In crime shows and books they often talk about Means, Motive, and Opportunity… I suspect at least one is missing from each example on your list.
Military Moon Bases. The opportunity requires a well established space program with regular, or at least imminent, Lunar visits. The Means is tremendous amounts of resources. Which diminishes the motive—since the higher the opportunity cost, the higher the returns need to be: what is cheaper to do on the moon than on Earth to such a point where it becomes a profitable venture?
How many of these bans have held after the technology or means to do them have become extremely viable or profitable?
I imagine it would be very easy to have a successful ban on destroying the Pyramids of Giza, this is because even demolishing one of the smaller Pyramids is a difficult and thankless task and hasn’t been attempted in over 800 years. If I may be terribly facetious, it would be incredibly easy to ban a group of typical 15 year old boys from using a Rotary Phone… if they can’t find one, stopping the same group of boys from using scatological humor, likely impossible.
I think that’s a good lens to judge them, and I agree at least some of my examples have one or more missing. I think at least several of them actually do meet the criteria though. E.g. the mining one was allegedly about to be an agreement about how much different countries could mine, or something, but at the last minute they decided instead to just ban it. The lasers one was already developed and ready to be deployed and being sold, and then it was banned. The LEO missiles one is feasible I believe, and I imagine would be hard to detect before being used (so maybe in fact some countries do have the tech ready for deployment in extreme scenarios).
Unless by “opportunity” you mean a chance to do it when no one is watching or similar, in which case I think the point is that you can remove the opportunity through international agreements.
U.S. intelligence reported on the danger of Serbian- and French-manufactured laser devices in the former Yugoslavia. Reports from Japan indicated that the cult, Aum Supreme Truth, allegedly planned to attack the Metropolitan Police Department’s main building in Kasumigaseki, Tokyo, with a vehicle equipped with some type of laser weapon before the March 20, 1995 sarin nerve gas subway attack. During the Gulf War, British ground forces were issued protective goggles because they were concerned about Russian-made lasers believed to be in service with the Iraqis. German pilots flying over the Iraqi no-fly zone were also issued laser protective goggles.The U.S. Armed Forces Medical Intelligence Center has reported, “It is highly probable that laser eye injuries occurred in the Iran/Iraq war, based on numerous reports of such injuries and the known purchases of lasers for the implied purpose of weaponization. Source: https://www.hrw.org/reports/1995/General1.htm
I wonder why that ban has held?
The LEO missiles one is feasible I believe, and I imagine would be hard to detect before being used (so maybe in fact some countries do have the tech ready for deployment in extreme scenarios).
Feasible as in cheap and effective, or feasible as in merely possible? It says it in the Wikipedia article—“Its nuclear payload was drastically reduced relative to that of an ICBM due to the high level of energy needed to get the weapon into orbit” I suspect it has less to do with a ban, and more because there’s more viable alternatives available for Nuclear armed nations.
In crime shows and books they often talk about Means, Motive, and Opportunity… I suspect at least one is missing from each example on your list.
Military Moon Bases. The opportunity requires a well established space program with regular, or at least imminent, Lunar visits. The Means is tremendous amounts of resources. Which diminishes the motive—since the higher the opportunity cost, the higher the returns need to be: what is cheaper to do on the moon than on Earth to such a point where it becomes a profitable venture?
How many of these bans have held after the technology or means to do them have become extremely viable or profitable?
I imagine it would be very easy to have a successful ban on destroying the Pyramids of Giza, this is because even demolishing one of the smaller Pyramids is a difficult and thankless task and hasn’t been attempted in over 800 years. If I may be terribly facetious, it would be incredibly easy to ban a group of typical 15 year old boys from using a Rotary Phone… if they can’t find one, stopping the same group of boys from using scatological humor, likely impossible.
I think that’s a good lens to judge them, and I agree at least some of my examples have one or more missing. I think at least several of them actually do meet the criteria though. E.g. the mining one was allegedly about to be an agreement about how much different countries could mine, or something, but at the last minute they decided instead to just ban it. The lasers one was already developed and ready to be deployed and being sold, and then it was banned. The LEO missiles one is feasible I believe, and I imagine would be hard to detect before being used (so maybe in fact some countries do have the tech ready for deployment in extreme scenarios).
Unless by “opportunity” you mean a chance to do it when no one is watching or similar, in which case I think the point is that you can remove the opportunity through international agreements.
I was not aware of lasers as a weapon
I wonder why that ban has held?
Feasible as in cheap and effective, or feasible as in merely possible? It says it in the Wikipedia article—“Its nuclear payload was drastically reduced relative to that of an ICBM due to the high level of energy needed to get the weapon into orbit” I suspect it has less to do with a ban, and more because there’s more viable alternatives available for Nuclear armed nations.