Great. Now what we do to keep it from happening again? How do we reduce corporatocracy and regulatory capture?
Then people will again start saying "we've had no accidents for years, therefore flying is really safe, so why all this burdensome regulation?". Regulation will get scaled back, something like the 737 MAX will happen again, the FAA will get beefed up, and so on, ad infinitum.
It's this sort of regulatory boom and bust that makes me feel humans shouldn't be allowed to do anything that's dangerous on a really large scale (such as nuclear power).
I was like you before, it's the "default" sentiment to feel like nuclear power is dangerous and dirty.
Please do your homework and collect information from reliable sources on the matter. It might change your mind, or at least give you a more balanced viewpoint.
Nuclear industry is a textbook example of regulatory capture. If the renewable guys were anywhere near as good we’d see 0 deaths from solar and wind. “The solar panel didn’t kill him, it was gravity and a slippery ladder”
Well, I did. And did not find any convincing claims. Try to take a step back and not see everyone as either anti or pro. Show me your evidence for your claims.
"Assassinated whistleblowers" is a pretty strong statement, it requires pretty strong evidence.
This is not true.
The space destroyed to make way for coal strip-mining in Germany alone, is larger than Tchernobyl exclusion zone.
You had a good comment except for the last line. Nuclear power is the safest form of energy production out there (and by far).
The industry was very heavily regulated globally before Chernobyl and Fukushima, but look what happened.
I’m not saying I’m against nuclear power (as I’m not). I’m not saying that any industry regulation is generally ineffective most of the time, especially when financials and greed gets involved (even though it appears to be true). I’m just saying humans are bad at moderating risk over long periods of time.
Gross incompetence and huge design issues 40 years ago on one hand, and complacency+incompetence that required a huge natural disaster to pose a problem, and even then it resulted in less death and destruction than the evacuation, the natural disaster itself or your regular fossil fuel power plant? Not sure that's a good example.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa...
Apart from Chernobyl which was poorly designed and managed to begin with, other plants have proven safe. Even Fukushima hardly caused any death while several thousands people were killed by a once-in-a-lifetime tsunami. Let's put things in perspective, please.
We are not really "fit" for any technology, but lack of technology wouldn't keep us safe from existential risks either. The solution is to transcend our biological substrate altogether.
Only on average. The potential worst case fuckup is the most spectacular compared to any other energy source.
Dams failures are WAY worse in terms of deaths.
The 'worst case' with a modern reactor is basically zero to very few people die and there is some leaked out radiation. This is what happened in Fukushima. Its hard to find a worse case with a modern reactor.
Just like plane crashes make for horrific headlines. Meantime, a lot more people die every year driving their car to work, and nobody talks about it. Your point is, we don't know how to grasp data?
I have some bad news for you...
The root cause is pretty easy to describe: benefits are apparent and risks are hidden.
It's much harder for people to weigh things that might happen against things that will happen. Especially when the former is negative and latter is positive (positive outcome bias).
Consequently, in meeting after meeting, risk safeguards are erroded. Because each meeting has a relatively minor "Do we want this benefit, or to hedge this risk?" decision, and in aggregate, people pick the former.
For more thinking along these lines, see the book “Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies” (1984) by sociologist Charles Perrow (concerning nuclear power), the book “The Limits of Safety — Organizations, Accidents and Nuclear Weapons” (1993) by Scott Sagan concerning nuclear weapons, and the work of philosopher Hans Jonas on the “imperative of responsibility” (1980s).
It would also require every other nation on earth to agree with the restriction, which isn't really compatible with the premise in the first place; if the regulations are self-imposed, people will stop following them.
Some HN readers apparently don't like to hear this but I don't see any other way.
As for how we can reduce regulatory capture, I don't believe there is any good solution other than constant vigilance.
- Better whistleblower protections
- Personal liability for making false or misleading statements to a regulatory agent
- Corporate death penalty. No more "too big to fail" nonsense. If there were actual competition among aviation manufacturers, the government could just dissolve the company and auction off the product lines to competitors.
