Scaled up nuclear power could be had for $3-4B a gigawatt/h. We waste say $1T a year on basic things, like not having universal healthcare. So a simple policy change would let us build about 300 reactors a years, after some scaling period. The excess energy can be used to turn C02 back into oil.
It’s not technically that difficult, we just chose to waste money on stupid things and rich people toys instead.
Energy abundance is simply the choose to build nuclear power plants at scale
Since the industrial revolution we've emitted about 1.5 trillion tonnes of CO2. Direct air capture requires roughly 1,500 kWh per tonne, so recapturing all of it would take around 2,250,000 TWh. Current global electricity production is about 30,000 TWh/year. That's 75 years of the entire world's electricity output just for capture, before you even convert it back to fuel, which costs even more energy. And thermodynamically you can never break even: we only extracted maybe 30-40% of fossil fuel energy as useful work, but reversing the dispersal of CO2 from 420ppm in the atmosphere fights entropy all the way back. It will always cost more energy to put back than we got taking it out.
As for the nuclear numbers: Vogtle, the only recent US build, came in at ~$16B/GW, not $3-4B. The world started construction on 9 reactors total in 2024. The all time peak was ~30/year in the 1980s. 300/year has never been close to reality. Average build time is about 9 years per reactor.
I'm not anti-nuclear but you can't hand-wave your way past thermodynamics and industrial scaling with "it's just a policy choice."
This is simply saying “current tech doesn’t allow for this”. True. However there are potential avenues
That will greatly increase the efficiency, and there are many companies pursuing these avenues so I don’t expect current tech to remain such forever.
The fact that you are thinking at the company level instead of an international world wide Manhattan project level should suggest how much you might not grasp the scale of the problem.
These cameras aren't even enforcement, just surveillance.
I think we all know even with the best technology in the world the police aren't gonna get off their lazy asses if your car gets stolen. This is just a way to burn money.
China city life is amazingly convenient. Trains and subways are just such an enormous quality of life boost. Add to that the relative cleanliness of having nearly zero homelessness and you’ve got something very compelling.
I will say we are winning in accessibility. China doesn’t have much of a ramp game
I wonder if you max out your options in China. It seems the Party is suspicious of ambition and high profile winners. I'm sure you can live comfortably, but there's a ceiling.
That’s not relevant to normal people. If you’re a billionaire with aspirations of power then it’s probably good there’s a ceiling. Sure beats having Elon randomly firing your public servants while high on ketamine.
Star athletes really hate being told they can't score more than 10 goals in a season because it's unfair to the other weaker players. The players will either leave to go play somewhere else, or they become weaker players themselves.
Why would a country want to welcome a psychopath whose goal is to make lots of money and wield political power that results from the money. I'm sure they would be happier with just as psychopathic people who make a bit less money but don't have aspirations of running the country from their secret bunker.
Reductive tropes?OP is pointing out a serious flaw in US federal spending. Namely our lack of spending on healthcare and our intensive spending on killing people from a distance
The federal govt spent about 2.6-2.8 trillion dollars[1] on healthcare in 2025 - including Medicare, Medicaid, ACA subsidies, VA/DoD health and federal employee benefits). In what world is that "lack of spending" ?
Universal healthcare is cheaper than our system of healthcare by a factor of 2 (comparing other OECD countries). If we raised taxes and implemented universal healthcare we’d save about $1T a year.
Cost isn’t the relevant factor, it’s politics. Or more accurately, naked bribery that we, for some insane reason, call “lobbying”.
> You must unfactor the European models getting subsidized by the current US model.
But they don't. This is clearly a pro-insurer talking point. Europe just negotiates on a state based level so therefore is able to negotiate better prices.
Medicare also negotiates on a state based level and represents more people than most European countries.
Right now the US governments collectively spend more than most European countries per capita on health care. The states and Feds. Totally exclusive of the private market spending. Expanding Medicare/Medicaid may be great for other reasons but does not solve the underlying cost problems in the US.
> but does not solve the underlying cost problems in the US.
sure but neither does blaming the EU for its healthcare system as some odd mental gymnastics into twisting it into a rationale about why universal healthcare "isn't possible" in the US.
Its a choice the US makes, while creating huge deficits fighting pointless wars at the same time.
Hypothetically, the amount of money that could be negotiated away is something like the sum of net incomes of US pharma/med device/insurance/healthcare, which is something like $100 billion annually. which sounds like a lot but it's only about 2% of annual $5+ trillion spend. You can't negotiate prices to be lower than the associated costs, the companies will just close up shop instead of being forced to take a loss.
At the end of the day, the fundamental drivers of high healthcare costs are (a) high labor costs of high-skilled doctors, pharmaceutical researchers, etc. (b) high cost of procuring land and construction of new hospitals in major metro areas. The first requires you to fix education first so that doctors etc. do not need to take out and later pay back what can now easily exceed $500k in combined tuition and living expenses. The second is politically unpalatable.
Because currently the working population pays what is effectively a tax for health insurance. I pay over $450 a month for a family plan, and that's cheap and subsidized AND I need to pay for copays/deductible/coinsurance.
So taxes could go up $5k/yr but if I got health insurance, I'm better off.
The savings would take longer to realize because they come from better contracts, better preventative care, increased screenings etc.
Healthcare Spending in the US is split across private and public expenditure. Under universal healthcare the public would pay more, but net spending would decrease.
Venezuela is undergoing tremendous freedom and hope. My fellow Venezuelans and I are super grateful for the well-planned, surgical mission of the US. They can have all the oil they want and help restore our industries in exchange for their financial benefit and partnership, which is the most recent track record.
Every Iranian I know has the same sentiment right now. Feeling very conflicted in that 1) their country is being attacked, and 2) thankful that the oppressive regime is being destroyed. Cautiously optimistic about the future.
I can’t see how these 1st party products can compete against open source. Why would anyone chose a shit proprietary solution when the free one is better
Stephen Miller is a racist xenophobe. If you aren’t a white “westerner” (or the “help”) he wants you out. And shockingly currently has the power to do so, since we’re run by the incel administration
It doesn’t make sense from a national security perspective actually.
A better plan would be to encourage skilled immigration and offer compelling benefits and stability like family visas, free movement, and so on. That way, the best people would make their contributions to science and society here. It’s actually a masterstroke because it deprives other countries of their best people.
The current administration is filled with weak men and therefore chose policies that look “strong” but are actually rooted in personal insecurity
It’s not even particularly expensive relative to GDP.
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