Billionaires Blast off

[TV and credit cards]

Bezos does not even hold any official office at Amazon,

Yeah. All he has is a chair now. What's it called? Oh yeah, Executive Chair. I'm not exactly sure what all that entails but I'll betcha he can pretty much walk up to anyone and say, "You're in my chair."

so I am not sure its warehouse workers count as his "underlings", if that's what you mean.

Correct. He has "agents". It's "agents", "subordinates", "underlings", "serviles", in that order.

In any case, that's a huge boat! But its construction, operation and upkeep is creating a lot of jobs too.

And ensure the workers' place in the afterlife.

 

[ZiprHead]

I thought Bezos was such a hard worker he wouldn't have time to go sailing, and that's why he deserved all that tax free money. Least that's the way I understood it from people here.

Somebody here was claiming billionaires should have no free time to go sailing? Where?

Also, when you pay almost $1G in federal taxes over a five year period, that is hardly "tax free money".

You might want to try reading my post again and not putting words in my mouth.

 

[none]

He has a point... amazon is worth a trillion... so I guess he paid that bill through his "federal taxes"....

 

[Harry Bosch]

He has a point... amazon is worth a trillion... so I guess he paid that bill through his "federal taxes"....

Federal income taxes are based on income not wealth.

 

[ZiprHead]

He has a point... amazon is worth a trillion... so I guess he paid that bill through his "federal taxes"....

Federal income taxes are based on income not wealth.

Thanks, Captain Obvious.

 

[lpetrich]

Has the World Finally Had a Glimpse of Jeff Bezos’s $500 Million Mega-Yacht?

The article first discussed Y721. For comparison:  Cutty Sark - a 19th cy. clipper ship preserved as a museum ship.

Displacement 2,100 tons (2,133.7 tonnes) at 20 ft (6.1 m) draught
Length
Hull: 212.5 ft (64.77 m)
LOA: 280 ft (85.34 m)
Beam 36 ft (10.97 m)

LOA = length overall

Lengths: Cutty Sark 65 m, YS 7512 75 m, Maltese Falcon 88 m, Black Pearl 107 m, Y721 125 m.

Lengths of some notable ocean liners / cruise ships: Lusitania (1907): 240 m, Titanic (1912): 269 m, Queen Mary (1936): 311 m, Symphony of the Seas (2018; current size champion): 361 m.

From the article:

However, it’s only one of two new boats for Bezos: He has also commissioned a shadow vessel called YS 7512 from builder Damen Yachts. This support ship measures 246 feet in length and accommodates 45 additional crew and guests. It will also feature a helipad and meeting space and have a vast amount of storage for Bezos’s endless number of water toys, with diving and snorkeling gear, jet and water skis, waterslides, and surfboards among the bunch. Shadow vessels are a growing phenomenon in the superyacht industry and one more extra toy that their owners want to have at the ready, says Nicholson. “You see them more and more now as an add-on to a superyacht purchase,” he says. “They’ve almost become a must.”

He should be like his warehouse workers, working all day and never getting much for his labors (sarcasm).

 

[lpetrich]

If he wants to put a lot of money into a big boat, here's a MUCH better investment for him:  Titanic II, a project to make an updated imitation of that famously ill-fated ocean liner. It has yet to start construction, but if Jeff Bezos and/or some of his fellow superyacht lovers would be willing to sacrifice their big boats, they could fund this project.

There is another Titanic replica under construction, the  Romandisea Titanic in Sichuan Province, China, far from the ocean. It will be permanently docked, and it will be a tourist attraction.

 

[ZiprHead]

Has the World Finally Had a Glimpse of Jeff Bezos’s $500 Million Mega-Yacht?

The article first discussed Y721. For comparison:  Cutty Sark - a 19th cy. clipper ship preserved as a museum ship.

Displacement 2,100 tons (2,133.7 tonnes) at 20 ft (6.1 m) draught
Length
Hull: 212.5 ft (64.77 m)
LOA: 280 ft (85.34 m)
Beam 36 ft (10.97 m)

LOA = length overall

Lengths: Cutty Sark 65 m, YS 7512 75 m, Maltese Falcon 88 m, Black Pearl 107 m, Y721 125 m.

Lengths of some notable ocean liners / cruise ships: Lusitania (1907): 240 m, Titanic (1912): 269 m, Queen Mary (1936): 311 m, Symphony of the Seas (2018; current size champion): 361 m.

