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It’s Time to Build

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Re: It’s Time to Build

#931

Post by buss »

kelp wrote: post #901
tekdude wrote: post #740

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've read about YIMBY groups before, particularly the one called BARF (if I remember correctly). This is a great start to the type of work that needs to be done. However, I have to ask: What is your group's funding situation? Who is bankrolling the effort? Is it grassroots funded, or are there wealthy benefactors who agree with the objectives (or, from a more cynical perspective, might be using your group for somethi…

I’m what would be considered a major donor to the YIMBY effort and I’ve donated in the low 5 figures. It’s generally grass roots though I know some wealthy individuals have donated much more of the total funds. The progressive camp of SF politics often tries to discredit the YIMBY movement by claiming AstroTurf. But it’s simply not true. This was started by motivated individuals who started organizing and then went a…

Thank you for your donations! All of my work is in a volunteer capacity, so your donations help pay for our office space, pay for the few full-time staff we employee, and fund outreach, education, and direct advocacy to move municipalities in our direction.

Your summary is correct. Most of our donations are small dollar from individuals. A few people donate more, and that's because they agree with what we're doing and they have the means to contribute. We're grateful for all support, and donations never influence any of our decisions about what to advocate for.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#932

Post by georgespencer »

m0zg wrote: post #193
georgespencer wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be right, but your tone is quite unpleasant and I think you give people an easy out to ignore you. > not a good indicator of anything One was a projection of eventual scarcity (vents), the other is a response to current scarcity (ponchos). If you believe that we should ignore this on "boy who cried wolf" grounds, we can go ahead and dismiss the rest of your comment, since you also got something badly wrong…

You can always find a crazy example of something or other and choose to blow it out of proportion, while ignoring positive developments on the ground. Blood and gore sell newspaper subscriptions. In the meanwhile I'm glad Trump ignored the political damage Cuomo was inflicting, and did not send the entire stock of vents to NY. Doing so would be utterly disastrous to other hotspots.

> You can always find a crazy example of something or other and choose to blow it out of proportion, while ignoring positive developments on the ground.

So to be clear, you believe: Cuomo deliberately ignored credible data from his people suggesting that the state would not need 30,000 - 40,000 ventilators in order to attempt to do political damage to Trump?

> In the meanwhile I'm glad Trump ignored the political damage Cuomo was inflicting

A notable feature of Trump's response to the crisis has been his inability to ignore criticism from others. One could argue that the silly video he aired last week was a byproduct of his total inability to ignore political damage from folks like Cuomo!

> Doing so would be utterly disastrous to other hotspots

I agree, in hindsight. But it would also have been far fewer than New York said it needed. Cuomo believed he needed 30,000. The national stockpile is around 9,000.

From The Guardian on 2nd April: "[New York state] has 2,200 [ventilators] in its stockpile and Cuomo said 350 people severely afflicted by the virus are coming into hospitals every night needing such breathing assistance."

Re: It’s Time to Build

#933

Post by darkerside »

bigbob2 wrote: post #811
darkerside wrote: post #757

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the gatekeepers' perspective, it was to postpone discussions on policies that would be extremely difficult to implement well. If the Republicans had done their job as well like usual, we wouldn't end up in this awkward situation of having an unpresidential president, but here we are. Freedom has a funny way of getting what it wants, like water flowing downhill.

From the non-gatekeepers' perspective, the difficulty of policy implementation does not matter when the policies themselves are ineffective and only serve to maintain status quo financial structures, which benefit the wealthy often at the expense of the most vulnerable. What specifically makes the president unpresidential as opposed to other presidents? Is it removals as a percentage of the estimated illegal immigran…

edmundsauto nailed it in the unpresidential comment.

I wasn't complaining about the gatekeepers failing, just trying to share their perspective for those who might not understand.

FWIW, I think the best outcome would have been to deny Trump at the gate, and instead find a candidate who could get those policies done without being a danger to democracy.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#935

Post by shripadk »

What was needed for the West was to just get serious about the disease and Lockdown. As early as January or February. A country as populous as India (with 1.3 billion people) has been under lockdown for well over 27 days and counting. Will be under lockdown till May the 3rd (and might get extended too if the curve has not flattened). We went in early unlike Italy or the United States. And it was a complete shutdown and not partial.

