Jeffrey Ladish Maybe so, but are you holding up the enormous costs...
· Comment — Archer T. Ships replied to his own comment. · View on Facebook · Markdown source
Jeffrey Ladish Maybe so, but are you holding up the enormous costs and delay the FDA imposes as a good thing? Has the near total shutdown of new nuclear power plants in the US--for decades--actually saved lives on net? How do you know? Remember that you must also count the lives lost if a new tech _doesn't_ go forward, not just those that might be lost from the tech itself. This is especially important point to remember because the people who die because a new tech isn't implemented often aren't aware that they've been harmed. Unless they've had economic/scientific training, the person who dies of lung cancer from coal plant pollution isn't necessarily going to connect their illness to the regulations blocking clean nuclear power. You can't even properly count such deaths unless you do controlled experiments (or find natural experiments). Whereas the (few) deaths that are caused by nuclear power are easily counted and widely touted. If people aren't even aware of the deaths/injury caused by excessive regulation, but are highly aware of deaths/injury caused by new tech, they're going to be heavily biased towards heavy regulation, even when the regulation causes harm on net. This bias is especially harmful when tech is new, as opportunistic politicians can win power by drumming up a panic against a new tech that doesn't have powerful constituencies to defend it yet.