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Boring Company cited for almost 800 environmental violations in Las Vegas

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Re: Boring Company cited for almost 800 environmental violations in Las Vegas

#51

Post by freedomben »

spankibalt wrote: post #38
freedomben wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The truth is somewhere in the middle. Many regulations are terrible and serve as a huge hindrance to innovation, and effectively restrict certain things to only the already-massively-rich entrepreneurs. However, (IMHO) there are a lot of regulations that are important and absolutely should be enforced up front. Finding the right balance is kind of impossible, and I don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater,…

> "The truth is somewhere in the middle." Another day, another invocation of the golden mean fallacy.

Another day, another invocation of the false dichotomy fallacy.

If the truth isn't somewhere in the middle, then by definition it must be on one of the two extreme edges. That's a pretty bad (and ironic) fallacy to commit, unless you think everything in this world (or at least all regulations) are binary (either perfect or completely worthless)

Re: Boring Company cited for almost 800 environmental violations in Las Vegas

#52

Post by delfinom »

Seattle3503 wrote: post #35

The tricky thing about environmental regulations is that they are crafted and utilized by NIMBYs to block any infrastructure development. Even if, on balance, the infrastructure is a net positive. It's not clear if these violations actually represent a real environmental hazard or are more reflective of NIMBY degrowth sentiment.

Workers getting chemical burns and firefighters needing to frequently take on decon sounds awfully like environmental regulations run amuck.

Its also outrageous that companies have to pay for workman's comp insurance /s

Re: Boring Company cited for almost 800 environmental violations in Las Vegas

#53

Post by Seattle3503 »

skopje wrote: post #23
freedomben wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The truth is somewhere in the middle. Many regulations are terrible and serve as a huge hindrance to innovation, and effectively restrict certain things to only the already-massively-rich entrepreneurs. However, (IMHO) there are a lot of regulations that are important and absolutely should be enforced up front. Finding the right balance is kind of impossible, and I don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater,…

>> >Many regulations are terrible and serve as a huge hindrance to innovation What is an example of a regulation that was a "huge" hinderance to innovation? Looking at the past 40 years of the US technological progress and the only thing I seen hindering innovation are the tech companies themselves through monopoly, monopsony, patents, and regulatory capture. (Unless the last one is what you meant, but that's a regul…

People are using environmental regulations to block the development of green infrastructure we need. Eg blocking the deployment solar panels.

https://www.pbssocal.org/redefine/group-sues-to-block-new-de...

Re: Boring Company cited for almost 800 environmental violations in Las Vegas

#54

Post by micromacrofoot »

Seattle3503 wrote: post #35

The tricky thing about environmental regulations is that they are crafted and utilized by NIMBYs to block any infrastructure development. Even if, on balance, the infrastructure is a net positive. It's not clear if these violations actually represent a real environmental hazard or are more reflective of NIMBY degrowth sentiment.

Some environmental regulations are crafted and used that way, but certainly not all, or even a majority, of them.

Re: Boring Company cited for almost 800 environmental violations in Las Vegas

#55

Post by boudin »

jvanderbot wrote: post #9
ck2 wrote: post #5

leaving a toxic mess is a repeated part of Musk's plan with each business it's always privatize the profits, socialize the costs he's doing the same thing with Starlink which is going to vaporize many thousands of toxic satellites out of LEO into the atmosphere https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-space-orbit-satellit... imagine what he's going to do on the Moon or Mars

That is a very deceptive video/article (at least the first half above the paywall). It is true that a few of these sats will have to come down each day, but the video is of a booster failure/explosion, not a normal planned obsolescence sat re-entry. And re-entry is part of the cleanup plan . All satellites responsibly launched need a plan to deal with possible orbital waste. By decommissioning in this way, we're redu…

I believe that an atmosphere compatible with human life is a bit more useful than internet by satelite. The fact that the impact of re-entry of satelites is absolute insane. Any good engineering company would study the whole impact of scaling up before doing so. The fact that spacex didn't do that is really worrying and regulation should come to stop what they are doing asap until the impact is better understood. Some more serious engineers at Japan aerospace are studying wooden satelite which is a quite approach to the problem.

