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It’s Time to Build

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Re: It’s Time to Build

#431

Post by deepGem »

The lack of a desire to build is very surprising to me, as an outsider at least. Disregarding politics and everything else, America was (and until now is) a builder's paradise. At least from a taxation and policy viewpoint. I mean, compare US to a place like India which, from a policy standpoint is very anti-builder. Yet, we have seen entrepreneurs springing into action and preparing low cost face shields, low cost masks and what not. Heck they are even making those contactless thermometers.

I am just thinking about this irony, a country of people who have a desire to build, has all the anti-builder policies. A country with the most builder friendly policies has no desire to build. Sigh..

Re: It’s Time to Build

#432

Post by pdonis »

CodeMage wrote: post #399
KirinDave wrote: post #167

I find this essay to be extremely frustrating, and a good example of the attitude I've personally witnessed Andreessen have in the few interactions I've had with him directly. > Is the problem capitalism? I’m with Nicholas Stern when he says that capitalism is how we take care of people we don’t know — all of these fields are highly lucrative already and should be prime stomping grounds for capitalist investment, goo…

> I find this essay to be extremely frustrating Thanks, I was worried I would find HN readers to be largely in agreement with it and I'm glad I was wrong about that. I also find that "we need to want these things" is the key problem with the article. I agree with your conclusions, but I think you've understated the case a bit. I believe that all of this has happened the way it happened because we live in a society --…

> This is what you get when you build your whole system around the optimization of one variable -- profit -- and put essentially religious faith into the unproven idea that the Invisible Hand of the Market will make everything work.

But this isn't what the whole US system is built around. That's (at least part of) the problem. As others have pointed out elsewhere in this discussion, many of the things Andreessen says he thinks we need to build are thinks that the free market would like to build, but can't because of legal and regulatory barriers.

That said, it is true that free markets are a tool, not an end in themselves. Free markets can help you to provide goods and services as efficiently as possible, but they can't tell you which goods and services should be provided and which should not. So free markets on their own are not enough to have a good society.

(Btw, notice that I said "free markets" and not "capitalism". They're not the same thing, although they are often conflated. "Free markets" means all transactions are voluntary--people cannot be forced into buying or selling anything, or prevented from buying and selling anything; it's up to them to decide. But "capitalism" means that capital is taken to be central to the economy, and accumulating capital is taken to be a positive thing. Historically, having a free market has often been the best way to accumulate capital, but not always: our present regulatory system might well be an example of the opposite, a society in which the best way to accumulate capital is to outlaw your competition through regulation.)

Re: It’s Time to Build

#433

Post by epistasis »

tekdude wrote: post #388

Regulatory capture is indeed a major underlying cause of a lot of the issues, but who will actually do the political work to fight against it? Someone spent money to capture the regulations in the first place, through lobbying and campaign donations. Who will spend the money to lobby and donate for the cause of undoing that? The "builders"? No, their focus and limited capital is spent on whatever it is they are worki…

This is a long asked question, and the recent book Golden Gates by Conor Dougherty spends part of the book exploring the emergence of a new political coalition that fights this: the YIMBY groups and associated groups. They are very young and inexperienced, but their existence is making huge waves.

There was an affordable housing builder interviewed on the housing podcast Gimme Shelter recently singing the praises of this movement, because it is such a big change from the past.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#434

Post by battery_cowboy »

wbl wrote: post #35
battery_cowboy wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love nuclear power, I used to be a 'nuke' in the Navy, but it's not feasible at today's tech level. There's too great a risk of nuclear accident right now, even if it's very uncommon (risk = severity x probability, if severity is 10/10 then any probability is too high, IMO). Someday, if the financials are right (if profit margins are good enough), or if we need it more than ever (if profit margins don't matter), so…

They already have lots of passively safe designs, but I don't need to tell you the difference between a real reactor and a designed reactor. With the economics of the power industry I doubt a lot of work will go into IFR commercialization.