From the article:

However, it’s only one of two new boats for Bezos: He has also commissioned a shadow vessel called YS 7512 from builder Damen Yachts. This support ship measures 246 feet in length and accommodates 45 additional crew and guests. It will also feature a helipad and meeting space and have a vast amount of storage for Bezos’s endless number of water toys, with diving and snorkeling gear, jet and water skis, waterslides, and surfboards among the bunch. Shadow vessels are a growing phenomenon in the superyacht industry and one more extra toy that their owners want to have at the ready, says Nicholson. “You see them more and more now as an add-on to a superyacht purchase,” he says. “They’ve almost become a must.”

He should be like his warehouse workers, working all day and never getting much for his labors (sarcasm).

Nice pair of boats for someone with such a meager income.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has had the same ‘low salary’ for decades, a little more than double the median U.S. employee’s pay

 

[lpetrich]

Rotterdam to dismantle historic bridge for Bezos superyacht

Bezos's gigantic, 430-million-euro ($485 million) yacht is too big for the iconic Koningshaven Bridge, which dates from 1878 and was rebuilt after being bombed by the Nazis in 1940 during World War II.

The shipyard building the three-masted mammoth in Alblasserdam, near Rotterdam, has asked the local council to remove the bridge's central section so it can pass through.

...
The middle section of the huge steel-girdered bridge will be removed to give enough clearance for the 40-metre (130-foot) high boat, Dutch media reported.

The process will take a few weeks and is expected to happen this summer.

Dutch Mayor Denies Plan to Dismantle Bridge for Jeff Bezos' Superyacht

• Bezos' new 417-foot megayacht is being built near Rotterdam in the Netherlands.
• Dutch media reported that a 100-year-old bridge would be dismantled so Bezos' yacht can leave port.
• The Rotterdam mayor said there's been no application yet, but Bezos would likely have to pay to dismantle it.

...
The existence of the megayacht, Y721, which is being constructed in the nearby city of Alblasserda, was first reported by the journalist Brad Stone last May. Stone reported that the yacht was costing the Amazon founder $500 million to build.

noting
Demonteren van De Hef voor superjacht Bezos tóch nog niet zeker. Aboutaleb: Geen aanvraag, dus geen besluit | Rotterdam | AD.nl

Demonteren van De Hef voor superjacht Bezos tóch nog niet zeker. Aboutaleb: Geen aanvraag, dus geen besluit

Burgemeester Aboutaleb vindt de ophef over het demonteren van De Hef, om een schip van miljardair Jeff Bezos te laten passeren, overdreven. Er is, ondanks dat eerder werd gezegd van wél, nog geen aanvraag binnen, en dus ook nog geen besluit genomen, zegt Aboutaleb.

(Google Translate)
Dismantling De Hef for superyacht Bezos not yet certain. Aboutaleb: No application, so no decision

Mayor Aboutaleb thinks the fuss about the dismantling of De Hef to allow a ship belonging to billionaire Jeff Bezos to pass is exaggerated. Despite the fact that it was said earlier, no application has been received yet, and therefore no decision has yet been made, says Aboutaleb.

The yacht's assembly shipyard is in Alblasserdam, a little bit upstream of Rotterdam.

When I learned of that, I thought "Wouldn't be easier to remove the masts or else to fold them down?" It would be much cheaper and easier than to remove the lifting part of that bridge, its center span.

 

[lpetrich]

Update from a month ago:
Rotterdam won't dismantle bridge for Jeff Bezos' super-yacht
and
Rotterdam Won’t Dismantle Bridge to Allow Jeff Bezos’ Superyacht Through - The New York Times - "The Dutch city faced an uproar as it considered dismantling a section of a 95-year-old bridge. Now the boat’s builder has decided not to apply for a permit."

From the NYPost: "It is unclear what Oceanco plans to do now that it has abandoned the option of pursuing the bridge’s dismantling."

My guess is that they will try to get the yacht out to see in some other way, like removing its three tall masts.

127m Oceanco Y721 begins transport through Dutch canals - Y721 is the yacht's construction name

Hitting the water for the first time yesterday morning in Alblasserdam, the 127 metre Oceanco Y721 has begun the journey to the yard’s Rotterdam facilities for the final stages of construction. Her three mighty masts were spotted in transit along Nieuwe Maas, and they are expected to be stepped today (August 3).

