The line about auto paint shops is out of place / misleading.
It's not all of CA, it's just the Bay Area, and probably some other urbanized areas with a history of really bad air quality.
Banned in California
381–390 of 749 posts
Re: Banned in California
#382I live in Santa Clara where the first chip fans in the world existed. In places like Santa Clara (home to Intel, AMD, Nvidia), and neighboring Sunnyvale and Mountain View there are maps of chemical leakage of industrial solvents which had contaminated the groundwater. The very first Google offices sat directly over one of these sites around 2004. It took decades to dissipate. People complained about noxious fumes and…
Elon Musk and Colossus have generated 3000 jobs in Memphis, according to Tesla propaganda (I mean "propaganda" in the original neutral term, of course: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda ). But, locals don't love that because of the environmental concerns. https://mashable.com/article/naacp-data-centers I, for one, would not want to live within 100 miles of these data centers. But, people that live there alread…
I find it disingenuous to talk about construction jobs as being "generated". Construction jobs are contracts. Building a datacenter might put 3000 people under contract temporarily but it doesn't "generate" jobs. Once the contract is complete those contractors they're no longer paid by the builder.
The word "generated" is used to make it sound like the project opened up 3000 new permanent jobs for people. Those contractors were employed before the contract and will be employed on another contract at some later point. There's no net gain of jobs in the long run. The contractors won't even necessarily be local. The builder isn't going to call up Bob's AC repair from Collierville to do the specialized datacenter HVAC. They'll fly in a company specialized in that task who will fly home at the end of the contract.
The companies scrambling to build datacenters take advantage of that linguistic ambiguity and then the local politicians end up doing the same. They give these companies sweetheart tax/zoning incentives, proclaim contractors as "generated jobs", and then leave the locals with all of the negative externalities and none of the revenue.
Re: Banned in California
#383Earlier quoted context omitted.
You act as though California is no longer one of the largest populations or one of the largest economies. The “snowball fallacy” is a fallacy because there is no reason California s can’t swing the regulatory pendulum back the other direction if there is too much economy / freedom impacted.
When I took a machining course, the instructor sat in the corner and showed us YouTube videos in Mandarin with English subtitles to teach us the equipment. We are never going to catch up.
China probably caught up the same way starting 40 years ago. Watching VHS tapes in English (or German, Japanese, or French) with Mandarin subtitles*. Clearly "never" is untrue because it's been done once already.
IMO this is all cyclical.
* This is metaphorical. Obviously there were also textbooks and research papers and technical manuals and everything else. The point is much of it came from abroad and they learned it all to the point that they're the experts today.
Re: Banned in California
#384There is a reason these kind of things are no longer possible in much of the western world and especially Europe-like US states like California: After the deindustrialization people started to enjoy healthy air and clear water. As always when it comes to "the good old times" or "make great again", your brain will remember very selectively. I used to live next to a large river for about 35 years. As a kid, it was forb…
Those are the incorrect choices. You CAN actually do these processes, and still keep the environment clean. I believe in procedural symmetry: if you ACTUALLY care about people and the environment, then you wouldn't let other poorer do these thing. The USA being richer, can afford to do it right and safer, not through regulation, but through process. There is a difference. So what would you do if you ACTUALLY cared ab…
FWIW, California can't restrict the importation and sale of items manufactured legally in other states if the item itself (after manufacture) is safe. CA can't tell other states to ban various manufacturing techniques.
Re: Banned in California
#385The article is just factually incorrect. It says, for example, that it's impossible to manufacture batteries in California and cites Tesla moving to Texas as the example. But Telsa still makes batteries in California in Fremont. They last did expansions on their battery manufacturing plants in 2023. It cites all the dangerous chemicals used in manufacturing, but those aren't banned in California. CA has safety requir…
You might be right, but the site is explicit about the Fremont plant being exempted, and opens with the claim that there are facilities grandfathered in.
The concept of "grandfathering" rule breakers has always seemed like naked corruption to me. OK, we think this thing is so bad, that we're passing a law to ban it, BUT everyone who was already doing this bad thing can keep doing it forever because... because... because putting an existing company out of business is apparently the worst thing in the world. If our elected officials think something is bad enough to ban outright, then it should go whole hog and actually ban it. Not just prevent upstart competitors to existing legacy industry.
Re: Banned in California
#386Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd choose to be the powerful and rich industrial country every single time. If I had a button that would wipe out the entire Amazon jungle and replace it with a world class high technology industry, I wouldn't even think twice before pressing it. Clean water to swim in? Build a pool. Frankly, any deindustrialized country is quite simply irrelevant. You need industry to have a middle class. You need middle class for…
> Build a pool. How does this work without water?
California has droughts, but never water shortages.
Re: Banned in California
#387[dead]
Re: Banned in California
#388Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd choose to be the powerful and rich industrial country every single time. If I had a button that would wipe out the entire Amazon jungle and replace it with a world class high technology industry, I wouldn't even think twice before pressing it. Clean water to swim in? Build a pool. Frankly, any deindustrialized country is quite simply irrelevant. You need industry to have a middle class. You need middle class for…
> Clean water to swim in? Build a pool. Where do you find clean water to fill the pool with? > You need industry to have a middle class. Your average industrial assembly-line worker is _not_ middle class. They are horrible jobs no-one really wants back, or at least not for themselves. It is very much possible to keep your air and environment clean, and still reasonably grow and remain relevant - look at France. > You…
> Your average industrial assembly-line worker is _not_ middle class. They are horrible jobs no-one really wants back, or at least not for themselves.
That's incorrect. Factory work is a ramp from low to middle class. It's low skill on entry but teaches on the job. Long term employees are valuable because they have expertise on the process and are, therefore, more valuable.
Ask Detroit if they want the Auto Industry's manufacturing back.
Re: Banned in California
#389Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why? The microbes don't get along with sourdough starter bacteria?
It's because CA has stricter regulations about what can be labeled compostable. Whatever had this label was never compostable to begin with, but called itself that on a technicality.
yeah we took one of those cups and buried in a compost heap for a few years. it was not degraded in the slightest.
Re: Banned in California
#390There is a reason these kind of things are no longer possible in much of the western world and especially Europe-like US states like California: After the deindustrialization people started to enjoy healthy air and clear water. As always when it comes to "the good old times" or "make great again", your brain will remember very selectively. I used to live next to a large river for about 35 years. As a kid, it was forb…
Those are the incorrect choices. You CAN actually do these processes, and still keep the environment clean. I believe in procedural symmetry: if you ACTUALLY care about people and the environment, then you wouldn't let other poorer do these thing. The USA being richer, can afford to do it right and safer, not through regulation, but through process. There is a difference. So what would you do if you ACTUALLY cared ab…
> The USA being richer, can afford to do it right and safer, not through regulation, but through process.
If you don't have regulation, for profit industry won't do it right “through process”, because that would be throwig away money. Regulation is how you do it right through process.
> So what would you do if you ACTUALLY cared about the people and environment? Put high tariffs on dangerous process products, reduce regulation (permits, etc), increase standardization and final safety measurements. Then the products we use, we make, safely.
Standardization and final safety measurements are literally regulations (and permitting is just a means of enforcing standardization.) So, basically, you “cut regulations” plan is actually to pair regulations doing exactly what the regulations you claim to cut do, call them a different thing, and add tariffs on top.
Which, is a long winded way of just saying “add tariffs”, which of course, a US state can’t do.