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Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction

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

#261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, and whilst getting themselves out of poverty they built 50,000km of high speed rail.

By racking up debt of epic proportions, with no return on investment in sight. All the while going into a demographic death spiral. Partly cause by the draconian 1-child policy, which attempted to fix the pronatalist policies of Mao.

Nothing is really stopping other countries from doing the same, to be honest. People are just scared to give legitimacy to what China has done for their citizens in a very short amount of time, because that would be against their own beliefs and morals.

I'm not saying China is the best and whatever, just saying they've proven every "China is about to fall" headline that has been circulating around for the past 15 years. Maybe we should learn some things from them.

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

#262
post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Its depressing trying to steelman that behavior because you realize that the country you grew up in had these people there. Maybe we should stop steelman them all the time. That is how they got enabled by centrists and pundits and moderates so much, they became the rulers. Steelmanning obvious bad faith actors is just another fallacy. Steelmanning consists of ignoring disturbing claims conservative right says, not…

The other method of challenging them and trying to prove your point does not work either. There is no solution it seems. They need to suffer the consequences of their decisions on their own. Thats why I was so depressed. I have an engineering mindset of finding out how to improve things and there seems like there is no solution to this problem that involves remaining with this group as part of your society because it…

Steelmanning is not challenging them at all. It is whitewashing them, making softer argument so that they are more palatable and frequently undistinguishable from support.

The only person challenged by such steelmanning is opposition to MAGA. They now have two opponents. They are made look as if they were exaggerating or were crazy when they accurately report to what MAGA does or says. They now have an additional, basically unintentional bad faith, rationalization to deal with against them.

> there is no solution to this problem that involves remaining with this group as part of your society because it takes two to tango (ie. both sides need to put in genuine effort at growth).

The problem is that what happens is that the opposition to MAGA is constantly asked to do growth, to steelman, to concede and move more to the right to accommodate MAGA. It is highly asymmetric and provably does not work.

> I have an engineering mindset of finding out how to improve things

I think that making it clear what MAGA wants says and supports to moderates and center is way better strategy then basically helping them.

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

#263

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…

> If a country changes course every four years, how can the success of a long-term project be ensured?

Sadly this is an inherent weakness of the US constitution. It's old and it was written at a time where we didn't have enough experience with democracies.

In a modern parliamentary democracy you vote parties which form coalitions and settle on one of the party leaders (in general the one with most votes) as prime minister.

This means that:

- other parties are still involved in the legislative process. In a presidential republic with the president holding executive power, other parties are not represented at all. Trump doesn't need approval on his actions neither by opposition nor his own party. In a parliament, many members will support continuity on many topics rather than change if it doesn't make sense. They still vote based on their conscience, not just on their affiliation.

- the executive depends on its effectiveness and for staying in power on the support of its parliament members. If some members of Giorgia Meloni's coalition don't like the direction she's taking they are not gonna vote her proposals and ultimately she may need to resign if she gets a vote of no confidence. Removing a president in countries like US is extremely difficult in comparison, and the executive has no checks, neither from opposition nor its own party to go in whatever direction a single individual decides to go.

Seriously, what Belarus, Turkey, Hungary, Russia, etc, all have in common? They are presidential republics. Single individuals hold too much power and have little checks from their own party members, let alone a parliament. It's no coincidence that the last parliamentary democracy to turn into authoritarian state has been Sri Lanka over 50 years ago: it's difficult for individuals to grab power, as there is a long checklist of things that need to happen. In a presidential one?

It's very simple: a single individual can claim popular mandate, building a personality cult is simple (you don't vote parties, you vote individuals), a single individual holds executive power and is very hard to remove.

Presidential republics are more effective than slow parliamentary ones, but we should ask ourselves if our focus in 2020s, in advanced economies where things are objectively fine, isn't slow refinement instead of sharp turns.

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

#264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no regime change coming when those in power run the elections, have already cheated in the past, and know that they are now untouchable.

It is not too useful to make bold unsupported claims that the current administration has the power to subvert elections. That just lowers us to their level, and the last thing we need is for a further erosion in confidence in our democratic system. The states run elections, and no matter what Trump says to get people to keep paying attention to him, they don't jump when the president tells them to. The feds have mone…

Elon Musk just announced spending 300 million to make it harder to vote.

And it didn't even make the headline of the article I read it in.

And he's being spreading lies about elections for years. Again, not regularly mentioned even in critical articles about him, because it's so normalized.

