In 1977, I completed my masters project in civil engineering at Illinois on power generating economics, emphasizing nuclear power but covering other major technologies too.  It showed that, in general, nukes weren’t then the life-cycle least-cost choice.  Clean coal was.
Ironically, a paper I presented at an American Nuclear Society meeting summarizing the nuclear/coal comparison won an award as the best student paper on power generating economics.  Even though I was already known as a leader of the environmental and consumer opposition to Illinois electric utilities’ proposed nuke plants and rate increases.
I dropped out of grad school because that study led to a job as a Commissioner’s Senior Advisor at the California Energy Commission.  It also fueled a career as an expert witness on utilities, energy, economics, finance and policy.  With power generating economics being my first major area of expertise, I accumulated small partial credit over two decades helping stop a dozen nuclear units proposed around the country.
Today, I tell folks that, if there were an organization named Former Nuclear Opponents for the Resuscitation of the Fission Option, I’d be founder and president.  How’d I get from there to here?
Even though I was politically active in utility and energy matters, I remained a serious objective analyst, essential for an expert witness.  In particular, I studied closely the costs of nuclear plants, which were increasing in the 1970s and 1980s at stunning and sustained rates.  Some other very good analysts were also studying that problem, and often testifying for utilities opposite me.
I proposed the hypothesis that regulation was increasingly requiring mitigation of environmental and public health and safety externalities of the technology.  The costs were being internalized.  In a sense, that was correct.  But it missed two fundamental points.
In 1984, as the principal economist at the California Public Utilities Commission, I toured the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant, then nearing completion, as I was preparing my proposals for ratemaking treatment of that plant.  In nearly every corner of the building, I saw a jumble of structural beams and other elements that looked like a mess.
I asked about that, and the engineers explained that the building had originally been designed and built to a 0.35g earthquake lateral acceleration specification.  However, during construction, they learned that a major fault was closer to the plant and shallower than previously thought.  So, federal regulators required them to retrofit the building to 0.85g standards.  Thus, the mess.
Retrofit rang a bell for me.  In 1973, as an assistant engineer at the City of Urbana, the crusty old public works director told me the environmental and other amenities I wanted to see in our neighborhoods were cheap and easy.  I was stunned; he always seemed like Dr. No on those matters.  But he explained that 100-year storm sewers, bikeways, underground utility lines, etc. were easy if they were designed into the subdivision from the start.  The problem with putting them in existing neighborhoods is that retrofit is very difficult and extremely costly.
I also further considered cost internalization processes upon returning to graduate school at Stanford in 1987.  I learned the key principle of regulation is that one should increase mitigation requirements (such as reduced radiation levels) until the benefit from the last increment of mitigation (such as greater reduction of emissions) exactly equals its cost.
Since costs of each increment of control or mitigation rise as more stringent levels are required and the value of benefits fall as mitigation levels approach 100 percent, controls added up to that equality point produce net social benefits.  Beyond that point, the social costs exceed the social benefits of each measure, and thus those measures are socially wasteful.
But American environmental, public health and safety regulation don’t adhere to this fundamental principle.  Instead, requirements are often set to technically achievable levels, regardless of whether they are economic.  This problem is extreme for nukes because they have a long design and construction period – and regulators require retrofit late in the construction process to new standards adopted during construction.
The combination of excessive standards and retrofit convinced me that nukes would be economic (and environmentally beneficial) if we got public policy right.  More next time.
Ron Knecht, MS, JD & PE(CA), has served Nevadans as state controller, a higher education regent, economist, college teacher and legislator.  Contact him at RonKnecht@aol.com. 
Ron Knecht

775-882-2935
775-220-6128
 
www.RonKnecht.net

​Editors note: This article was written by the late Orlis Trone in March, 2009. It is as pertinent today as it was back then, so we are reprinting it.

