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I agree, but it doesn't seem any more obvious than the same being true for transport, healthcare, decent education etc and government funding for those is immen

I agree, but it doesn't seem any more obvious than the same being true for transport, healthcare, decent education etc and government funding for those is immensely unpopular with a large portion of the population. Edit: sure, I'll narrow this to just housing and transport.

brigadier132 2y ago
It's much more obvious than education. For education, what they are educated in matters. For healthcare, it's much harder to fundamentally lower the cost. Ie for energy, we know if we build a ton of nuclear reactors, wind turbines, and solar we could have practically free energy. It's just about increasing supply. Health care does not have that easy lever. For transport and housing, I agree it's analogous. If we lower the cost of housing and transportation dramatically then everything will also get cheaper.
- MostlyStable 2y ago
  Education also has the problem that, to all evidence, we don't know what to use more money for. There does not seem to be any correlation across US school districts with dollars per student and educational outcomes. No one disagrees that "better" education would be great. We, as a society, just don't seem to know how to get better education, but just throwing more money at the problem doesn't appear to be working. You can argue about how "cost effective" nuclear is, but at the end of the day, if you spend money, you know, for a fact, that you will have more energy than you did before. Maybe you could have gotten more MW/$ with a different technology, but you will still be ahead of where you were before you spent the money.
- insane_dreamer 2y ago
  > For healthcare, it's much harder to fundamentally lower the cost. I strongly disagree. Compared to the rest of the OECD we have much higher costs (3x OECD average!) and worse health outcomes (life expectancy 4 yrs < OECD average). https://www.oecd.org/unitedstates/health-at-a-glance-United-States-EN.pdf https://www.oecd.org/unitedstates/health-at-a-glance-United-... If they can do it, obviously we could do. There's just no political or social will. Everyone complains but no one is willing to make the radical changes (i.e., Medicare for all), or lifestyle and environmental* changes (i.e., to combat obesity, which costs us $150-200 billion/year in health care costs). https://stop.publichealth.gwu.edu/sites/g/files/zaxdzs4356/files/2022-06/fast-facts-costs-of-obesity.pdf https://stop.publichealth.gwu.edu/sites/g/files/zaxdzs4356/f... * (availability/affordability of healthy food)
mrshadowgoose 2y ago
Strong disagree. Energy use irrevocably underpins absolutely every human activity. The other items mentioned do not. Don't take this as a disagreement that education, healthcare, etc aren't crucial. They certainly are, but not to the same degree.

brigadier132 2y ago

It's much more obvious than education. For education, what they are educated in matters. For healthcare, it's much harder to fundamentally lower the cost. Ie for energy, we know if we build a ton of nuclear reactors, wind turbines, and solar we could have practically free energy. It's just about increasing supply. Health care does not have that easy lever. For transport and housing, I agree it's analogous. If we lower the cost of housing and transportation dramatically then everything will also get cheaper.

MostlyStable 2y ago
Education also has the problem that, to all evidence, we don't know what to use more money for. There does not seem to be any correlation across US school districts with dollars per student and educational outcomes. No one disagrees that "better" education would be great. We, as a society, just don't seem to know how to get better education, but just throwing more money at the problem doesn't appear to be working. You can argue about how "cost effective" nuclear is, but at the end of the day, if you spend money, you know, for a fact, that you will have more energy than you did before. Maybe you could have gotten more MW/$ with a different technology, but you will still be ahead of where you were before you spent the money.
insane_dreamer 2y ago
> For healthcare, it's much harder to fundamentally lower the cost. I strongly disagree. Compared to the rest of the OECD we have much higher costs (3x OECD average!) and worse health outcomes (life expectancy 4 yrs < OECD average). https://www.oecd.org/unitedstates/health-at-a-glance-United-States-EN.pdf https://www.oecd.org/unitedstates/health-at-a-glance-United-... If they can do it, obviously we could do. There's just no political or social will. Everyone complains but no one is willing to make the radical changes (i.e., Medicare for all), or lifestyle and environmental* changes (i.e., to combat obesity, which costs us $150-200 billion/year in health care costs). https://stop.publichealth.gwu.edu/sites/g/files/zaxdzs4356/files/2022-06/fast-facts-costs-of-obesity.pdf https://stop.publichealth.gwu.edu/sites/g/files/zaxdzs4356/f... * (availability/affordability of healthy food)

mrshadowgoose 2y ago

Strong disagree. Energy use irrevocably underpins absolutely every human activity. The other items mentioned do not. Don't take this as a disagreement that education, healthcare, etc aren't crucial. They certainly are, but not to the same degree.