Questions

>> Why is US GDP growth so weirdly constant?

Maybe because the Fed's dual mandate of keeping employment low whilst keeping inflation under control has this side effect.

Growth is not related to the total utility value of the work that is produced by the country; it's a highly controlled metric; that's why the financial system is prone to booms and busts; the metrics we use are not in sync with reality and sometimes the discrepancy becomes so obvious that everything crashes.

>> Why are certain things getting so much more expensive?

Probably also related to the Fed's manipulation of the money supply. The way that inflation is calculated is by looking at the Consumer Price Index; this index only accounts for prices of products based on their general classifications; it doesn't take into account the fact that the quality of all products overall have been steadily declining over the years. If we were to factor in the decline of quality of products over time, we would find that inflation was actually much higher than reported.

>> Why do there seem to be more examples of rapidly-completed major projects in the past than the present?

Engineering practices are getting worse over time and increasingly focus on risk-mitigation rather than productivity. Big tech monopolies don't need to be efficient in order to keep increasing profits; they can afford to hire a ton of engineers who have nothing to do so they become focused on risk-mitigation instead of development efficiency.

Small companies mistakenly look up to corporations as role models for their own businesses and they start adopting the same inefficient and expensive tools and practices (e.g. serverless). Engineers who are efficient are shunned as being bad engineers because their front end code doesn't have 100% test coverage and they don't use the latest bulky over-engineered tools that came out of Facebook.

>> How do you ensure an adequate replacement rate in systems that have no natural way to die?

It's good to know that people in positions of power are thinking about these problems.

Blockchain?

>> Why are programming environments still so primitive?

This is related to the question "Why do there seem to be more examples of rapidly-completed major projects in the past than the present?" - The answer is probably similar.

Companies that succeed don't succeed because of good engineering practices and tooling; they succeed because of other completely unrelated reasons (business connections, funding, etc...) but they become role models in the developer community; a successful company's past technical decisions are treated as some kind of recipe to success even though many of those decisions were actually pretty terrible and developed in a rush to meet the challenges of hockey-stick growth curves.

Tooling and developer efficiency hasn't mattered because other factors like access to business connections and funding have been so much more important in terms of achieving successful outcomes.

Real technical innovation can't hold a candle to social networking.

I agree regarding the symptoms, but am less convinced that run-time efficiency is the sole (or perhaps even major) cause. If it were, I'd argue that we'd see less usage of, e.g., Python.

I don't know the true cause -- I wish I did. But I do do see a trend towards an ever more "hands-off" style of software development: large volumes of automated (especially unit) tests in preference to interactive approaches (or hybrids, like running subsets of tests via a REPL), and running test instances on remote servers (often via extra layers of indirection, such as CI servers) rather than running on your own machine. I'd love to see a resurgence of interactivity, but if anything it seems to be going against recent trends.

Edit: The subjective impression I've got is that doing things the indirect, hands-off way is being presented as somehow more "professional" while hands-on interactivity is the realm of the self-taught and hackers. Do others see this? What can be done to change these perceptions?

All 15 of them?

The market has spoken, programmers want free stuff, and they’re happy doing it the old fashioned way.

Except for those who aren’t content:

[Insert videos from Bret Victor here]

https://vimeo.com/36579366

Lighttable is another attempt that comes to mind:

http://www.chris-granger.com/lighttable/

>How do people decide to make major life changes?

before the change, on those days when it seems like nothing is happening, those people are thinking around the change. constantly, subconsciously (or not) and internally weighing options and possibilities. then, one day, they say "Im done." they find the words needed to make the change, which until then were elusive and, like a key, finding them makes the action doable, and doable without opposition. like a analog-to-digital switch that activates only when the analog portion is in the last 10% of either direction, the pwrson has their finger on the switch for days weeks months before the pressure builds up and things change.

this hypothesis excludes changes made in reaction to other external or involuntary changes in a persons life.

> Corruption is increasingly rampant in both the public and private sectors, and money is being siphoned off at every step.

This is utter bullshit when it comes to the sort of major public infrastructure projects hinted at in the original post. In fact, what slows things down significantly is the fact that there are so many controls in place to reduce and eliminate this corruption. Contracts that could have been settled with a fat envelope to the brother-in-law of the county commissioner are now handled in a much more open and transparent process. Corrupt profits that could be skimmed by using sub-standard materials are now prevented by layer upon layer of inspection and sourcing paperwork (which all increases cost.) Projects that could once move quickly because unions were weak and safety regulations were non-existent, to the point where contractors could simply throw human lives at the problem until it was solved, now move at a slower pace and with far fewer deaths as a result.

Infrastructure may take more time and cost more, but the cost in lives during construction and after the project is completed are much lower.