Stepped?  Mast stepping - "the process of raising the mast of a boat."

The  Nieuwe Maas ("New Meuse") is a bit of river in Rotterdam.

So that yacht's masts will likely be installed downstream of Koningshavenbrug (Koningshaven Bridge, "De Hef").

 

[lpetrich]

Watch: Jeff Bezos’s Polarizing 417-Foot Megayacht Just Made a Stealth Escape Into a Dutch Port

After causing quite the controversy, Jeff Bezos’s multimillion-dollar megaycht just made a very quiet escape.

In the wee hours of Tuesday morning, the epic $485 million vessel was towed away from Oceanco’s Alblasserdam shipyard where it was being built to a port in Rotterdam, as reported by Marine Industry News. It seems a rather anticlimactic end to the months-long “Bridgegate” saga.

Noting
WATCH: Jeff Bezos' megayacht steals away in depth of night - Marine Industry News

Hanco Bol, a local yachting enthusiast, spotted the transport in progress around 3am and posted a detailed video of the three-hour journey on YouTube.

He speculated that the alternate route was chosen “to keep the launch and transport under wraps”.

“We never saw a transport going that fast,” he wrote in the caption of the video.

noting
Jeff Bezos: Umstrittene neue Megajacht heimlich unterwegs für erste Fahrt in Rotterdam – ohne Masten - DER SPIEGEL

Jeff Bezos: Umstrittene neue Megajacht heimlich unterwegs für erste Fahrt in Rotterdam – ohne Masten - DER SPIEGEL

Streit über historische Brücke in Rotterdam

Neue Megajacht von Jeff Bezos heimlich unterwegs für erste Fahrt

In Rotterdam sollte zeitweise eine alte Brücke weichen, damit das neue Luxusschiff des Amazon-Gründers hindurchpasst. Der Plan wurde verworfen und das unfertige Schiff nun im Morgengrauen durch die Kanäle gezogen.

Google Translate with some touching up:

Jeff Bezos: Controversial new megayacht secretly on its way for first trip in Rotterdam – without masts - DER SPEGEL

Dispute over historic bridge in Rotterdam

Jeff Bezos' new mega yacht secretly on its way for first voyage

In Rotterdam, an old bridge was to be temporarily removed so that the Amazon founder's new luxury ship could pass through. The plan was discarded and the unfinished ship was now towed through the canals at dawn.

Without masts? A good way to avoid clearance problems.

 

[lpetrich]

I translated the rest of Der Spiegel's article with Google Translate, but I won't repeat it here.

So Y271's builders had to sneak that boat out of its "birthplace"?
For lack of a better word.

The video:
Jeff Bezos's 127m/ 417ft Oceanco Y721 yacht was launched today - YouTube - Aug 2

Oceanco launched the Y721 early this morning.

The 127m/ 417ft three-masted schooner got fame, not only as Holland’s largest superyacht to date, but also as the World's largest sailing yacht which was most likely built for Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

The launch of the yacht started at 1AM and at 3AM the yacht was released from the drydock. The transport to Greenport in Rotterdam started directly afterwards. Although the Noord – Nieuwe Maas direction is shorter (23 km/ 14 miles) with only two bridge openings to take, the transport went via the quitly longer Noord – Oude Maas -Nieuwe Maas direction. We never saw a transport going that fast. With an average speed of 8 knots/ 15 kph the transport arrived only 3 hours later at 6AM at Greenport even with 4 bridge openings and a total distance of 40 km/ 24 miles. Most likely Oceanco tried to keep the launch and transport under wraps (we have not seen much footage around) with this alternative direction. A Rotterdam Centre and De Hef passage would most likely brought much more attention. By the way: The De Hef bridge will stay intact as the masts will be stapped at Greenport too.

 

[lpetrich]

The yacht has a black hull and two white superstructure decks.

Jeff Bezos’s 127m/ 417ft Y721 with her masts stepped - YouTube

As you might know, Jeff Bezos’s controversial Y721 yacht arrived at Greenport in Rotterdam without her masts last Tuesday. The fore, main and mizzen mast of the 127m/ 417ft schooner were transported and stepped last week, so we took the opportunity to have a closer look at Holland’s largest yacht and the World’s largest sailing yacht by boat yesterday. Footage by The Nautical Lady & Dutch Yachting.

