We Homo Sapiens tend to think that we are masters of our domain, and in many respects we are. But I have concluded there are some things that are simply beyond the present powers of humans to implement safely and fairly. For those things, the stakes are too high, the risks are too great, and our social systems are too weak. The product of those factors inevitably leads to disasters.
Nuclear power - disasters on a large scale. Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Fukushima. What’s next? Nuclear power is like playing with the ultimate fire. There are two main problems with nuclear power today. First, I don’t believe that the economics of operating a nuclear power plant will support the implementation of a truly safe design (if in fact one exists). Second, our political and legal systems are incapable of ensuring that a safe design would be implemented properly and that the resulting plant would be operated according to prescribed standards. There is too much money involved and money corrupts everything. The regulators are in the pocket of the industry and are toothless, which means regulations are both weak and weakly enforced. Greedy contractors and owners look for ways to cut costs and understaffed, underfunded regulators (because taxpayers are cheap, too) are incapable of discovering their shortcuts and mistakes, or of forcing corrections if they are discovered. The volatile mix means that a disaster of epic proportions is waiting to happen at every nuclear power plant.
The death penalty - disasters on a small scale. Justice derives its legitimacy from fairness. I’m convinced there is no justice system in the world that is capable of implementing the death penalty fairly. The problem, again, is money. How many rich people get the death penalty? In the US, virtually none. They have the resources to hire the best lawyers and bring the most pressure to bear on the (understaffed, underfunded) government. The death penalty is thus visited disproportionately on the poor. Even if everyone sentenced to death “deserved” it in some cosmic sense, it would be unfair because many other rich people who similarly deserved it are spared because they can essentially buy their way out of it. But far worse are the many people wrongly convicted and sentenced because they can’t afford to hire a competent lawyer. [I’m proud to say that my law school, Northwestern University, has established the Center on Wrongful Convictions (http://www.law.northwestern.edu/cwc/), founded by my classmate Larry Marshall (http://www.law.stanford.edu/directory/profile/40/), and that they have to date successfully overturned 13 such wrongful convictions that had resulted in death sentences. But the fact that the Center exists only supports my point.] If the legal system is incapable of administering a penalty fairly across the entire population of wrongdoers, and is incapable of administering the ultimate penalty with virtual 100% assurance of a proper conviction, then that penalty should not be part of the legal system.
My views on both nuclear power and the death penalty have changed over time. My original support for both them was predicated on beliefs that people generally conduct their affairs in good faith and that the justice system (in America, at least) could be relied on to achieve a fair result. Sadly, I’ve learned that when the stakes are high both of those beliefs have turned out to be wrong. The instinct for greed is overwhelming in big business and the only check on that instinct is correspondingly powerful regulation. When the regulation isn’t up to the task, bad things tend to happen (see, Global Financial Crisis). And the American justice system, which I still believe is the best in the world, is capable in theory of administering the death penalty fairly and correctly, but is incapable in practice. Thus, I believe nuclear power must be phased out as rapidly as possible and the death penalty should be abolished immediately.
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The random views of Scott Kissinger