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Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction

arstechnica.com

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Re: Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction

#211

Post by aboardRat4 »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #148
igorramazanov wrote: post #136

If a country changes course every four years, how can the success of a long-term project be ensured? And what of its negotiating credibility? How can the other side trust that an agreement will hold in the future? This is not a critique, but a genuine curiosity, because there's an obvious drawback with a system with opposing world views. Unless, of course, something still unites them in the first place, with acceptab…

I'm not sure I follow the questions. The success of a long-term project can be ensured through the procedures described in the source article: you set up a durable judicial system, and invest them with the power to require that the country uphold its end of the bargain, no matter how much its current political leaders might want to change course.

>success of a long-term project can be ensured through the procedures described in the source article: you set up a durable judicial system, and invest them with the power to require that the country uphold its end of the bargain, no matter how much its current political leaders might want to change course.

That's an abuse of the judicial system. Politicians are elected exactly because the voters perceive a need to change the execution of government's functions.

The thing is, you cannot beat human moral qualities with formalist means. People who come to power by raising hatred towards their political opponents will always find a way to subvert policies even if not cancel them.

Long-term policies should be established through consensus among all parties, not though legalistic bureaucracy.

Re: Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction

#212

Post by [deleted] »

bruce511 wrote: post #189
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The President's party loses seats in the midterms" is a long-term trend and it seems pretty likely to hold this time. The real question is, once the Democrats are back in control of at least one house of Congress, are they going to be sane or are they going to spend two years making such fools of themselves that we end up with another Republican President in 2028?

Alas you'll need to define "sane" first. That might be harder than expected. Equally unfortunate is the need for 60 senate votes to actually have a meaningful say over what the president does. And in truth no part has had "control" of congress to this level for a while. When one (or indeed both) sides are politically incapable of being bipartisan (witness the outcomes for those voting against party lines, on both sid…

[deleted]

Re: Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction

#213

Post by bradchris »

Octoth0rpe wrote: post #153
igorramazanov wrote: post #136

If a country changes course every four years, how can the success of a long-term project be ensured? And what of its negotiating credibility? How can the other side trust that an agreement will hold in the future? This is not a critique, but a genuine curiosity, because there's an obvious drawback with a system with opposing world views. Unless, of course, something still unites them in the first place, with acceptab…

> how can the success of a long-term project be ensured? Well, for one by ensuring that 'long-term' means it starts at the start of a term and ends before the end of that term. At most that only rules out nuclear, at least wrt long term energy projects. And it's not like recent dem administrations were unfriendly towards nuclear. Vogtle 3/4 were approved early in Obama's term, and finished under Biden's.

4 years gets you, historically, an 8-plex built in San Francisco. If you’re lucky. The ship is slowly turning, but that’s what institutional investors would call a short-term win in the most economically productive state in the USA.

I’m a supporter of it regardless of the cost, but for a “long term” project look at the California HSR, which was directly approved by voters 19 years ago and we’re still debating how to fund the majority of it, let alone actually build what we voted to construct and open in its entirety within 10 years.

Re: Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction

#214

Post by nebula8804 »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #167
bmitc wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sad truth is that it's millions of people. These people just want to see the world burn due to nothing but narcissism and hate of the imaginary "other side".

There are not in fact millions of people who want to burn the world just to spite others. If you truly believe that then you have really failed to understand people around you, and should try to better empathize. As a rule, people do what they do because they believe it to be the right thing. They might be misguided in that belief, of course, but the idea of millions of people deciding on a cartoonishly evil course o…

I have an interesting perspective because my town is currently being sued by the state for years of secret discrimination by police and authority(my neighbors obviously voted strongly MAGA) so its an interesting hard right perspective.

After sitting and observing my local town's MAGA base for the better part of two years straight(by attending town meetings and joining all their facebook groups) it is clear that there is no real long term plan. They just love to get a rile out of others and deeply believe that Trump is doing great and that any problem is caused by someone else.

Its depressing trying to steelman that behavior because you realize that the country you grew up in had these people there. Growing up in the same town, everyone I interacted with was serious about excellence. My parents, my neighbors, my teachers and my classmates. There was this minimum standard where everyone from the businessman to the garbageman may have had different views on life but everyone still did their best every single day and still had this mentality of growth.

