Dale.Amon@H.GP.CS.CMU.EDU (04/01/89)
> if cold fusion becomes the crack-cocaine of energy production? I can imagine > a thousand fanatics in 750 terrorist cells making an H-bomb in their kitchen. This could well be true in a way you are not considering. Attempts to force individuals into a particular mold has graudally pushed people from relatively safe marijuana from known sources to more and more potent (and more easily smuggled) drugs from unknown and dangerous sources. Likewise, with a technology this simple, attempts to prevent its use will lead to a new growth industry for organized crime. They'll be selling D2O, platinum and palladium right along with the crack and assault guns and everything else that governments try to stop. And like crack, the jusry rigged home built generators will kill people and have a vast social cost that would not occur if the thing were out in the open and usable within a reasonable legal system. If people want something and it is possible for it to be supplied, (ie it exists or can be made to exist) it WILL be supplied, regardless of the size of the effort made to stop it. The price will rise until it is sufficient to counter the enforcement efforts with arms, bribery, overthrow and control of small governments and corruption of large ones. The social cost of stopping people from doing what they want to do will almost invariably be far higher than to let them alone and create institutions able to deal with problems that are open to inspection rather than hidden in an underground. If this fusion technique is for real, it is going to spread faster than a fission reaction, and there ain't NOBODY going to be able to stop it. Those who do will get squashed flat. When it's steamboat time you steam, and if you don't get your canoe out of the way in time, you better know how to swim.