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It’s the End of California as We Know It

nytimes.com

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Re: It’s the End of California as We Know It

#101

Post by cagenut »

baggy_trough wrote: post #100
cagenut wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

empirically speaking no, we (mankind) have never moved half or more of our agriculture hundreds of miles in a generation or two without large number of people not making the transition. maybe we pull it off this time? seems like a flat out evil experiment to run. imagine your company running its failover plan to its DR site on short notice. what are the odds of it being flawless? ok now imagine moving half the farmin…

You may not be appreciating how adaptable the economy is.

sure, I may not be. its still an extremely ideological and flat out psycho bet to assume it will be though. it is functionally no different from saying "jesus take the wheel"

Re: It’s the End of California as We Know It

#102

Post by not_a_cop75 »

WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #2

As much as I want to say that Farhad is wrong, I can't. He is right. We can't continue to live the way we have. We are seeing the results of kicking the can, also known as the fix, down the road. We hope that things will get fixed eventually but not now. We feel that somehow it will be easier to fix by the next generation. Unfortunately, it only gets harder. We'll just have to suffer more when the fix is finally made…

The end of California for most people was generations ago. My folks lived in LA when I was a kid, and the sheer lack of affordable housing even then made them move out to Florida, where water front property was comparatively affordable.

California has never chosen to fix the problems that it has. It has instead become a less practical version of New York for the west. Now, if you can tolerate living in California, that's saying something. You can tolerate the crap that most people wouldn't in a thousand years want to deal with. Don't get me wrong there are good things - the climate generally speaking and the education system.

But since moving away from Cali, I've always noticed something weird and eccentric about most people that chose to remain. I can't begin to say what it is - maybe an optimism that things will get better as tech giants solve more and more problems. Still, my response is good luck with that. Big money in the hands of just a few has seldom benefited any nation, and that applies to states just as much.

Re: It’s the End of California as We Know It

#103

Post by baggy_trough »

cagenut wrote: post #101
baggy_trough wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may not be appreciating how adaptable the economy is.

sure, I may not be. its still an extremely ideological and flat out psycho bet to assume it will be though. it is functionally no different from saying "jesus take the wheel"

I think you should learn more about economic systems, because your thinking is a bit off-kilter from reality in my opinion.

Re: It’s the End of California as We Know It

#104

Post by pas »

gduffy wrote: post #91
pas wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The incentive is already set, city limits are already set, eventually they will fill up and then people will be motivated to build up a bit. Sure, fundamentally nothing is sustainable because eventually the useful energy gradients where life can thrive will run out as the universe expands into a cold dark empty vacuum. But before that let's try to spend the already fixed tax income a bit more efficiently. Compact cit…

No the incentives are not there, not when you can vote yourself richer by freezing property taxes and preventing building up or out. Citation needed on cities being fundamentally more efficient. A suburban home can be powered by pure solar, rainwater/groundwater can be captured and recycled locally, an electric car can carpool, and mass transit (sure, let's build more of that too) can easily reach out to the suburbs.…

Infrastructure maintenance costs are higher the bigger area you want to cover.

Making small things are rarely efficient (transformers, inverters, heating, cooling, insulation).

Moving people one-by-one more distance will always require more energy, EVs also have to carry themselves, and thus the more people you can move per trip the better. (Hurray for electric buses.)

I already telecommute (our company already works full remote).

I mean if you have problems with needles and poop, but we don't, and most cities also don't, then it's probably not because SF is a city.

Anyway. I have no problem is people want more personal/private space, better sound insulation, a garden, a pool and whatever. But those luxuries should be priced in, so it encourages building up and compact, so more people can enjoy living in nice places. (Like next to a forest, lake, on a hill, in a valley, whatever).

Re: It’s the End of California as We Know It

#105

Post by gduffy »

pas wrote: post #104
gduffy wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No the incentives are not there, not when you can vote yourself richer by freezing property taxes and preventing building up or out. Citation needed on cities being fundamentally more efficient. A suburban home can be powered by pure solar, rainwater/groundwater can be captured and recycled locally, an electric car can carpool, and mass transit (sure, let's build more of that too) can easily reach out to the suburbs.…

Infrastructure maintenance costs are higher the bigger area you want to cover. Making small things are rarely efficient (transformers, inverters, heating, cooling, insulation). Moving people one-by-one more distance will always require more energy, EVs also have to carry themselves, and thus the more people you can move per trip the better. (Hurray for electric buses.) I already telecommute (our company already works…

If you are advocating for capitalism with externalities priced in using fair (by democratic vote) and absolute/equal valuation methods, that is what I am arguing for as well.