Stepped = installed. The boat has a bowsprit, and its yards extend aftward (backward). So it will have a  Schooner rig instead of a square rig. It did not have any aftward yards up the masts, as schooners typically do, but it did have some short side spars on the masts.

Jeff Bezos' megayacht is close to being finished — here's what it looks like up close - didn't have anything new.

 

[lpetrich]

Elon Musk's Flawed Vision and the Dangers of Trusting Billionaires | Time

Elon Musk is a singular visionary driving humanity toward a better future—or at least that’s what he and his admirers want us to believe.

Like about Tesla Motors electric cars and SpaceX rockets.

As his profile has been elevated by relentless media attention, Musk has become the figure everyone was looking for: a powerful man who sold the fantasy that faith in the combined power of technology and the market could change the world without needing a role for the government. (Just don’t talk about the billions in subsidies that kept his companies going over the years.)

Then discussing Tesla Motors and its problems. Like supplying raw materials for its batteries: lithium and cobalt.

In 2019, Tesla was named in a lawsuit over the deaths of children in the Democratic Republic of Congo who died mining cobalt at sites owned by British mining company Glencore. Despite talking about cobalt-free batteries, Musk proceeded to sign a deal with Glencore in 2020 to supply its Berlin and Shanghai factories. The lawsuit was dismissed in November 2021, but in April of this year, an investigation from Global Witness found that Tesla was among a number of companies that may be getting minerals from mines using child workers in the DRC.

Working conditions:

t may be easy to overlook consequences that exist at the other end of Tesla’s supply chain, but these problems extend deep into the heart of its manufacturing operation. Black workers dubbed the company’s Fremont factory “the plantation” after being subject to racist abuse and a number of women described sexual harassment at the facility as “nightmarish.” Meanwhile, workers at the Nevada Gigafactory are suing after a mass firing of over 500 people, following reports that Musk praised workers in Tesla’s Shanghai factory for “burning the 3 am oil” by working 12-hour shifts and six-day weeks while sleeping on the factory floor.

The cars themselves:

To top it off, Tesla’s customers are also being put in harm’s way. Its vehicles have slammed into highway medians, emergency vehicles, transport trucks, and more, while using its supposedly self-driving Autopilot feature. Musk continually misleads the public about how safe and capable the system really is, even as the U.S. traffic safety regulator is poised to recall hundreds of thousands of vehicles. And Tesla is just the tip of the iceberg.

Seems like self-driving systems will have a long way to go before they can be considered reasonably reliable.

 

[lpetrich]

Elon Musk:

He has a history of floating false solutions to the drawbacks of our over-reliance on cars that stifle efforts to give people other options. The Boring Company was supposed to solve traffic, not be the Las Vegas amusement ride it is now. As I’ve written in my book, Musk admitted to his biographer Ashlee Vance that Hyperloop was all about trying to get legislators to cancel plans for high-speed rail in California—even though he had no plans to build it.

Several years ago, Musk said that public transit was “a pain in the ass” where you were surrounded by strangers, including possible serial killers, to justify his opposition. But the futures sold to us by Musk and many others in Silicon Valley didn’t just suit their personal preferences. They were designed to meet business needs, and were the cause of just as many problems as they claimed to solve—if not more.

noting
Road to Nowhere: What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong about the Future of Transportation

Road to Nowhere exposes the flaws in Silicon Valley’s vision of the future: ride-hailing services such as Uber and Lyft to take us anywhere; electric cars to make them ‘green’; and automation to ensure transport is cheap and ubiquitous. Such promises are implausible and potentially dangerous.

As Paris Marx shows, these technological visions are a threat to our ideas of what a society should be. Electric cars are not a silver bullet for sustainability, and autonomous vehicles won’t guarantee road safety. There will not be underground tunnels to eliminate traffic congestion, and micromobility services will not replace car travel any sooner than we will see the arrival of the long-awaited flying car.

In response, Marx offers a vision for a more collective way of organizing transportation systems that considers the needs of poor, marginalized, and vulnerable people. The book argues that rethinking mobility can be the first step in a broader reimagining of how we design and live in our future cities. We must create streets that allow for social interaction and conviviality. We need reasons to get out of our cars and to use public means of transit determined by community needs rather than algorithmic control. Such decisions should be guided by the search for quality of life rather than for profit.

