RE: Why is Nuclear Fusion Not Yet a Reality?
Interesting reflection on the role of greed in all this.
As one of the commentators says, there's been for years an European-funded effort to develop a commercial fusion reactor. There is a public "agency" (think NASA) called F4E (Fusion for Energy) located in Barcelona that oversees the efforts to build the ITER in France, on the Rhône valley at Cadarache, near a town called Saint-Paul-lez-Durance. If you go with Google Maps, the zone where it is being built is pixelized on purpose.
But... Europe doesn't have oil, is a big oil importer and the oil and gas lobby is not very powerful. So why hasn't Europe managed a commercial fusion reactor yet?
Here is where one reasonable hypothesis would be that, while too much greed inhibits progress, "no greed at all" is not necessarily good either. Because if you employ public servants to advance the science and industry, they will soon notice that
- whatever mistakes they make are held against them and harm their careers
- whereas whatever successes they score change not much because the merit is diluted by the "collective culture" (everybody contributed) and there are no bonuses to be had ...
So the safest choice is to ... not do much - if you don't do much you won't make mistakes at least. Public servants working in Barcelona and Cadarache get their salaries month after month whether the fusion reactor succeeds or not. ... so why take the risk of a botched launch or an accident?
So pure greed is not good.
But the key is to understand that if pure "A" (say greed) is BAD, it doesn't necessarily imply that "Not A" (say communism) is GOOD.
Interesting perspective, @lux-witness. I think the hesitation that you speak about, regarding moving forward to the latter stages of innovation, definitely exists and perhaps it plays a larger role in postponing technological progress than many, or even most, of us would presume.
It's a bit unfortunate that the general population is so often at the mercy of the big risk-takers (the guys and gals with "big balls") when it comes to creating more optimal ways of living but it certainly seems to be the general way of things in this world, particularly when we consider innovations in technology/ science.
Here's to hoping that there's a man or woman out there with the right combination of intelligence and courage to go all the way through with this experiment in creating a safer and more efficient from of energy production. History warns us not to hold our breath, but it appears that we're FINALLY nearing a viable product that can be scaled world-wide.