Re: Boring Company cited for almost 800 environmental violations in Las Vegas

#56

Post by throwawaygmbno »

ceejayoz wrote: post #28
Larrikin wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Xi and Putin were caught on a hot mic talking about swapping out their organs with fresh ones. I assume from their local political enemies.

This is getting downvoted, probably because it sounds like a loony conspiracy theory... but it isn't. https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/hot-mic-picks...

Why assume it's people who can't Google down voting and not Russian and Chinese plants. There's all kinds of topics on here that trigger a down voting campaign that works pretty well on non top comments.

Re: Boring Company cited for almost 800 environmental violations in Las Vegas

#57

Post by indigoabstract »

Larrikin wrote: post #17
add-sub-mul-div wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worst thing about space exploration is that it's not fun and optimistic like it was before this specific 2020s phase of capitalism, the best thing is that this crop of billionaires will all be dead before the real cool future stuff could happen anyway.

Xi and Putin were caught on a hot mic talking about swapping out their organs with fresh ones. I assume from their local political enemies.

To be honest, what can you talk about when you're a big shot dictator and your conversation partner is an even bigger dictator than you are?

The weather? Or the latest invasion that you've launched? That's probably boring, so it's a tricky situation.

Re: Boring Company cited for almost 800 environmental violations in Las Vegas

#58

Post by Ekaros »

ceejayoz wrote: post #37
Seattle3503 wrote: post #35

The tricky thing about environmental regulations is that they are crafted and utilized by NIMBYs to block any infrastructure development. Even if, on balance, the infrastructure is a net positive. It's not clear if these violations actually represent a real environmental hazard or are more reflective of NIMBY degrowth sentiment.

Las Vegas does not strike me as a very friendly place for NIMBYs.

Just depends on whose backyard. Haven't the casinos blocked certain possibly beneficial transport projects for long time now?

Re: Boring Company cited for almost 800 environmental violations in Las Vegas

#59

Post by Seattle3503 »

3D30497420 wrote: post #39
Seattle3503 wrote: post #35

The tricky thing about environmental regulations is that they are crafted and utilized by NIMBYs to block any infrastructure development. Even if, on balance, the infrastructure is a net positive. It's not clear if these violations actually represent a real environmental hazard or are more reflective of NIMBY degrowth sentiment.

From the article: > Workers have complained of chemical burns from the waste material generated by the tunneling process, and firefighters must decontaminate their equipment after conducting rescues from the project sites. The company was fined more than $112,000 by Nevada’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration in late 2023 after workers complained of “ankle-deep” water in the tunnels, muck spills and burns.…

Indeed I agree chemical burns would suggest a real environmental hazard in this case.

Re: Boring Company cited for almost 800 environmental violations in Las Vegas

#60

Post by ETH_start »

awesome_dude wrote: post #20
dpc_01234 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He is right, but also the fines need to be higher, especially for repeated violations. Ever worked in a company where you need approval from 7 separate teams to land a simple change? Just can't get anything done, no matter how useful. This is a huge problem. People generally do not understand what serialized blocking does to performance. On the other hand the fines cited in the article seem laughably low. I don't kno…

Him being right, or wrong, is a bold call to make. But all he's saying is he wants to run his company the way tech entrepreneurs have been for a while - "It's better to ask forgiveness than permission" which they like because it's favored toward them, and, by the time a regulator has caught up, they have made a pile of money, or lost it all and gone.

For a different perspective, it's the difference between the kind of (pro-innovation) restrictions imposed on automobile companies versus those (anti-innovation) ones imposed on aircraft companies:

https://fee.org/articles/how-the-faa-is-keeping-flying-cars-...

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