It’s easy (and not incorrect) to say SpaceX went a bit too far on this one - but if you’ve ever had to deal with NEPA, you can be sure that that process *also* goes too far, albeit in the opposite direction. While in Camden it was used for a direct-democratic result, in other locales (eg, all over California) it is simply used for bureaucratic stonewalling, indefinite progress-stymieing and rent-seeking.
It seems both the extreme of 100% bureaucracy and 100% corprocracy don’t provide ideal outcomes. In this case, the person or people who determine the balance… is/are the sovereign.
Absolutely. My core point isn't that regulation is always virtuous or that NEPA is perfect... it's that Starbase shows what happens when powerful actors preemptively reshape legal and political structures to eliminate public accountability altogether. The issue isn’t bureaucracy vs. efficiency, but who gets to design the rules and whether democratic mechanisms have any meaningful role in shaping major infrastructural decisions.
Agreed. Without going full polemic, if we had to boil it down, NEPA and the surrounding bureaucracy went too far in the unaccountable, illegible, mercurial direction. (I say this as an open and unapologetic direct democracy fan.) Realizing that one can only spend infinite time and money against an adversary with an infinite time horizon, SpaceX pre-emptively handled it. Without advocating for SpaceX, the way for this to not be necessary was to get control of NEPA a decade+ ago, and formalize a process that is reasonable, legible and timely. For (extreme) lack of all three, even for those opposed to SpaceX, it's hard to blame them.
Bureaucrats tend not to relinquish power once assumed no matter how counter-productive attempting to retain it becomes, so it would be reasonable to guess that the SpaceX-style oversight-obliviation trend will accelerate. If we do prefer reasonabe direct democracy, we need to police our own people and regulations---otherwise questionable faith actors will do whatever needed to realize their goals.
Many, many systems in the US (houses without door locks, public funding, highway manners, entitlements, governance) only work if everyone in the system operates in good faith. That faith is so far gone in so many domains, that we should basically expect political maneuvers like this at this point.
It’s easy (and not incorrect) to say SpaceX went a bit too far on this one - but if you’ve ever had to deal with NEPA, you can be sure that that process *also* goes too far, albeit in the opposite direction. While in Camden it was used for a direct-democratic result, in other locales (eg, all over California) it is simply used for bureaucratic stonewalling, indefinite progress-stymieing and rent-seeking.
It seems both the extreme of 100% bureaucracy and 100% corprocracy don’t provide ideal outcomes. In this case, the person or people who determine the balance… is/are the sovereign.
Absolutely. My core point isn't that regulation is always virtuous or that NEPA is perfect... it's that Starbase shows what happens when powerful actors preemptively reshape legal and political structures to eliminate public accountability altogether. The issue isn’t bureaucracy vs. efficiency, but who gets to design the rules and whether democratic mechanisms have any meaningful role in shaping major infrastructural decisions.
Agreed. Without going full polemic, if we had to boil it down, NEPA and the surrounding bureaucracy went too far in the unaccountable, illegible, mercurial direction. (I say this as an open and unapologetic direct democracy fan.) Realizing that one can only spend infinite time and money against an adversary with an infinite time horizon, SpaceX pre-emptively handled it. Without advocating for SpaceX, the way for this to not be necessary was to get control of NEPA a decade+ ago, and formalize a process that is reasonable, legible and timely. For (extreme) lack of all three, even for those opposed to SpaceX, it's hard to blame them.
Bureaucrats tend not to relinquish power once assumed no matter how counter-productive attempting to retain it becomes, so it would be reasonable to guess that the SpaceX-style oversight-obliviation trend will accelerate. If we do prefer reasonabe direct democracy, we need to police our own people and regulations---otherwise questionable faith actors will do whatever needed to realize their goals.
Many, many systems in the US (houses without door locks, public funding, highway manners, entitlements, governance) only work if everyone in the system operates in good faith. That faith is so far gone in so many domains, that we should basically expect political maneuvers like this at this point.