Yea, that's what I'm saying, there's no financially viable solutions, and someday if we can make one, or if we stop caring about the cost for some reason, then it'll happen. Right now, the problem is that the "safe" designs aren't tested well and they're generally not commercially viable due to cost.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#435

Post by pdonis »

cs702 wrote: post #334

> We don’t have enough coronavirus tests, or test materials — including, amazingly, cotton swabs and common reagents. We don’t have enough ventilators, negative pressure rooms, and ICU beds. And we don’t have enough surgical masks, eye shields, and medical gowns — as I write this, New York City has put out a desperate call for rain ponchos to be used as medical gowns. Rain ponchos! In 2020! In America! This passage i…

> during normal times people and companies have strong economic/competitive incentives NOT TO INVEST in the kind of expensive, robust (i.e., inefficient/redundant) infrastructure that everyone agrees is necessary but on which the payback is highly uncertain, highly diffuse, or might not be recouped until after everyone today is dead.

And who is in the best position to overcome this barrier and invest in stuff like this anyway? Someone like Marc Andreessen, who as a lot of wealth he can invest in anything he wants, without having to answer to anyone else about financial returns. If he and everyone else in his position did what Bill Gates is doing with malaria, and just picked one of the problems he lists and threw money at it until it was fixed, how many of those problems could be fixed? So why he Andreessen writing an article complaining about these problems, instead of just going and fixing one of them?

Re: It’s Time to Build

#436

Post by wbl »

djcapelis wrote: post #397
harryh wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NYC and SF have roughly similar sized city budgets when measured on a per capita basis and they had _wildly_ different responses to Coronavirus. Whatever it was that causes such different responses, I don't think it was "political movements who want to drown government in a bathtub."

[flagged]

Please explain to me what influence Republicans have on Bill de Blasio that would have prevented a shutdown.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#437

Post by battery_cowboy »

chrisco255 wrote: post #95
battery_cowboy wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love nuclear power, I used to be a 'nuke' in the Navy, but it's not feasible at today's tech level. There's too great a risk of nuclear accident right now, even if it's very uncommon (risk = severity x probability, if severity is 10/10 then any probability is too high, IMO). Someday, if the financials are right (if profit margins are good enough), or if we need it more than ever (if profit margins don't matter), so…

More people have died from mining accidents than nuclear accidents.

You don't need to sell me on nuclear, I was a nuclear electrician's mate, I know it works, it's just not cost effective for the safe designs.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#438

Post by epistasis »

jahaja wrote: post #423
tekdude wrote: post #388

Regulatory capture is indeed a major underlying cause of a lot of the issues, but who will actually do the political work to fight against it? Someone spent money to capture the regulations in the first place, through lobbying and campaign donations. Who will spend the money to lobby and donate for the cause of undoing that? The "builders"? No, their focus and limited capital is spent on whatever it is they are worki…

> Regulatory capture is indeed a major underlying cause of a lot of the issues How is it even possible to isolate capitalism from regulatory capture? Capital accumulation inherently creates power and influence, so regulatory capture is surely just the perfectly logical second phase?

You separate democratic procedure from capital. This is why the Citizens United ruling was such a disastrous decision for the US. However, capital doesn't necessarily mean election wins or regulatory influence, even now. Bernie Sanders raised immense amounts of money, more than Joe Biden did, but Sanders still was not able to win out in most states. There's more to politics than money, though money can definitely raise the volume of one's voice.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#439

Post by battery_cowboy »

viraptor wrote: post #62
battery_cowboy wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love nuclear power, I used to be a 'nuke' in the Navy, but it's not feasible at today's tech level. There's too great a risk of nuclear accident right now, even if it's very uncommon (risk = severity x probability, if severity is 10/10 then any probability is too high, IMO). Someday, if the financials are right (if profit margins are good enough), or if we need it more than ever (if profit margins don't matter), so…

What do you mean by severity being 10/10? The issues we had in recent times were fairly mild. As long as they're not hidden and acted on quickly, we seem to cope well. Sure, people die, but it seems like severity 10 only because it all happens in one go. Take the deaths from air pollution, resources transport, mining, production, etc. involved in coal/gas/solar/wind, and put them in one day at the same rate as we had…

You still don't understand that it's not financially feasible, for many reasons. I love nuclear, I fucking operated nuclear plants, but until we have passively safe designs that are tested and proven, it's not an option. You're totally correct on the facts, but no one is willing to fund it, that's the fact that killed nuclear.

Re: It’s Time to Build

#440

Post by karatestomp »

TbobbyZ wrote: post #247
kitotik wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There has been a huge demand for cheaper and more widely available healthcare for a long time.

Cheaper healthcare cannot be achieved because of the amount of regulation that is in the healthcare system.

The amount? Do all the other OECD states have a smaller "amount" of regulation on their healthcare systems?
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