 

[lpetrich]

Elon Musk’s Biggest Boondoggle - New York magazine

His pitch deck — first shown during an April 2017 TED talk — depicted a city block where Teslas could pull into parking spaces and be lowered underground on shiny silver lifts that could also, somehow, propel the vehicles along tracks through cavernous subterranean spaces. The animation then zoomed out to reveal hundreds of Teslas, all traveling along the familiar curves of freeways, only underground, and navigating directly to their destination at top speeds, as Musk claimed, of 130 mph.

Musk has never once proposed a mere tunnel. What he has proposed are infinite tunnels, a “3-D network of tunnels to alleviate congestion.” What Musk was officially selling the Sepulveda Pass audience was dozens and dozens of tunnels, stacked in layers below the city like a human habitrail. “Highways are at the outer limit of their capacity,” said Musk, as Gary the snail oozed beside him in agreement. “For tunnels, you can have hundreds of lanes. There’s no real limit.” No one that night asked how, say, building ten lanes of far more expensive tunnels would be any different than building ten lanes of freeway, which is what L.A. had already tried right there on the 405, spending $1.3 billion in 2013 to add one extra lane in each direction. It ended up luring so many more cars that it made rush-hour travel times even longer.

While EM had some success in selling his proposals to Los Angeles officials, he failed in Chicago. But all that his Boring Company succeeded in building was a short test tunnel near SpaceX headquarters, and it was not very impressive. Further efforts were halted by NIMBY's.

His only operational tunnels are under the Las Vegas Convention Center, with two above-ground ends and one underground station in between. The tunnels are one-lane and one-way, with one for each direction. Passengers ride human-driven Teslas, without any of the fancy stuff promised -- no car elevators, no car skates.

 

[lpetrich]

Alexander Demling on Twitter: "Musk admitted Hyperloop was about getting legislators to cancel plans for high-speed rail in California. He had no plans to build it
Musk said public transit was “a pain in the ass” where you’re surrounded by strangers, including possible serial killers (link)" / Twitter
I thought that the Hyperloop was a nonstarter the moment I heard about it, and nothing that has happened since has made me change my mind about it.

Alexander Demling on Twitter: "There’s still no High-Speed Rail in California btw.
If I want to go to LA I can fly or drive - which is great for someone who sells cars." / Twitter
That's because it's still being built. It's expected to run San Francisco - San Jose - Merced - Fresno - Bakersfield - Palmdale - Los Angeles - Anaheim, with future extensions to Sacramento and San Diego.

What they have funding for is Merced - Bakersfield, and they hope to get funding for the rest of the system later on.

Alexander Demling on Twitter: "Having said that, buses on that route can be a good alternative. You can work during a bus ride. They are cheap, clean, reliable (from what I’ve experienced) and take 7,5h, so not that much longer than a car ride.
And the more people use them, the less CO2 per rider " / Twitter


Matthew Chapman on Twitter: "This is exactly what I've been telling people for years. The Hyperloop was always a scam. Anyone who looked seriously at the proposal knew it could never possibly work. And even if it worked exactly as proponents described, it would be inferior to existing high-speed rail tech!" / Twitter

Matthew Chapman on Twitter: "It's literally already being built. And the project is spurring key improvements to existing infrastructure, including the electrification of Caltrain." / Twitter

Matthew Chapman on Twitter: "California high speed rail has had delays and cost overruns (largely because it was underfunded.)

But nobody is going to ever remember the problems with building it once it is built. The Shinkansen had serious budget overruns as well and that is completely irrelevant today." / Twitter

So it will likely be San Jose - bus (2 hours) - Merced - high-speed train (1 hour) - Bakersfield - bus (2 1/2 hours) - LA

 

[lpetrich]

Paris Marx on Twitter: "Happy to have this confirmed: the goal of Hyperloop was to get California’s high-speed rail canceled. Musk and the Kochs, both trying to halt a transition away from automobiles. For Musk, fantasy technologies are preferable to real solutions. #cahsr #highspeedrail (pix link)" / Twitter

The pictures are screencaps from that book. EM claimed that a LA - SF Hyperloop would cost only $6 - $10 billion, something that I find grotesquely optimistic.