Even before the Lockdown commenced, we were testing all travelers as early as January and isolating those who were showing any signs of sickness. The Western countries did not do any of it. These two things alone helped slowdown the spread of the virus. There was no need for large amounts of ventilators, masks or PPE. Just common sense.

What the West got wrong was not "lack of ability" to build things. It was "lack of agility" to respond to the emerging crisis. The West should have gone in for a complete lockdown. The West should have tested (no contact thermal testing would have been sufficient) all travelers at the entry point. This slackness cost so many lives!

I remember having a discussion [1] about this almost a month ago when the first major destructive potential of this pandemic was still unravelling in the West. Many were skeptical about how India would respond and that it was a disaster waiting to happen. But no such disaster happened because of how proactive the Government of India had been since January. This proactiveness has allowed India to have really low number of positive cases compared to the West. This also doesn't put pressure on the medical system.

The lesson to learn here is that you should use common sense. A lot of it. First control the spread of the virus and then work on a cure. You can't let the virus wreak havoc and then expect a vaccine or a cure be available immediately to tackle it. It puts unnecessary pressure on scientists who need crucial time to figure out a cure. But I guess it is too late now and the West will just have to ride the wave. Unfortunately a lot of lives will be lost in the process. Very sad.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22609604

Re: It’s Time to Build

#936

Post by jackcosgrove »

I have been thinking about this problem for a long time, and I think it's cultural. I don't limit it to American or Western culture; I think this a human behavior.

My thesis is that quantitative and spatial intelligences, which are required to build things, are rarer than verbal intelligence and thus more likely to regress to the mean. This makes them harder to pass on to progeny and less reliable as conduits of status.

Highly verbal careers like law and to a lesser extent finance (which is more about networking than crunching numbers at the high level) are more accessible to the average heir, because they require more common skills. If being an engineer or doctor were the pinnacle of social status, it would be harder to pass on social status because it would be less likely that your child would be able to perform those functions.

So elites decided to build societies that gave structural advantages to the so-called FIRE economy because that gave them the best chance at locking in their status. This relegated builder careers to second or third tier status.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#937

Post by [deleted] »

mattmanser wrote: post #718
3xblah wrote: post #674

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I read the parent comment, the point is not that Andreesen could singlehandedly make a difference with his investments. The point is that his words do not match his actions. His work is fostering an industry whose competitive advantage is not having to build anything tangible for the public's benefit and, in the case of companies like Facebook, not having to pay taxes on their profits.

I always get a bit conflicted with Marc Andreessen stuff. Like this article starts out with a bold claim that's...wrong. Germany have done well. A western country has done well. Elephant in the room, massive 80 million person country, major western power, and the American claims no-one's done a good job because the US hasn't. And then he goes into talking about having pre-prepared therapies or a vaccine. Again, we al…

[deleted]

Re: It’s Time to Build

#938

Post by KKKKkkkk1 »

Solve the climate crisis by building — energy experts say that all carbon-based electrical power generation on the planet could be replaced by a few thousand new zero-emission nuclear reactors, so let’s build those. Maybe we can start with 10 new reactors? Then 100? Then the rest?

Yeah, let's not do that.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#939

Post by kpennell »

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #938

Solve the climate crisis by building — energy experts say that all carbon-based electrical power generation on the planet could be replaced by a few thousand new zero-emission nuclear reactors, so let’s build those. Maybe we can start with 10 new reactors? Then 100? Then the rest? Yeah, let's not do that.

why not? It's our only truly scalable low carbon source right now

Re: It’s Time to Build

#940

Post by ilrwbwrkhv »

rexreed wrote: post #895

This reeks of Hypocrisy. After years of VC companies investing in bat-shit ideas they now cry about not having solutions for bat-borne illnesses. Oh "failure of imagination" when they poured billions into the lack-of-imagination ideas such as WeWork, Uber, AirBnb, and others. Oh now we need imagination when companies with potential solutions for these problems over the past few decades couldn't get these investors at…

Yes very well put. I like the line about "investing in bat-shit ideas they now cry about not having solutions for bat-borne illnesses".

This sort of reactionary call to arms does us no favours.

We need a new class of investors as you correctly identified.

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