Constitutional authority for developing technology / health care / soc. security

[This post is a continuation of an email conversation between my dad Steve and friend Jason .. comments encouraged.]

Interesting discussion :) Long-winded. I'll contribute some more steam before we switch to nuclear.

Jason, your idea about the limitations of the constitution is quite interesting, particularly with regard to energy legislation. A quick read of the constitution reveals that there is no constitutional mandate for our government to develop/maintain/expand our transportation system except perhaps "To establish ... post Roads" -- Art. I, Sect 8. Yet the DoT is a pretty well-funded department. Likewise, the DoE gets a fair chunk of change. Why? It's a good question. Maybe private industry could handle it. Maybe not. For instance, could private industry have collaborated to put together our interstate freeway system? I seriously doubt it. Private industry did the work, but the government orchestrated it, and used taxpayer money to pay for it. Likewise, solving our energy problems will likely require government orchestration. We'll probably need some pretty nifty power and energy transmission infrastructure including conduits for electricity and for "portable power" for autos (e.g. hydrogen).

Sometimes nations/civilizations/organisms can get an upper hand by having big common projects. Think militaries. Think ocean exploration in the 14/15/16th centuries. Think space program (but don't think so hard that your start to wonder what the hell it's done for us so far... mostly i jest .. if you've considered it much, you recognize several crucial benefits that space has brought us). I think state-sponsored technology development is appropriate. How one would write a constitutional amendment to properly sanction it is another question!

In the opening passage of Common Sense, Paine says that government is a "necessary evil", negatively constraining society's vices. Meanwhile, society itself provides the positive influence, "uniting our affections". What you are suggesting (and I expanded on above) is that gov't should be in the business of "positive influence". We also obviously need to worry about gov't properly constraining society's vices. This is where we clearly need corruption control.

Medical care and social security (which is in desperate need of being renamed "managed savings" or being re-directed to being a safety net program) are in the same boat as energy technology when it comes down to it I guess.

On the sub-crime crisis: 1) if the gov't is going to bail out these lenders, they should regulate. 2) gov't shouldn't bail out the lenders. I think I'm with you Jason, voting for #2.

Who is this physicist who told you about the nuclear fuel problem? He/she is right that we have a problem if we don't effectively use fuel. As I recall, if we used all of the available energy in uranium ore, we'd have plenty of power for centuries even if energy consumption were to go up 10x. Using all available energy would involve something quite different than what the French do which is a joke compared to what i'll call true nuke fuel squeezing. French squeeze less than 5% of available energy in fuel. Standard US nukes get only 1%. You can squeeze out nearly 100% of energy with breeder reactor. Breeders are expensive because it's expensive to make them safe. Proliferation is another concern and is a concern for any squeezing operation. But you can squeeze in a safer way using fusion as a source of neutrons (there are other possible sources too) to maintain a sub-critical reaction that uses "fast" neutrons to squeeze energy out. Look for fission-fusion hybrids hitting news in next 5-10 yrs. (physics sidenote: when you don't moderate/slow neutrons [as we do in our current "slow" neutron reactors], the characteristic time of a critical system is very very fast, making it tough [expensive, uncertain] to design a control system with an appropriately small response time).

Oh -- Nanosolar -- i hope it works! But I question their ability to get materials cheap enough to power the globe.. maybe they can tho? I really have no facts on this matter.