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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

#291

Post by myrmidon »

miki123211 wrote: post #194
s1artibartfast wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Don't forget vetocracy. Every regulation, whether it's environmental, DEIA or anti-fraud, adds a few steps to each project. With enough regulations and enough steps, things just slow down to a crawl. As governments and legal systems get older, they get into more and more situations where a bad thing happens, and the politicians must show that they've done something to stop a similar thing from happening again. Nobody…

> Nobody can publicly admit that it's fine to letting a 5-year-old kid die once in a while, even if that would be the right call.

Sure, there are such cases, but a lot of regulation was written in blood, and the price that affected individuals or even our whole species paid was often monumental:

Having cancer literally eat the workers faces is not acceptable (=> radium girls), nor are mistakes like leaded gas or CFCs.

Everytime people advocate for big immediate gains from abolishing regulations, you can be almost certain that they are selling toxic snake oil.

Current US admin seems no exception, especially when comparing related promises with actual results (e.g. Doge).

edit: I'm not saying that pruning back regulations is bad, but it needs to be a careful, deliberate effort and big immediate payoffs are often unrealistic.

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

#292

Post by cucumber3732842 »

bruce511 wrote: post #185
Krasnol wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that the outlier might mark a beginning. Seeing what's possible in this position, I doubt future US presidents will hold back.

It doesn't matter I'd they hold back or not. The perception of political instability is enough. If, as an investor, I'm asked to throw billions at a multi-year project, political risk is going to be on the PowerPoint. You may think this current administration is an aberration, but it serves to prove that aberrations can happen. That the levers supposed to prevent this (congress, courts) are creaking. Sure a judge rul…

Is that a bad thing though?

Like say you can develop a 1000 windmill offshore wind project. At "market rate" for performing that activity they lose you money or make you very little, say a percent or two, because offshore is just harder.

But with government partnership and doors opening they make money at a low estimate 3%.

This causes you to forgo the 200 windmills in a field project that would make you a positive 1-3% regardless of which way the political winds blow because why do that when you can deploy 1k of them in some bay and make money hand over fist simply by joining hands (more tightly than the land based small project would) with government?

And as a result nobody can do the 200 windmill project because, between you and all the other people chasing the 100@% projects the cost of engineering, site prep, permitting, other fixed costs for such projects, etc, etc. are based on what the market will bear, and it can bear a lot more when your amortizing things over 5x as many units.

So maybe the things that do get invested in are more sustainable and financially conservative, which would improve public perception of them vs these megacorp-government joint venture type deployments we have now.

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

#293

Post by exe34 »

graemep wrote: post #266
flakeoil wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 chang…

any ideas why they might not wish to?

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

#294

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

aboardRat4 wrote: post #211
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

Perhaps you don't think legalistic bureaucracy should matter, but the voters' representatives in Congress don't agree. Under the Administrative Procedure Act, government agencies must produce legalistic bureaucratic reasons for their actions; they may not act capriciously to suit the whims of political leaders or transient desires for a change.

Congress certainly has the power to change this if they want to. But without something like the APA, private businesses exposed to federal regulation would struggle to make any plans beyond the current US Presidential term. So they do not want to.

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

#295

Post by dionian »

aucisson_masque wrote: post #255
Drupon wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Were the Venezuelans wrong? Should a country just legally accept its conquerors economically?

That's pretty much the law of the strongest. Mess with American colonialism and you end up like Cuba or Venezuela. It's better to have your natural resources stolen than having your whole country wrecked by embargo, secret NSA plots, etc..

its not like they built it.

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

#297

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

graemep wrote: post #237
vvpan wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

That's a bigger problem the worse your system is performing.

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

#298

Post by expedition32 »

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 am from a country with 20 political parties and near constant political drama. It makes America look sane.

The answer is contract law. Pulling the plug out of a project costs money.

Obviously this still requires a level of sanity which may no longer exist in the US.

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

#299

Post by monting »

tokioyoyo wrote: post #261
monting wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 yea…

Debt is not fundamentally bad. But the financing has to be justified by positive return, be it in the service itself that makes money back to pay off the debt, or as a public good, returns in the form societal benefit as a result of the service.

When you have massive buildups with no hope of returns, it's a a bad financial decision and the public carries the debt burden.

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

#300

Post by expedition32 »

mapt wrote: post #283
7952 wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This applies to the UK particularly as a result of privatisation. Utilities, pensions and transport are completely dependant on previous government agreements that commit the public to long term expenses that sit outside tax. It takes debt of the government books, but also defuses responsibility. And becomes a necessary evil for getting anything done.

The US occasionally has mayors & governors who spitefully or corruptly trap their successors contractually in long-term commitments with private parties which are obviously bad financial decisions. I argue that we have a reasonableness standard we can apply here - "Lack of consideration" is what might void a contract indenturing a 20 year old idiot in an unpaid MLM scheme. Consideration of the public is a factor. > "…

I am getting the feeling that Americans love "leadership without oversight". In my country we have a parliament on the national level whose single job is to make life miserable for whoever is in power and on the local level there are city councils who do the same.
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