Its gone now. The cracks started to form after 9/11 when the quiet racists came out but it really seems like one grievance after another built up until Trump came along and caused all these people to put all their chips on supporting him do or die. Man going back to 2016 if Hillary had won, I wonder if the temperature would have come down. Part of the current hubris that they have is the same thing I saw under Bush(many Trump people are former all in on Bush supporters). They think they can do no wrong but eventually reality set the Bush people straight because when the economy crashed and people started to feel real pain, all those people went back into their caves for a while. I think the only thing that will stop MAGA is that the coming crash has to really really hurt. Thats when the jokes stop and they become serious again. It has to be absolutely obvious that Trump caused it which means that it has to be severe.

I often hope that maybe if Trump just peacefully passes away that it will finally fizzle out. Maybe thats a better outcome?

Re: Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction

#215

Post by AnthonyMouse »

bruce511 wrote: post #189
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The President's party loses seats in the midterms" is a long-term trend and it seems pretty likely to hold this time. The real question is, once the Democrats are back in control of at least one house of Congress, are they going to be sane or are they going to spend two years making such fools of themselves that we end up with another Republican President in 2028?

Alas you'll need to define "sane" first. That might be harder than expected. Equally unfortunate is the need for 60 senate votes to actually have a meaningful say over what the president does. And in truth no part has had "control" of congress to this level for a while. When one (or indeed both) sides are politically incapable of being bipartisan (witness the outcomes for those voting against party lines, on both sid…

It takes 40 votes to prevent the other party from putting something in a bill that you're willing to do a government shutdown to prevent. That's probably a good thing. Consider what would be happening right now, when the Republicans have >50 but not >60, if that meant they could actually do whatever they want.

And the difference between 49 and 51 is still pretty damn important because "majority" has a lot of procedural consequences that are not irrelevant.

Re: Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction

#216

Post by ZeroGravitas »

verdverm wrote: post #98
kabdib wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> incompetency "corruption"

spite of one man child

Yep just one man opposing cheap home grown energy: Trump.

And Putin. Two men, Trump, Putin and Farage.

Three men, Trump, Putin, Farage, and every far-right party in europe.

Among the people who are clearly involved in this conspiracy to deprive humanity of cheaper energy are...

Re: Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction

#217

Post by olerich »

pwarner wrote: post #146
igorramazanov wrote: post #136

If a country changes course every four years, how can the success of a long-term project be ensured? And what of its negotiating credibility? How can the other side trust that an agreement will hold in the future? This is not a critique, but a genuine curiosity, because there's an obvious drawback with a system with opposing world views. Unless, of course, something still unites them in the first place, with acceptab…

I'm not advocating their system, but here's one pro for China obviously.

Quite the opposite, a working, independent justice system guarantees rule of law and long term stability.

Re: Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction

#218

Post by throwaway2037 »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #173
shimman wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this is the core of a particular brand of politics: neoliberal politics. Where the financialization of everything is what's most important. There was a time, still in lived memory, where the US government was able to complete many types of projects and it also coincided with the period of lowest economic inequality (the great compression), the expansion of civil rights, and had the highest taxes against the elite…

Tax rates are not the same as effective taxes paid, and US taxes as a percent of GDP are at an all time high. This is besides the fact that gdp is many times higher, growing geometrically. It is an interesting question of what changed in terms of ability to execute, but lack of funding isn't the answer. I suspect it is a combination of scope creep, application to intractable problems, and baumols cost disease at work…

    > US taxes as a percent of GDP are at an all time high
I found this from the Federal Reserve: "Federal Receipts as Percent of Gross Domestic Product"

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S

It looks pretty steady around 17%. It was as high as 20% in the late 1990s. However, this does not include state and local taxes. I could not find a source for it. What is your source of information?

Re: Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction

#219

Post by monting »

aboardRat4 wrote: post #204
monting wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They "eliminated" extreme poverty caused by communist control in the first place, by going to a capitalist system. There were tons of economic low-hanging fruits by building out large infrastructure projects, which corruption happily siphoned off of. The ROI of these infra projects have been gone for a while, yet they continued. Also it's been stealing intellectual property, trade dumping, exporting deflation. Soakin…

Emm... and what prevents the USA from doing all the same things?

China benefited greatly from the US-led globalism order that's been going on since WWII.

Another way of saying it is China took the most advantage. And it has gone way overboard in taking advantage. So the backlash is expected and necessary.

Part of fixing things involve doing things that seem like it's destroying the order that the US created itself.

Re: Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction

#220

Post by graemep »

chongli wrote: post #160
pwarner wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not advocating their system, but here's one pro for China obviously.

China doesn't have flip-flopping like this with its attendant massive waste. Instead it has endemic corruption which siphons off funds all over the place, perhaps with the exception of the big projects that command the full attention of central leadership.

One of the reasons why "democracy is the worst system of government, except for all the others".
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