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353 points dmazin | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.532s | source
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coldspoon95[dead post] ◴[] No.44509675[source]
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nemomarx ◴[] No.44509810[source]
Nuclear seems to only work if nation-states build and operate it directly - no private firm can build them profitably and on time.

If you can get the us federal government to be functional again or have a path to doing that, please let people know, but with the current defunding everything mindset and general gridlock and one bill a year passed I think solar will be much cheaper by the time you even start breaking the ground on a thorium reactor.

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lotharcable ◴[] No.44509873[source]
> If you can get the us federal government to be functional again or have a path to doing that

Impossible.

Federal government in US is failing along with the rest of large scale western style governments. They are too big, cost too much, and have too many fundamental structural deficiencies.

The model of having professional class of administrators and politicians running the country as part of a massive bureaucracy is one that can't work as it is unmanageable and full of conflicts of interests, moral hazards, political market failures and so on and so forth.

They carry on just through inertia at this point. Their one talent is creating a image of control and stability without actually providing any.

If you ever worked in a large publicly traded corporation and realized just how dysfunctional they are as a organization, multiply that a thousandfold and you have modern western governments.

Nuclear is expensive and doesn't work because there are a lot of people in power and next to power that don't want it to work.

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1. myrmidon ◴[] No.44510267[source]
> Federal government in US is failing along with the rest of large scale western style governments. They are too big, cost too much, and have too many fundamental structural deficiencies.

How do you see those governments failing, and when?

When sorting countries by tax burden (as a percentage of GDP), then you will find that there are tons of extremely livable countries at the top (wealthy European nations), while basically everything under ~10% GDP taxation is a 3rd world disaster.

How big of a GDP percentage would you propose can a government take at most and not "invariably fall apart"?