We agree in principle on
what the optimal position would be, then. This is actually the best Internet political discussion I've ever been in, just from that!
The frustrating bit is that we also agree on how there's no political will to get there, and that's where our positions diverge. I cannot support the idea of 'ban it first, and then sort it out from there', for a number of reasons.
-Economic inertia. To borrow Newton's Third Law, a business in motion will continue in motion, unless acted on by an opposing force. If you ban nuclear power, you destroy the nuclear power industry. This means that you lose your experts in the field, you no longer have companies around to conform to the regulation... the whole thing goes belly-up. If the government, in its infinite wisdom, decides to lift the ban, who will be there to care?
Yes, I said 'if'. Get the ban in place, and you change the government's current position on nuclear power. It's always easier to get something banned than unbanned, easier to regulate than to deregulate, and easier to expand the bureaucracy than to shrink it. Once you have nuclear power banned, to un-ban it would require political effort on a scale I doubt could be mustered; after all, there wouldn't be any nuclear power lobby any longer, and you know how politicians think with their lobbyists instead of their brains.
(And even if you did, it'd take long enough to write the new laws and set everything up to destroy the industry. Utility companies aren't Apple; they don't have massive bankrolls of profit to sit on. Most can't afford to operate at a loss for any length of time, much less long enough for a comprehensive regulation package to be written, passed, and implemented.)
-Unintended consequences. To put it pithily, laws don't do exactly what you want them to do. Even if you halted the industry in its tracks, took it apart, wrote a package of laws that looked like they'd do the job, and gave the go-ahead to start the plants back up without wrecking the industry, who's to say that the laws would function as intended?
Look at game patches, preferably for MOBAs or MMOs. Patches break things ALL THE TIME (and which is more complex- a game, or an industry?). What do the companies do? Release them, watch for errors, and amend them. To me, that suggests that the government should change things slowly, one law at a time, looking at the impact of each law over time (Is it sufficient? Too much? Are there unintended side effects?) and patching them before moving to the next law.
Also, when you try to do everything at once, you get comprehensive bills that nobody reads. That's never good- too much opportunity for faulty and/or corrupt provisions to slip by, and it means the governed have to spend more on lawyers just to figure out how to be in compliance. Better to keep things short and to the point, as much as possible.
-I can't really give this one a pithy name- it's too complex. Part of this issue is the dishonesty involved in pitching one thing "nukes bad!" to the voters, only so you can get in and make a law based on the position of "nukes good, if used responsibly". Sure, it might work, but if we're just going to manipulate people into voting for somebody like that, how do the people really have any say? Why call it a democracy at all?
Another part of it is the disconnect that said dishonesty invokes between the people and their own governance. When you say that you need to pitch an issue one way to get support, so that you can do something different later on, you're saying that people can't understand the issue, don't care to understand the issue, or that they won't vote the right way (for you) if you do explain it to them, so you have to misdirect them to get into office and do the Right Thing (tm). No matter how you slice it, that's some arrangement of morally/constitutionally wrong. There is a social issue in there- we need to get people informed and
thinking about issues, rather than just accepting either side's talking
points- but I don't think such an issue is an excuse to manipulate the public like that.
Probably why I'm not a politician.
As far as Iran goes, I mentioned all those other countries as examples of the "it's wrong for the US to use nuclear power, but we don't care about them having it' hypocrisy; any 'fit' I threw was over that, and not what's actually happening in Europe or Japan or Iran... though I'll admit to some sarcasm about their motives.
It's a totally different issue, but I do think Iran is trying to make nuclear weapons, that their leadership doesn't actually care about having civilian nuclear power as anything more than a smokescreen for the weapons development, and that, if they get the bomb, it will get used on Israel within the decade. I have no problem with them having nuclear power; I have a MASSIVE problem with letting ANY nation still willing to use nukes as anything but a deterrent or retaliation (specifically against nuclear attacks) have the bomb. If somebody came up with a deal which could ENSURE that Iran got power and not the bomb, I'd be thrilled to support it, and your points about what to put in it are a good conceptual start.
The devil is in the details, of course. Always is.
I think we're at a point where our respective fundamental assumptions about the issues are irreconcilably different, so I think I'll bow out of the discussion before it gets acrimonious. It's been a pleasure on my end- I hope you can say the same.
Intelligent, civilized discussions are a wonderful thing. Thanks for this one.
My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate. Get yours.
