Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction • Hacker News Board

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

#421

Post by CamperBob2 » Thu, Feb 05, 2026, 3:55 AM UTC

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #420

CamperBob2 wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd encourage you to make a list of the top 10 things you're worried he's about to do now, and check back in a few months to see how many of them came true. I don't have to "check back in a few months." Look at what he's accomplished in only one year : https://www.project2025.observer/en . Far more than he was able to do in his four previous years in office. Trump is basically doing all the things that he wanted to d…

I looked at this site, and a number of the items have a big red gavel marker with a label saying "Court Orders: Blocked". To me this sounds like it's saying court orders are capable of blocking Trump and have in fact blocked Trump from completing the marked items. Am I misinterpreting?

I don't see that tag on a significant number of items.

In any case, once again: yes, some of Trump's actions are being blocked by the courts, and the Republicans are working to fix that by installing captive, corrupt, or incompetent judges.

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

#422

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Feb 05, 2026, 4:27 AM UTC

threethirtytwo wrote: post #80

elmomle wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a linear relationship where you trade one for the other. You don't just get a more competent government by giving up freedoms.

There is a relationship here. It is not a perfect one, but it is real, and pretending otherwise just avoids the tradeoff. Take California’s high speed rail. Every individual has the right to object. No one wants an eyesore in their backyard. Everyone gets a hearing. Everyone gets a lawsuit. Everyone gets a veto in practice, if not in theory. The result is predictable. I will never see a functioning high speed rail sy…

[deleted]

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

#423

Post by threethirtytwo » Thu, Feb 05, 2026, 4:27 AM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #154

threethirtytwo wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the keyword is "individual freedom." Technically, freedom can be expanded in the way you're implying but usually in common parlance they are referring to individual freedoms. That is what people mean when they say the US is "more free" than China. Under your expanded definition it's not clear which one is more free. Extreme individual freedom is often called anarchy.

There is nearly universal agreement among humans that nobody should have the "freedom" to commit non-consensual violence against another person. This is often cast as interfering with their freedom to be left alone and then the argument is that you don't have the freedom to deprive someone else of their freedom. But as soon as you have a government that so much as prohibits murder you're not doing something that can…

I think this framing quietly smuggles in a category error.

This isn’t about what feels compelling to you or me, nor is it a clean split between “near-universal moral prohibitions” and “petty micromanagement.” There’s a massive middle ground you’re flattening. Scale matters. Irreversibility matters. Civilization-level consequences matter.

Banning murder preserves a baseline condition for freedom. Large infrastructure projects don’t just “nudge” behavior or marginally increase traffic. They reshape cities, labor markets, land values, energy use, migration patterns, and political power for decades or centuries. They bind future generations who never consented and cannot meaningfully opt out. Calling that “petty” is just wrong descriptively, regardless of whether you support the project.

Once you acknowledge that, the question stops being “should the state only prevent violence?” and becomes “what kinds of collective decisions are legitimate when their effects are vast, asymmetric, and effectively permanent?” That’s not micromanagement. That’s the core problem of modern governance.

So no, the objection isn’t to the government punishing murder instead of being anarchic. It’s to pretending that civilization-shaping actions belong in the same moral bucket as minor regulatory nuisances. You can argue that such projects are worth the tradeoff. You can argue they should override individual objections. But dismissing them as trivial violations is an easy rhetorical move that avoids grappling with why people resist them in the first place.

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

#424

Post by heavenlyblue » Thu, Feb 05, 2026, 7:01 AM UTC

ecshafer wrote: post #335

ghtbircshotbe wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This problem has already been solved. The legislature creates the laws, the executive executes the laws, and the judiciary interprets the laws. But now we're in a situation where the executive does whatever it wants including illegally shutting down congressionally created programs, the legislature lets it happen despite not having the votes to legally change the law, and the judiciary is also letting it happen when…

Caesar was assassinated because the Senate was jealous Caesar's wealth, power, prestige and love by the people. Also because he wanted to redistribute land, threatening their own power.

lol I can see how in like 200 years we'll be hearing the same opinion about Trump!