Safeguarding against capture from the regulatory side is more difficult. But I guess term limits for decision-making positions could help, or having a good process for identifying and declaring conflicts of interest?
There are a number of industries and companies that will exist as long as the current USG does, at least for our lifetimes, due to decisions that were made long ago.
Examples include Lockheed, Boeing, and Microsoft.
Any solution to the problem needs to accept and address the levels of deep integration between these companies and the state.
It'd require a lot more ass-covering to pretend that the company isn't just an arm of the government, entitled to a neverending stream of practically unlimited tax dollars.
Look at the whole kerfuffle that Amazon is making over JEDI being given to Microsoft. Under the current system, that's probably better avoided.
That doesn't make much sense though. The size of rewards might incentivize how hard someone works for them and to what extremes, but the objective they're working towards depends on what the reward is, well, rewarding, which is a separate thing. It's perfectly possible to imagine a system where executive compensation was based purely around safety for example, say "$5 million for no flaw-derived fatalities during tenure of 10 years and another $5 million for no flaw-derived fatalities for anything manufactured during tenure for 10 years after retirement", or whatever exact numbers/details you wish. Of course, even that could be "outsized" in that too high+unbalanced a level might encourage the extreme of too little innovation. But merely saying "executives shouldn't get paid more than [number pulled out a random because who knows]" doesn't seem like a directed policy that'd help. And in fact is quite contrary to other comments calling for more personal responsibility and the like.
like holding family members hostage? Or perhaps violent mutilation on failure? The financial route has been ramped up as far as can be imagined - $100m's are paid to CEOs to fail, and to wreak the economy, society and the planet at the same time.
There are some CEOs in the Fortune 500 with 750k base, but bonus and stock exceed that by multiples.
"The median total compensation for Fortune 500 CEOs who had been in their role for at least two years was $11.5 million"
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/fortune-500-ceos-are-paid-...
I think a fifty times multiplier is already too high though so I don't know if I can agree to pushing that up any further. The goal is specifically to change things for the better, to NOT maintain the status quo.
I am not sure what capping executive salaries would achieve. You'd still get the same kind of people at the top anyway - even if the top salaries were identical to that of a janitor, the fact that you have power over others is its own motivator for many people out there. Proof in point: politicians don't make outrageous amounts of money (compared to CEOs), but they are addicted to power and control just as well.
You might have seen this recent news article. I won't summarise, as I don't think I can do better than the URL:
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/08/ea-shareholders-say-n...
It seems like the current two-party system is in fact part of the "corporatocracy and regulatory capture", but with current electoral law they are unlikely to ever be dislodged.
Fortunately, the individual states are not prevented from implementing reforms like Ranked Choice Voting, which would allow new parties to form and gain a reputation in politics at least at the state level.
If a party repeated that success across multiple states, that could be used to pressure the largest two parties to support similar reforms, like making Congressional districts return multiple representatives (proportional to the vote within that district).
So Boing will pay not only the massive costs of withdrawing the MAX since orders for it are plummeting. But this event will affect all its business. This is why there is lobbying/political pressure to divert at least some of the blame, the implications are in the tens of billions in the next few years.
So the good news is that the company will be forced to clean-up its act voluntarily, a similar safety disaster could mean extinction.
The refund would be made at gate level, since the plane allocations are made in the last minute.
It's certainly a factor behind the hundreds of MAX orders that were canceled thus far. Fitch lowered it's delivery estimate from 700 to 75 MAX planes for 2020.
There are elections coming up in November. You'll have at least 2 federal races on the ballot. Figure out where the candidates stand with regards to corporatocracy and regulatory capture and vote accordingly.
If you don't like where any of the candidates stand, there will be another election in 2 years. In the mean time, let the candidates know how you feel. Donate to, or volunteer for the candidates who you want to win.