Another simple analogy is flying cars. Tires are cheaper than flighting gravity and aerodynamics + weather, extra maintenance, etc. Still unconvinced? Then add engine failure, which means crashing for flying car (dangerous/uncontrolled landing at least), vs pulling over to a road shoulder.
Being physics possible is completely different to is it financially viable or even sustainable.
This is very simplistic and ignores all the trade offs that got us to where we are today.
For one example what if, instead of depegging from gold and creating the petrodollar which was then enforced by the MIC, what if nuclear power had proliferated everywhere? What if the MIC was just a nuclear MAD race?
What would the world look like with 5 decades of infrastructure build out, R&D, education advances, a skilled nuclear workforce etc?
You think we’d only have got to electric cars in the 2010s? You think we’d have found our way to cloud computing of today in that environment? Wars and conflicts probably would have looked different.. Everything would really, definitely including flight.
In any of these thought experiments you’re forced to ignore all of the trade offs that led to the point in time of the thought experiment.
If the basis of the argument was “we’ve had abundant nuclear power around the world for 30-50 years” and flying cars is still impractical it’s a very different to flying cars being impractical in the current reality.
I agree.
My only issue is free (infinitely cheap) power solves every problem. Maybe every problem ever (if you can spare a little time too).
Patents delayed 3d printers for decades. Lots of like examples of this stuff.
I’m pro-nuclear - the issue is always can governments be trusted for long term safety and storage of contaminants. Did the delayed focus prevent more catastrophes? Don’t know. Are governments more trust worthy now? Don’t know. Does Earth need nuclear to handle human population growth - sure, no other option.
If you throw in technology to store significant power for portability (e.g flying car batteries) - then you’ve hit the holy grail. As long as the weight isn’t too great.
My point was more around a good salesman can obscure the practicality of something in a present world, and sell turds as golden wings.
I’m not sure I agree that free energy does solve every problem.
If anything I’d expect it to unleash a new wave of problems that we will have to handle.
The current AI debate is a good example of this. The groups wanting a moratorium or bans are the same who would have thwarted nuclear in the past. They ONLY see the potential bad outcomes and catastrophise everything to the extremes - they can’t tell you HOW AI will end humanity but they are sure it will so we just shouldn’t try and instead let’s regulate it and control it and limit it and make it the domain of the state..
It’s likely problems will manifest specifically because of the course of action the central planners / statists insist upon (no-one thinks it’s a good idea to train ChatGPT to be woke) and they’ll never factor in how their efforts led to those mistakes. Same could be said of nuclear.
This is why we need proper free markets and the death of the state as we know it. Problems will arise, people will work out how to solve them but having arbitrary rules interfere has a distortion effect that we can’t truly reconcile.
Humanity needs these struggles to progress, not fake made up climate change and systemic racism bullshit to focus brainwashed children on - technologies which will progress us as a species and make us flourish all the more, regardless of what challenges they throw up for us to address.