I've been writing a bit.
what the optimal position would be, then. This is actually the best Internet political discussion I've ever been in, just from that!
The frustrating bit is that we also agree on how there's no political will to get there, and that's where our positions diverge. I cannot support the idea of 'ban it first, and then sort it out from there', for a number of reasons.
-Economic inertia. To borrow Newton's Third Law, a business in motion will continue in motion, unless acted on by an opposing force. If you ban nuclear power, you destroy the nuclear power industry. This means that you lose your experts in the field, you no longer have companies around to conform to the regulation... the whole thing goes belly-up. If the government, in its infinite wisdom, decides to lift the ban, who will be there to care?
Yes, I said 'if'. Get the ban in place, and you change the government's current position on nuclear power. It's always easier to get something banned than unbanned, easier to regulate than to deregulate, and easier to expand the bureaucracy than to shrink it. Once you have nuclear power banned, to un-ban it would require political effort on a scale I doubt could be mustered; after all, there wouldn't be any nuclear power lobby any longer, and you know how politicians think with their lobbyists instead of their brains.
(And even if you did, it'd take long enough to write the new laws and set everything up to destroy the industry. Utility companies aren't Apple; they don't have massive bankrolls of profit to sit on. Most can't afford to operate at a loss for any length of time, much less long enough for a comprehensive regulation package to be written, passed, and implemented.)
-Unintended consequences. To put it pithily, laws don't do exactly what you want them to do. Even if you halted the industry in its tracks, took it apart, wrote a package of laws that looked like they'd do the job, and gave the go-ahead to start the plants back up without wrecking the industry, who's to say that the laws would function as intended?
Look at game patches, preferably for MOBAs or MMOs. Patches break things ALL THE TIME (and which is more complex- a game, or an industry?). What do the companies do? Release them, watch for errors, and amend them. To me, that suggests that the government should change things slowly, one law at a time, looking at the impact of each law over time (Is it sufficient? Too much? Are there unintended side effects?) and patching them before moving to the next law.
Also, when you try to do everything at once, you get comprehensive bills that nobody reads. That's never good- too much opportunity for faulty and/or corrupt provisions to slip by, and it means the governed have to spend more on lawyers just to figure out how to be in compliance. Better to keep things short and to the point, as much as possible.
-I can't really give this one a pithy name- it's too complex. Part of this issue is the dishonesty involved in pitching one thing "nukes bad!" to the voters, only so you can get in and make a law based on the position of "nukes good, if used responsibly". Sure, it might work, but if we're just going to manipulate people into voting for somebody like that, how do the people really have any say? Why call it a democracy at all?
Another part of it is the disconnect that said dishonesty invokes between the people and their own governance. When you say that you need to pitch an issue one way to get support, so that you can do something different later on, you're saying that people can't understand the issue, don't care to understand the issue, or that they won't vote the right way (for you) if you do explain it to them, so you have to misdirect them to get into office and do the Right Thing (tm). No matter how you slice it, that's some arrangement of morally/constitutionally wrong. There is a social issue in there- we need to get people informed and
thinking about issues, rather than just accepting either side's talking
points- but I don't think such an issue is an excuse to manipulate the public like that.
Probably why I'm not a politician.
As far as Iran goes, I mentioned all those other countries as examples of the "it's wrong for the US to use nuclear power, but we don't care about them having it' hypocrisy; any 'fit' I threw was over that, and not what's actually happening in Europe or Japan or Iran... though I'll admit to some sarcasm about their motives.
It's a totally different issue, but I do think Iran is trying to make nuclear weapons, that their leadership doesn't actually care about having civilian nuclear power as anything more than a smokescreen for the weapons development, and that, if they get the bomb, it will get used on Israel within the decade. I have no problem with them having nuclear power; I have a MASSIVE problem with letting ANY nation still willing to use nukes as anything but a deterrent or retaliation (specifically against nuclear attacks) have the bomb. If somebody came up with a deal which could ENSURE that Iran got power and not the bomb, I'd be thrilled to support it, and your points about what to put in it are a good conceptual start.
The devil is in the details, of course. Always is.
I think we're at a point where our respective fundamental assumptions about the issues are irreconcilably different, so I think I'll bow out of the discussion before it gets acrimonious. It's been a pleasure on my end- I hope you can say the same.
Intelligent, civilized discussions are a wonderful thing. Thanks for this one.
My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate. Get yours.
I've been writing a bit.