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

#265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yet somehow they've managed to eliminate extreme poverty and challenge the U.S. in GDP. Sounds like cope to me. They couldn't do that with extreme corruption like we tolerate in U.S. allies.

China is literally going through an "anticorruption" purge of the PLA right now. Zhang Youxia et al. The corruption in China has a very different shape than in the US.

(not sure what you mean by "corruption we tolerate in US allies"?)

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

#266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That could be a problem in itself. It certainly is here in the UK. If you have two parties that have much the same policies you do not get necessary change and voting becomes meaningless.

The thing is that wether the ruling party is right or left there are limits to what they can do based on the real world we live in. For example there is a limit to how much they can lower or increase the tax. There is a limit to how much they can save on one thing and invest in another. Often when a new party takes power, no big real changes are seen as it is not so easy to implement considering the real world. They…

Its harder to implement change than to promise it, of course.

However, historically it made a lot more difference which party was elected.

In the UK in the 80s you knew that if you voted Labour things would bet nationalised, and if you voted Conservative things would get privatised. Since the centrist consensus (e.g. Blair and Cameron) emerged it makes a lot less difference.

That, IMO, is evidence that what has changed is not that the two parties are constrained from pursuing very different policies, but that they no longer wish to.

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

#267

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…

> If a country changes course every four years, how can the success of a long-term project be ensured? Sadly this is an inherent weakness of the US constitution. It's old and it was written at a time where we didn't have enough experience with democracies. In a modern parliamentary democracy you vote parties which form coalitions and settle on one of the party leaders (in general the one with most votes) as prime min…

> Sadly this is an inherent weakness of the US constitution. It's old and it was written at a time where we didn't have enough experience with democracies.

(I'm not even American and I know this)

The constitution was meant to be a living document, adjusted over the years as the world changes.

But the very opposite happened, it became Holy Scripture, unchanging and never evolving.

The whole American system was based on the idea that the ruling class cared for "reputation", "honor" or "legacy". It was wholy unprepared for people who just don't give a fuck about all that and actively wipe their asses on existing rules and conventions.

Like going in front of Congress and just ... lying. Provably, verifiably lying. Zero recourse, the shame of lying used to be enough. And because of ancient decorum rules, the congress can't even say "you're lying" and google the facts right there and then, they have to do this idiotic perfromatic dance of asking the same question repeatedly and getting a word salad non-answer back for hours.

Or just not going for the inquiry because, why would you? There's no penalty past "losing face" for not going. Why bother.

The system was flawed from the start, but the people were still in there for the best of everyone so it held together and mostly worked. Politicians respected one another as people and humans, even though they differed in opinion.

I personally can't see a way back for USA without a massive purge in the government followed by actual ironclad laws and processes set in stone to prevent anything like this from happening again. Let congress google basic facts, let them call people liars to their face, give them their own execuitve branch that can drag people for hearings by force if needed.

And copy the German Federal Constitutional Court[0] system, they have term limits and people are nominated through multiple channels.

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

#268

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…

Ideally they don't change course every 4 years, they change only people who become more adept at maintaining course as they go along.

Quite simply the US had founding fathers who were ahead of their time, and some uncharted waters ahead of it.

This set the example for the decent navigators who took the executive positions, but momentum can only last so long.

You need decent people to come along on a regular basis to refresh the progress.

The very system that allowed for a gifted individual to have an outsized positive outcome, has always posed a real vulnerability if the decency is compromised. Whether that is a "natural" lack of decency or if compromises escalate over time, that's a weakness which is magnified when it does show up.

Different presidents have had this problem from time to time.

When you start with a country where the big advantage is being ahead of its time with an emphasis on more decency than average, it doesn't take somebody completely behind the times or absolutely disgusting to do serious damage. Even dropping the ball one time can be a major setback.

Just ask every respectable President in history.

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

#269
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> incompetency "corruption"

spite of one man child

The child may be mad but he is happy to take bribes from the oil industry so they are as guilty as he is. And the same goes for most right wing politicians in Europe.

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

#270
post #162

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…

Which is largely why presidencies do not mess with the order they inherit too much (subjective statement I know). Most institutions and projects are not stressed and the government branches just keep doing what they always did. The current administration is an outlier, but we all know that.

> The current administration is an outlier

Is it? What stops the next one being an outlier, or the one after that?

Its going to take decades to recover from the whims of the US population (the plurarity of whom voted for this)

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