Re: US political futures domestic

On Jul 4, 2:40 am, David Friedman <d...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com>
wrote:
> In article <BJudnZbdPIWCGcDVnZ2dnUVZ_hqdn...@comcast.com>,
>  "Kevin Cherkauer" <a...@bbb.ccc> wrote:
>
> > The way I see it, we are in a pickle. If we could all agree to share we
> > could get out of the pickle without too much large-scale human misery.
>
> I think you have it exactly backwards.
>
> Suppose you are correct, as you well may be, that the price of fossil
> fuels is going to go up a lot. One result will be to create enormous
> pressure within individual countries to loosen restrictions on building
> nuclear reactors. Americans who, for ideological or other reasons,
> disapprove of reactors will be outvoted by Americans who want to be able
> to heat and cool their houses, drive to work, and do a variety of other
> things that useenergy.
>
> Absent political restrictions, it's hard to see any substantial barrier
> to a very large increase in the number of reactors--it isn't as if it
> would require 90% of the world's concrete, or construction workers, or
> ...  to produce such an increase.
>
> But now suppose we all agree to share. Building a reactor in my country
> or state will offend me if I happen to be an opponent. The benefit will
> be divided among the entire population of the world. Americans, like
> other people, care a lot more about the welfare of those close to them,
> especially themselves and their friends and relatives, than about the
> welfare of anonymous billions on the far side of the globe. So the
> political pressure to ease restrictions on the construction of reactors
> will be much weaker in your world of "all agree to share" than in the
> present world.
>
> This is a familiar problem, usually known as the tragedy of the commons,
> and is the reason why real world societies that try to impose rules of
> general sharing mostly don't do very well.
>
> --
>  http://www.daviddfriedman.com/http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/
>  Author of _Harald_, a fantasy without magic.
>  Published by Baen, paperback in bookstores now

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