261–270 of 272 posts
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Not really. Doubling your commute length is not an improvement. I have noticed places with heavier traffic tend to have shorter distances to your destination. So your total time is the same regardless.
I think you misread me. Doubling your commute length had nothing to do with my argument.
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National Environmental Protection Act In other words, every infrastructure project is required to prove that they are not harming habitats or disturbing native cultural sites or any of the myriad other types of sites that are protected.
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Yes, my partner was a conference planner and whenever they had one in NYC in the Time offices their team wasn't allowed to adjust tables by themselves, everything had to be done by formal work order tickets and only union hands could touch anything, even equipment they owned and brought in themselves. Coincidentally, this new infrastructure bill has union requirements for any EV work.
Non American here, can someone explain to me what is unique about USA society that creates this situations? I mean, most of the world has unions, most countries to a much greater extant than USA, and yet we don't see those horror stories of loss of work efficiency from anywhere else. What is unique about USA unions that drive those?
Others are more like European unions thus are more reasonable. In the limited times I've worked with IEW union electricians in the bay area they were reasonable people who did good work without any slacking, fake make-work, or outrageous prices.
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Putting a man on the moon was relatively simple in comparison, actually. All the resources focused down to a single task, a single vessel, and a single mission. In comparison, there are countless jurisdictions and hundreds of millions of lives being effected, plus well established property lines that need to be redrawn all over the place. I'm not saying I approve of how much it costs to do reasonable infrastructure r…
At its peak, the Apollo program employed 400,000 people and required the support of over 20,000 industrial firms and universities.
Thirty years ago when you needed to install new computers in an office I remember it took us weeks to get the cable (Ethernet) installed because one contractor had to pull the cable and cut it at each workstation, another contractor had to come and put the connector on the cable and yet another had to come and plug the cable into the machine. Believe me we were tempted to sneak in one weekend and do the whole thing o…
> another contractor had to come and put the connector on the cable ... severely warned about the consequences This kind of job moating and threats is a union thing isn't it?
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Unions get a bad rap. They don’t have to be bad. Everyone should have an incentive for efficiency.
Its an interesting question. I'm not a union guy and spent my youth working in construction so I've encountered my share of plodding union tradesmen who took remarkably long to do small things that could be finished in a few minutes if you rushed. When I was young and foolish I'd often shake my head at the snails-pace they worked at. I'm older now, and arguably a smidgen wiser. I've reacted with shock at hearing abou…
I really don't know the ratio, but in my highly incomplete experience it was about 50/50..
This is purely conjecture, but the real problem to me SEEMS to be the union management. Unions are super useful sometimes, but like any concentration of power, they get corrupt over time.
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I fail to see how these are in contention. Our (American) lack of HSR actually _decreases_ individual choice. Instead of having the extra option of convenient rail connections, we have to suffer through long drives or airport transits. Insofar as public infrastructure enables individual freedom, I believe China is currently out-America-ing America.
America puts a premium on the freedoms of current landowners. All the land has been allocated already. The price required to obtain the necessary land for nationwide HSR would be a nonstarter in the current legal system. Only a top down system where the individual land owners get less than what they expect like China would make it possible. Even the interstate highway system would not work today. It only worked in th…
That being said, the rural-urban divide also divides this issue: rural counties have higher levels of property ownership. Given America's political geography (heavily favoring rural areas), land-use reform will likely take longer to enact, regardless of (urban-driven) necessity for reform.
I could see actors at the state level implement measures to more fairly regulate land-use though, so perhaps change could come to more urban states sooner.
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I don’t think arguing both parties are corrupt disarms us. Instead, I see it as a rallying cry to either upend the system or to work outside of it. Some examples of political action (that work!) outside of the party system: - participating in a climate strike - unionizing your workplace - voting for local candidates that aren’t tied to the 2 party system - voting for candidates that the mainstream (ie: rich donors) o…
That certainly helps, but the two party system is the power structure, so that's how things get done. While I support change to that system, I am not waiting for it - we need to accomplish things now. > everyone in power is beholden to capital That is lazy analysis. I agree that far too many are beholden, but not everyone and not everyone to the same degree. It's like saying 'all software is too buggy' - that's too t…
Every time any land is going to be developed where I live (Denver/Boulder/etc.), there is always a thread on Nextdoor advocating for people to stop it by raising environmental concerns and putting in a ton of comments. If 1/10 projects get canceled due to individual objections that means a lot of time and money gets wasted. Another 4/10 projects might eventually get built but only after long drawn out discussions and…
It's things like this that make me yearn for the government of yore that just fucking did it , no questions asked i.e. the federal government laying out the interstate highway system. They didn't care it tore apart neighborhoods, they did it because if they didn't, the evil Soviets would eventually build a better highway system and the US couldn't have that embarrassment. A shitty motivator? Sure, but it was a motiva…
GPS?