You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

Salemicus comments on Open thread, Feb. 16 - Feb. 22, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion

3 Post author: MrMind 16 February 2015 07:56AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (125)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Salemicus 17 February 2015 10:48:09AM 5 points [-]

If a million people paid $5,000 each, no power plant gets built because the government won't allow it.

Comment author: passive_fist 17 February 2015 11:06:59AM 2 points [-]

Definitely. I'm not proposing that as an actual realistic plan. It's just interesting to compare cost vs. utility (both in terms of power generated and impact on the environment) of the different energy sources. The only real way to put the plan into action would be government subsidies on nuclear power plants.

Comment author: [deleted] 21 February 2015 12:40:28PM 1 point [-]

A million people wouldn't pay $5000 each without a coordination mechanism.

Comment author: Pfft 18 February 2015 04:30:02PM 0 points [-]

Really though? My intution is that democratic governments are very sensitive to issues that lots of people care about, particularly if they show that they care about them by paying real money.

For comparison, the National Rifle Association has 5 million members, and a revenue of $256 million (so ~$50 per member), and is considered to have a big influence in politics. Google's online petition against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) gathered 7 million signatures ($0 per signer), and the act failed. This "build your own powerplant" movement would be similarly sized.