Brent Toderian on Twitter: "“Elon Musk admitted to his biographer that the reason the Hyperloop was announced—even tho he had no intention of pursuing it—was to try to disrupt the California high-speed rail project to get in the way of that actually succeeding.” — @ParisMarx @Gizmodo (link)" / Twitter

How Silicon Valley Failed to Fix Transportation - "The titans of tech brought plenty of disruption to our broken transportation system but delivered little in the way of innovation"

About Paris Marx's book.

 

[lpetrich]

City Nolan (get your s!!!) on Twitter: ""As I’ve written in my book, Musk admitted to his biographer Ashlee Vance that Hyperloop was all about trying to get legislators to cancel plans for high-speed rail in California—even though he had no plans to build it." -- (link)" / Twitter
then
Yonah Freemark on Twitter: "Since Musk fantasized about hyperloop in 2012,
>12,000 miles of high-speed rail opened in China
>600 miles opened in Spain
371 miles opened in France
201 miles opened in Morocco
179 miles opened in Turkey
77 miles opened in Germany
0 miles of hyperloop passenger service opened" / Twitter

Alissa Walker on Twitter: "This is a story ..." / Twitter

This is a story about Elon Musk's now-successful attempt to steer U.S. cities away from proven transportation solutions — but it's also a story about the desperation of elected officials who will try anything to fix their city's problems

Musk's promise was never *one* tunnel. His promise was *infinite* tunnels.

From 2018: “No matter how much demand there is, you can satisfy it with a network of 3D tunnels. If you have 20, 30, 40 tunnels, eventually you run out of people to use them”

Of course, Musk conveniently doesn't believe in induced demand.

But you don't have to believe in that concept to understand why "infinite tunnels" won't work. The best explanation I've read is from @MichaelManvill6's 2021 paper on congestion pricing

How and Why Would Congestion Pricing Work?

Congestion pricing is hard! High speed rail is hard! Which is why we saw elected officials falling over themselves to associate with Musk's holes *and* his promise to pay up to $1 billion per project to "end traffic"

In 2018 I saw Musk tell a room of hundreds of city officials they shouldn't build rail anymore. The mayor of LA, who was onstage with him, didn't even push back!

This was a clear and concerted effort, says @parismarx (read their new book on this topic!)

Musk not only pays, he assumes all the risk, former LA Metro exec @joshuaschank, told me. So the Boring Company submits free or low bids for transportation projects, then raises money from investors convinced the tunneling technology is cheaper and faster (sound familiar?)

Which brings us to the Boring Company's new strategy: Going to city officials directly and telling them to casually suggest tunnels as solutions to their problems.

After this email to the Kyle, Texas city manager, a tunnel was approved nine months later

Those city officials come to Vegas, see the tunnels under the convention center, and return home convinced they've seen the future of transportation. Fort Lauderdale just gave the Boring Company $375,000 for a study to tunnel under an intracoastal waterway

Watch Mayor Dean Trantalis get defensive when a local tunneling expert pokes holes in the proposal, saying $10 million per mile is too low to tunnel under saltwater. Trantalis claimed he rode in Vegas tunnels that were "all underwater" (??) and go to the airport (they don't!)

The next week, the city of Vegas voted to extend the system to Downtown Vegas, making it the first city to approve public tunnels. Before voting, Mayor Carolyn Goodman asked good questions, namely, how will a single tunnel with cars of 4 people not experience traffic congestion?

Alissa Walker on Twitter: "The answer came not from the Boring Company, but from the city of Vegas's infrastructure director, who said he'd been working closely with the Boring Company. And guess what he said?

Don't worry, if the tunnels get congested, the Boring Company can just add more tunnels

And yes, you may have noticed the name of the item before the city council: "Agreement between the city of Las Vegas and The Boring Company to install and operate a monorail"

The way the tunnels are classified by Nevada state law, Elon Musk is now officially building a monorail

Noting Elon Musk’s Tunnel Is Really Just an Underground Highway - Curbed - about his SpaceX HDQ tunnel

 

[bilby]

Seems like self-driving systems will have a long way to go before they can be considered reasonably reliable.

I don't think they have all that far to go, but the premature claims of cowboys like Musk is likely to set them back a fair way, as he inspires governments to demand a more cautious approach than would otherwise be needed.