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

#425

Post by hvb2 » Fri, Feb 06, 2026, 7:00 AM UTC

cm2187 wrote: post #231

hvb2 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Dozens of new GW+ wind farms came online in the last four years. Thats not that much is it given the size and energy demand of the country? And that's over the past 4 years, you'll only see the true impact of this in the next 6 years. > This concerns a few projects in a few particular locations that are exposed to federal interference Markets are driven by a lot of feelings too. If you're trying to build a wind far…

Electricity doesn't travel continents the way shipping containers do. So it's not like anyone wants to build a wind farm and wonders where in the world they are going to place it. Plus if you are a major single customer (eg datacenter, factory), you need reliable energy, so would be odd to build a wind farm. As far as I am aware wind farms only makes sense when you sell to the grid, and where there is an alternative…

> So it's not like anyone wants to build a wind farm and wonders where in the world they are going to place it.

No, but there's demand everywhere. So it's all down to how likely you are to get your money back?

And this is for adding power to the grid, if you have a major single customer you're already adding a ton of risk to your project... What if the datacenter is no longer needed after a few years or isn't completed ever?

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

#426

Post by int_19h » Sat, Feb 07, 2026, 1:40 AM UTC

klooney wrote: post #409

ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do. The 60 votes requirement is just a handshake agreement 50 votes + the vice president can remove at any moment.

It's so maddening. They just decided in like 2010 they didn't want to ever do anything again.

Doing things puts you on the hook when those things fail. Politically it's much better to keep the limit in place so that you can make virtue signalling votes that are guaranteed to fail. That way you're seen as "doing something" but without having to be responsible for it.

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

#427

Post by int_19h » Sat, Feb 07, 2026, 1:46 AM UTC

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.

From the business perspective, endemic corruption is preferable. Generally speaking, on societies like that, you know exactly how much you need to pay to which people to get things moving, so it can be budgeted for predictably.

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

#428

Post by int_19h » Sat, Feb 07, 2026, 1:56 AM UTC

theshrike79 wrote: post #267

epolanski wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 o…

The original American political system is based, first and foremost, on the notion that political parties are bad and shouldn't exist.

Of course, it never really worked out that way. We're simply at the end of that very long line.

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

#429

Post by int_19h » Sat, Feb 07, 2026, 1:59 AM UTC

verdverm wrote: post #376

fundad wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost half of the voting public intentionaly acted to sabotage the country. Let's stop treating them with kid gloves, they are anti-American and should never be forgiven.

This is not how to reverse the damage that has already been done, if you are unwilling to forgive, you are as bad as MAGA, perhaps worse. Forgiveness is a core human virtue we do not want to lose. No, half of the voters did not intentionally vote for this. Half of the voting public doesn't pay any attention and votes based on their finances or party allegiance. You and I saw all the bad things to know what would happ…

Forgiveness is warranted when people express genuine remorse and strive to not repeat the same action again.

Anyone who voted for Trump in 2024 had his first term as a shining example of what the man is. This goes doubly for people who voted for him twice.

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

#430

Post by int_19h » Sat, Feb 07, 2026, 2:01 AM UTC

eucyclos wrote: post #399

jfengel wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how parties work, of necessity. They are all uneasy alliances of people who can barely tolerate each other. People find the one that supports their most important issues and hopefully few things they really detest. Then they have to pay at least lip service to all of it. By getting everyone else's support, at least one or two of your favorite issues get worked on. In doing so you need to find a way to live wit…

Having seen student politics with and without parties - my student union had them, my engineering society banned them - I'm convinced that it's not bad voters that ruin democracies but political parties. Parties need to simplify their messages to get buy in, and promote a 'team first' over 'issues first' mentality in their members. They're anathema to principles of honest debate and compromise.

The problem is that the side that organizes always wins over the side that does not. And it's very difficult to ban political organization (which is ultimately what parties are) in a way that is actually enforceable.

The American founding fathers were mostly of the opinion that political parties are bad and should be avoided if republic is to stand. Yet they found themselves organizing into parties before the ink was dry.

So the best we can do in practice is engineer the political system such that the damage from party groupthink is minimal.