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Comment Re:"One time" (Score 1) 186

No it hasn't. People come and go all the time. Notice how the claim is that many are going to Florida... Because they are retiring.

The same claim was made about the UK, but turned out to be based on two (2) LinkedIn posts by people claiming to be millionaires and claiming to be leaving the UK because of the tax burden, extrapolated out to tens of thousands through some of the most bullshit maths you have ever seen.

Comment Re:In which 3rd world country can we store the was (Score 1) 22

You are being very selective with your figures there. The French nuclear industry produces 13,000 m2 of radioactive waste every year (from your own Wikipedia link), and while most of it is not high level, much of it is intermediate level, and it all needs to be stored carefully for the long term. It's not cost effective to separate it out and clean it up individually either.

The proposed storage site is 600 hectares, considerably larger than a modest single story house. It's a major industrial site.

It may be well designed and safe, but it's certainly not small or economically competitive.

Comment Re:Make it stop (Score 1) 22

Chernobyl demonstrated the fundamental problem with nuclear power: Trust.

You have to trust the designers, the people checking the design, the plant operator. They have all been shown to do a poor job more than once. No country has figured out how to fix that.

Of course the same is true for everything else, except that the consequences of a catastrophic wind turbine failure are a lot less severe than a catastrophic nuclear accident. Don't take my word for it, ask why insurance companies are unwilling to insure it. Fukushima is on course for half a trillion Euros to clean up, not counting he economic cost, and Japan is supposed to be a modern, well regulated, highly skilled country that should be able to do this sort of thing safely.

It's irrelevant now anyway, because unless a country needs nuclear for some other reason (primarily to keep nuclear weapons and naval vessels around), the economics of it compared to the alternatives has doomed it.

Comment Re: Thinking Too Small (Score 1) 110

In Japan they can temporarily suspend business operations for corporations found guilty of crimes. Staff must still be paid, but they can't do any work. It's an interesting sanction because it obviously hurts financially, but it also makes it very clear to every other company doing business with them that they did wrong, and gives competitors an opportunity.

Comment Re:Delusional (Score 1) 110

Your numbers are way off. Anthropic is worth nearly $1t, or rather its stock is. So 50% of that goes to the sovereign wealth fund, $500bn. So it would be 14 Anthropic sized companies to reach $7t, and that's a long term goal, not day one.

$7 trillion with a 5% return would be about $20k per US citizen.

Comment Re:"One time" (Score 1) 186

They always threaten to do that, but then don't. If you look at places with billionaire taxes, if anything they end up with more wealthy people because they become nicer places to live.

Unrealized wealth is the other big scam they use. They can access and leverage that money, but you can't tax it because it's not "real". Meanwhile plebs like you get to pay full rate.

Comment Re:In which 3rd world country can we store the was (Score 1) 22

It probably won't happen anyway. RR are getting a lot of money for R&D, but nobody (including RR) has figured out how to make these things viable. Too expensive, worse fuel and waste problems than traditional reactors, and they still need most of the same infrastructure.

Even if they do somehow overcome all the issues, by the time they are ready to start delivering they will be completely irrelevant anyway. The share rate at which renewables and storage are advancing means nothing else has much of a future, beyond niche applications.

Comment Re:Sojust like every other tech growth story (Score 1) 197

Most of the R&D in China is done with private money. The government does contribute, but it's more long term guarantees than it is cash.

In a democracy, policy can change ever 4-5 years. Look at the US, it's been alternating between pushing renewables to banning them to pushing them to banning them again, over the last 4 administrations. If you were a company developing renewable technology, would you have faith that your investment in R&D wouldn't be banned by the time it reaches market? Doesn't even have to be a ban, just an administration that is hostile to your business, and an electorate that would rather roll coal than see a wind turbine 20km off-shore.

The Chinese government said that EVs were the future and it would ensure that future came quickly and stuck around. It made sure the infrastructure was installed, and promoted them to consumers as a way to reduce pollution. Loans for development were made available. And it stuck to that for the long term, not just the next 4-5 years.

Democracy can do that too, but not in a two party system. Look at European democracies where coalition governments are the norm, where the system is designed to prevent any one party gaining complete power. Planning is longer term, and there is more certainty in future policy direction.

Comment Re:Sojust like every other tech growth story (Score 5, Interesting) 197

From Europe we look at Americans that way too. Long hours, ridiculously little holiday entitlement (I just booked flights for my six week break over the new year, and I've still got time off to spare), and a billionaire-Epstien ruling class who live in luxury. Only they also get pollution, mass deportations, bankrupted by healthcare costs, school shootings, and so on.

China is far from perfect, but it also doesn't compare that badly.

Comment Re:I just had to replace a phone for a family memb (Score 1) 49

The usual way of fixing it is to designate those products as critically important and put in a mandate for making them available. Take water, for example. Data centres need it, humans need it, farms need it. If it was just sold to the highest bidder we would be in trouble.

I'm hoping that Chinese manufacturers step up to increase supply, because they will be less concerned about demand drying up. They have both a rapidly expanding domestic market, and the longer term goal to out-compete rivals on price. CXMT is unfortunately allocating a lot of production to AI as well, but they aren't the only ones. Hopefully NAND flash production also ramps up very quickly.

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