SF doesn’t have that by a long shot. That’s the actual point.

Also, I didn’t say I had a problem with cities, far from it – I have liked living in the city in the past, and I can understand why someone would want to live in a good city. But [citation needed] on cities being fundamentally and meaningfully cheaper under the externality-adjusted capitalism model.

Urbanization can increase total living costs compared to lower-density living, for example through disease spread, crime, power density and transmission requirements, high-speed waste processing requirements vs composting opportunities, food production locality, and etc.

Whether the efficiency scales balance out in favor of a particular density or not is a mystery to me. I am just not as sure as you seem to be.

Let’s find some data that shows a TCO per capita for a well-planned/well-run suburb vs a similar city. Or, do what I’m doing and get out there and mold your local environment into what you need while letting others do the same – there’s enough space and energy for all of us here and probably >10x if we fill the Earth and Mars.

P.S. While I don’t know for sure, I suspect that the answer to efficiency vs density is: it is either a wash or a small enough difference that it doesn’t matter compared to living the life you want as sustainably as possible.

Re: It’s the End of California as We Know It

#106

Post by pas »

gduffy wrote: post #105
pas wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Infrastructure maintenance costs are higher the bigger area you want to cover. Making small things are rarely efficient (transformers, inverters, heating, cooling, insulation). Moving people one-by-one more distance will always require more energy, EVs also have to carry themselves, and thus the more people you can move per trip the better. (Hurray for electric buses.) I already telecommute (our company already works…

If you are advocating for capitalism with externalities priced in using fair (by democratic vote) and absolute/equal valuation methods, that is what I am arguing for as well. SF doesn’t have that by a long shot. That’s the actual point. Also, I didn’t say I had a problem with cities, far from it – I have liked living in the city in the past, and I can understand why someone would want to live in a good city. But [cit…

I'm also not sure, and values are always population dependent, but simply the fact that land (and nature on it) is one of the most scarce resource nowadays, it seems straightforward to say that if we price in land use compact wins over sprawl.

I agree that there's enough energy and stuff in theory to be green and live anywhere, but currently in practice there isn't. (For example just now with the PG&E blackouts the very real cost of living spread out shows itself.) At the same time you are correct that if some pandemic strikes it might be better in a log cabin, but ... for how long? Are you ready to hunt? Grow your own wheat, and so on? And HongKong seems to be doing fine, after SARS they are doing a lot of proactive stuff.

Re: It’s the End of California as We Know It

#107

Post by gduffy »

pas wrote: post #106
gduffy wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are advocating for capitalism with externalities priced in using fair (by democratic vote) and absolute/equal valuation methods, that is what I am arguing for as well. SF doesn’t have that by a long shot. That’s the actual point. Also, I didn’t say I had a problem with cities, far from it – I have liked living in the city in the past, and I can understand why someone would want to live in a good city. But [cit…

I'm also not sure, and values are always population dependent, but simply the fact that land (and nature on it) is one of the most scarce resource nowadays, it seems straightforward to say that if we price in land use compact wins over sprawl. I agree that there's enough energy and stuff in theory to be green and live anywhere, but currently in practice there isn't. (For example just now with the PG&E blackouts the v…

Land is not scarce. I know this because I've both surveyed a large part of the world from the air myself, and from data. Please cite data.

PG&E's failure is because of poor capital investment, bad infrastructure decisions, and lack of federal antitrust intervention into a mismanaged California-ordained private energy monopoly.

You don't have to live in a log cabin, I am not talking only of pandemics but also the mental well-being of people who want to spread their elbows a bit using the copious land available on Earth, and you don't have to hunt or grow your own wheat to live in a suburban or semi-rural place and buy food and products locally (although there is nothing wrong or crazy about hunting and growing some of your own food, if you want to... we just also have this thing called "money" that you can trade for goods and services that you don't want to provide yourself).

I'm only responding now in an attempt to get you to reconsider the frankly baseless assumptions that you are asserting as facts – the truth is, and the point is: there are ways for people to live efficiently enough in urban, suburban, and rural settings, and we should stop judging that very personal preference and instead focus our time and investments on improving efficiencies across the spectrum (and fighting always to enforce legislation that engenders more competition in every marketplace).

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