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The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

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491–500 of 564 posts

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#491
post #130

By U.S. I think they mean the Federal Government. It's possible to build very large projects, presumably to code and under proper safety standards, in America if one desires. Here are two examples which come immediately to my mind. I'm sure they are many more examples. https://www.tesla.com/gigafactory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Park I think the Federal Government looks at infrastructure as jobs programs and…

Not just the federal government. State and local governments are also insanely slow and expensive.

For example: Mayor Ed Lee being fast and decisive. Building teacher housing during such a state of emergency that SFUSD has trouble filling its open teaching positions. About $300,000 of city money budgeted per unit, and it won’t be open until President Trump’s successor is halfway through his/her first term, if we’re lucky. http://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/Mayor-comes-up-with-...

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#492
post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of Europe doesn't live in what Americans would call suburbs, but villages. They're dense where people live and have train and bus service conveniently, because in postwar Europe there were a lot fewer cars. They also zone such that there's a dense living area surrounded by farmland - when that farmland becomes all housing thenyoull have American style suburbs, but few in Europe want that because it's harder to g…

You'd better update your knowledge. Suburbs now spread for miles around towns and even former villages, for ten or twenty miles around major cities. And small towns and villages lost their railways and stations 40 to 80 years ago.

Not in a lot of Germany, or Austria from what I saw driving the countryside for a week

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#493
post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What prevents you from renting a car when you want to drive out to the countryside? Nothing, but it is a barrier. When you own a car, you just get in, make sure you've got gas, and go. When you don't, you need to go out and find a rental place, get there, find a car you want/like, etc. It's a small barrier, and mostly psychological, but it's there and it affects decisions.

Yup. I cycle a lot, and when I first moved to USA I tried to live the car rental only lifestyle in the Bay Area. In someways this was easier than I expected: * Most US car rental price comparison sites let you book a car months in advance to lock in the price, but you don't pay till pick up. There's almost never a penalty for booking and not picking up, so I used to just block book the weekends months in advance, whe…

If you live in the Bay Area, I honestly don't know how people survive without a vechicle.

You're not being selfish.

I've lived in the Bay Area my entire life, and never seen so much traffic. The economy must be better here than I thought. Plus--the amount of newer cars is staggering. I don't know how people pull it off.

That Honda will most likely give you years of trouble free service.

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#494

Related to what we might label "modern" infrastructure, I just got back from a trip visiting the outskirts of Illinois. The towns there are small, but full of people hungry for opportunities and good work. Yet everywhere you go there is no work to be done. Businesses—even big box stores like Walmart or Target—are closed down. Homes lay vacant despite their reasonably cheap (at least for someone living in Silicon Vall…

The weird part, to me, is that we have people here, so there is obviously a market. At the very least, in a functioning economy, they could be working to help each other.

Why should everything be about big supply chains run by big business powered by big finance? Maybe the Amish have the right idea.

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The abusive relationship love-affair is the best explanation I've ever heard of cars in the USA. Just like a an abusive relationship, the car love affair still produces some good things. It's not all dark and dreary. "I hate that he comes home drunk and hits me, but he's so loving and apologetic the next morning." "I hate that I get so stressed from my daily commute, but being able to drive to the countryside on the…

> "I hate that I get so stressed from my daily commute, but being able to drive to the countryside on the weekend is so nice." I have truly never understood this line of thinking. These two are not tied together. I grew up in a car-centric city, but moved away in my teens. I've never personally owned a car and haven't had one in the household since I was 17. I hear this supposed "upside" of cars from my friends who a…

The only actual negative I can think of is the mental friction of having to pay each time

Don't underestimate this. People will pay a large premium for unlimited internet, for example, just to relieve themselves of the mental burden of maybe, possibly, once a year going over and getting hit with $5 or $10 in overage fees. Companies know this. They exploit the hell out of it!

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I create a video and post it on my private youtube channel, as a private individual? Can I spend $10 million creating the youtube video, if I have that much money as a private individual? Can I organize a group of 10 friends to each spend $1 million on the youtube video? Can I organize 1 million people to spend $10 each on said video? Note that under McCain-Feingold (which is the law that was at issue in Citizens…

Most laws have loopholes, just as most software has bugs. You try to anticipate them when you write the law, and you keep an eye on them and amend the law as necessary.

It's not that simple in this case, because for my first question the answer really needs to be "yes" as a clear First Amendment matter: individual political speech is clearly protected, and video is a common "speech" medium nowadays. So that's a "loophole" that is pretty much required by the Constitution.

It's really not clear to me how one can draw a sane line between the first and second question, for this case, unless you want to forbid any political video that actually takes time/effort/money to do research for (see "documentary").

And then the problem becomes that either you privilege the political speech of rich individuals over non-rich ones even more than we already do, or you have to allow non-rich individuals to pool resources to speak.

The "loophole" is then.. what exactly? What form the pooling takes? Whether the pooling is voluntary? Something else? I see a lot of people who are unhappy with the Citizens United decision, but not many proposals for what the law on this should be apart from "political speech from organizations I disagree with should not be allowed". For example, I see lots of "corporations shouldn't be able to engage in political speech" but very little of "unions shouldn't be able to engage in political speech" from Citizens United opponents. Amusingly, I see a fair amount of "unions shouldn't be able to engage in political speech" from people who support the Citizens United decision. And I have met absolutely no one who opposes the Citizens United decision and also thinks Michael Moore shouldn't be allowed to create movies in election years. Though I expect such people do exist; there just aren't many of them.

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I had the choice to go live in Manhattan and not have a car vs. live somewhere else and be obligated to own a car I would choose Manhattan in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, I can't do that (and even if I could, most people cannot).

I'm curious as to why you truly can't do it. Obviously not everyone can, but most individual cases likely can. It's more that you choose not to, which is still perfectly valid.

Can’t live in Manhattan? Because NIMBY housing policies prevent Manhattan from growing.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/19/upshot/forty-...

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#498
post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If people don't bang on about it, nothing will ever change ... It's not going to change anyway. The car haters on HN are in the minority of Americans.

I suspect that part of the reason cities like San Francisco, New York, and Vancouver are so ludicrously expensive in North America are because there are far more people that hate cars than there are cities which are amenable to their preferences. So, if a minority, then a very under-served one. Those cities are going to stay expensive unless the supply of walkable cities increases.

I don’t think so. Besides my weird urbanist friends, and very poor people, I don’t know anybody who doesn’t at least want to have a car.

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#499
post #64
post #18

This reflects in health care as well. American health care costs about twice as much as it does in every other first-world nation. Those systems run the gamut from fully socialist to mostly privatized, but they all share a common feature - they provide universal coverage at half the cost of the American system. That says there's something uniquely broken in our model. Infrastructure? Same thing. There's something dis…

> mostly privatized Where's that?

The Netherlands has mandatory private insurance policies. Obamacare is very similar.

Just more regulated.

Re: The US has forgotten how to do infrastructure

#500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't even understand the need of physically being at the same place, for information workers at least (until remote surgery and hairdressing catch up). Working remotely is good for the environment! I like cars, but I'd never want to use one for commuting. Random places at indiscriminate times — this is what cars are for indeed.

I recently wrote a lengthy counterpoint to that: https://likewise.am/2017/05/19/in-response-to-the-cult-of-re...

I am a consultant in a small team of professionals, right. However, for me, "learning on the job" comes mostly from solving problems, not talking to people. Which is why I steered to consultant / R&D positions. And I had no problems in acquiring said knowledge (in trading systems) on my own.
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