (Twitter, Washington post). The wheels are already in motion, maybe not this election cycle, but not much longer after that.

In answer to your question, from my perspective it is a private enterprise, they just need to go through some minor inconveniences like elections to make it happen.

Please don't manipulate what I say for your gain.

OK, I'm interested in making this calculation, I'm happy to have my assumptions challenged.

As per my link, the efficiency of BEVs from source to wheel is 76%, the current same for hydrogen is 30%. This technology will likely make this worse for H2 in exchange for better practical applications, range, weight, etc.

If you want to compare a hypothetical H2 car against a real world BEV lets compare a Tesla Model Y against the best case H2.

Assumptions:

12 year vehicle lifetime

14 000 miles per year

0.0456 $ per mile (typical home charging)

0.1155 $ per mile (assuming the above relationship, this accounts for inflation in the comparison)

These numbers give us the cost of energy difference at $11 743 in favour of the BEV. Given that a replacement MY batters is $15 000 you are correct that the H2 is better economy than the BEV, however the BEV exists now, with a charging infrastructure, but the H2 vehicle does not. Also whilst H2 costs aren't likely to change much with economy of scale, this definitely isn't true of battery technology.

Basically my previous points stand, H2 is going to be important for some uses, but there is a danger that stories about it give the illusion that we don't need to stop using ICE now and switch to BEVs for personal vehicles for both environmental and economic reasons.

One can be pro BEV and pro H2 at the same time.

Unless cryogenically liquifying hydrogen has a negative energy cost, yes. The physics doesn't make sense.

For sure costs will decline for both, but the physics of the supply chain will always give a cost benefit to batteries where they are practical. And we should not be waiting for anything as TCO of BEVs is already on par to ICE.

It's that which makes me critical of all "hydrogen cars" articles, I've yet to read one without a connection to the oil or ICE industry.

As I said, "more importantly costs are falling under Wright's Law" meaning energy density isn't much of a concern, but even if you believe it to be important it is still improving in BEVs.

The article is exclusively about energy density and doesn't mention the financial or energy costs of the cryogenics, energy density is important for practicality but cost is what will drive adoption.

Lighter and/or better range BEVs at better prices are inevitable: hydrogen lost this competition. My criticism is against the article's narrative that hydrogen is "just around the corner" for personal cars and road haulage, it cannot compete on price based on the physics involved.

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy that the technology is improving, hydrogen will likely have it's place in ocean shipping because of technology like this increasing energy density to practical levels. I'm not against hydrogen, I'm against hydrogen (stories) being used against BEVs by oil and ICE companies.

In the case of cars and road haulage it's not necessary as current energy density of batteries is already practically sufficient. The total system energy efficiency of batteries is significantly better they hydrogen can ever be, and higher compression actually makes this worse source

This technology does have practical applications for ocean shipping, and possibly flights down the line (as the article points out) but often the focus is on personal vehicles as the article mainly focuses on. And this is my main criticism: most of the narrative around hydrogen is used to support the argument that "we should keep using petroleum for now as hydrogen is just around the corner" whilst ignoring the fact that BEV is already better than gas from a total cost of ownership perspective.

I can't claim that this article is connected with the oil industry or traditional auto, but as BMW have their majority of their profits from ICE and the publishing house is based in Detroit I can't help but question the intention of the publicity, independent of the value of the technology.

Basically, all research like this is valuable, but the narrative is often used against BEVs which I am suspicious and critical of.

That's kind of the missed point when comparisons are made, batteries are advancing according to their own (lower) version of Moore's law, energy density has tripled over the last decade. And more importantly the prices are obliging Wright's Law, coming down in relation to production volume. The physical limits of known technology are still 3x away.

Hydrogen is limited by physics already, with only small improvements in efficiency available.

If you have a sous vide it's set and forget. "Black garlic" is the name, the cooking method is just called ageing, as it is basically accelerated ageing, pasteurization kinda covers this too.

The minimum for practical purposes is 60c or 140f, it will take 3 months to "cook" garlic at this temperature, but the result is pure black garlic, not burnt at all, but perfectly sticky sweet.

Respectfully as you're obviously big on the physics, you're wrong about the maillard reaction. Similar to pasteurization this can occur at lower temperatures over longer time, sous vide black garlic is a good example of this.

It was a joke, apparently not obvious enough.

I'll answer my own question, 9 bar or only 9m of water.

How many atmospheres of pressure do you live under such that 175° isn't boiling!

William Osman made toast with lasers

Kettle: you're thinking too small, you want boiling water on tap