America’s institutions of learning OUGHT to be the sanctuary of academic freedom, where the principle of “the free flow of ideas” reigns supreme and the mind is esteemed as inviolable. Sadly, however, and to the detriment of America as a free nation, the freethought-killing pestilence of socialist ideology has established absolute power over the nation’s academic delivery system, and has done to it what absolute power does, corrupted public education ABSOLUTELY. The socialist take-over of the schooling of America has altered the objective of the classroom from education to “RE-EDUCATION,” the goal of which is to inculcate in students an allegiance to socialism and a loathing for American culture. Before our eyes, we are witnessing an ideological mind-grab by way of academic indoctrination. Radical professors like Ward Churchill, who despise everything that this country stands for, are indicting America by criminalizing American history, that is, by rewriting it to read like a “rap sheet.” It is through the reeducation of their students that socialist instructors aim to reinvent America as a socialist society. Freedom of speech was the first casualty of socialism on campus. Since its advocates attained dominance there, they have declared academic censorship against all expressions of pro-American opinion. Any student who attempts to defy their directive is subjected to ferocious acts of “in-your-face” intimidation and is hounded into silence under withering assaults of socialist derision. The title of David Horowitz’ book, “One-Party Classroom,”—written specifically to oppose the foregoing state of affairs—captures the picture perfectly. The academic years of life are the anchoring years of thought-formation, when students are gathering and assembling the contents of their learning into values to live by. That is why the mind-masters of socialism see the campus as “made to order” for the implantation of socialist sentiments. The cadre of political activists they indoctrinate on campus, in turn, indoctrinate “the masses.” The masses, that virtually shoulder-lifted Barack Obama up to the pinnacle of political power, serve to warn that the pestilence of socialism has metastasized from the classroom out into every nook and cranny of American society. But be assured that socialist ideologues are not resting on the laurels of their conquest of the campus. Rather, they are now working to stir up “class consciousness” in the mood of the masses, and to parlay that mood into political authority over the life of every American citizen. Every Republican needs to understand that the greater causal agent of our recent defeat was THE MASSES, the progenies of socialist indoctrination. For that reason—and for the survival of our two-party system—we must reinstate the sovereignty of academic freedom so that the principle of “THE FREE FLOW OF IDEAS” will, once again, reign supreme in the classrooms of America—from grammar school to high school to college. 

​The web site of Nevada Humanities (NH), a nonprofit institution that receives substantial public monies and federal tax exemptions, emphasizes its commitment to equity:
“Nevada Humanities is committed to equity and inclusion in everything we do.  Nevada Humanities believes that diversity, equity, empathy, respect, connection, and participation are the building blocks to a just and thriving society.  We are committed to the equitable treatment of all people in every aspect of our organization and its activities, and in our understanding of who participates in – and has access to – the humanities. “
By including equity among diversity, empathy, etc. and referencing participation and access of all people, the statement is clearly political, not academic.  And it favors equal outcomes, not the common definition of equity as fairness of process, opportunity, standards, etc.  That is, in fact, now the case for many social activist groups and legal and academic usages, not just NH.
The Merriam Webster Dictionary defines equity primarily as: “justice according to natural law or right[,] specifically: freedom from bias or favoritism.”  There are two secondary meanings.  First, financial equity related to money, property, risk interest, common stocks, etc.  Second, a system of law that supplements, aids or overrides common and statutory law.
Another definition comes from Microsoft’s Bing: “the quality of being fair and impartial.”  It also has similar and short versions of the common financial and legal traditions.  The financial and legal traditions reflect the primary meaning of justice according to natural law or right and according to freedom from bias or favoritism – that is, fairness..
So, the primary and secondary meanings of the term remain what we thought they were and have been for 700 years.  However, progressives, who increasingly have taken over academe (including law schools), jurisprudence, the nonprofit sector and much public policy, have long engaged for their own special-interest purposes in concerted broad efforts to shift the meaning of the term and others ultimately to their opposites.
That’s rhetorical abuse, including terms like “social justice”, “sustainability” and even “the public interest” in the mouths of progressives.
In the legal realm, Robert Longley, with over 30 years in municipal government and urban planning, argues:
“Equality refers to scenarios in which all segments of society have the same levels of opportunity and support.  Equity extends the concept of equality to include providing varying levels of support based on individual need or ability.”


This statement shows expressly the propensity of progressives and other leftists to conceive of society, governance and law in terms of identity groups – “segments of society” – plus human activity and transactions as being between such identity groups, not individuals or firms.  In short, it’s purely political.
It also focuses on activity, relations and transactions as generally mediated or conducted by government, with the assumption that government should control production, distribution, consumption and nearly everything else.  It expressly hints at the Marxist principle of from each according to his ability to each according to his need.
Sadly, with the rot that has taken over academe and the appointment of Clinton and Obama judges, this very perverse mischief and destructive nonsense has gotten traction in academic law and jurisprudence.  A 2016 paper from the Stanford Social Innovation Review shows a similar distortion has become endemic in some philanthropy and public health dogma.
Almost all progressive projects have used long-term disingenuous attempts to twist fundamental concepts to support their goals.  Their goals are in fact predatory on the real public interest of maximizing aggregate human wellbeing and fairness among individuals.
As I have written before, and contrary to the collectivists, history shows the following promote human wellbeing and fairness: individualism; the rule of law; constitutionally limited government; separation of powers between national, regional and local units; separation of functional powers at each level of government; individual sovereignty and personal liberty; individual rights, not group entitlements; strong property rights; and high levels of economic freedom.
NH’s web site details how its mission evolved over 50 years from a meritorious focus on classical academic subjects of history, philosophy and literature to political activism.  Groups like NH are entitled to their views and pursuit of them, but not to public dollars to support their politics, any more than, say, libertarians.
Ron Knecht, MS, JD & PE(CA), has served Nevadans as state controller, a higher education regent, economist, college teacher and legislator.  Contact him at RonKnecht@aol.com.

Ron Knecht

775-882-2935
775-220-6128
 
www.RonKnecht.net