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Also, because we've lost the ability to build things in the US, we've forgotten that low lying land is a solvable problem. In fact, we already solved that probl

Also, because we've lost the ability to build things in the US, we've forgotten that low lying land is a solvable problem. In fact, we already solved that problem in FiDi back before we gave up the social technology of building things. (Just look at our inability to build subways - something we were capable of 100 years ago and which desperately poor India and China do today.) When push comes to shove, we can just pay the Dutch or Singaporeans a lot of money to fix things for us.

fennecfoxen 10y ago
> Also, because we've lost the ability to build things in the US We have the ability. It's just that we've decided having a political process with umpteen layers of environmental review, and having "prevailing wage+" labor unions (who contribute to re-election campaigns) do the construction, is more important than having nice things. (+ the "prevailing wage", of course, being not the average or median wage, but the highest wage out there.)
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  I think the concept of "social technology" is an important one. http://thefutureprimaeval.net/social-technology-and-anarcho-tyranny/ http://thefutureprimaeval.net/social-technology-and-anarcho-... While we have the machines and such needed to build a subway or build a bridge, we no longer have the capacity to organize men in such an endeavor.
thesmallestcat 10y ago
Lies! Technology and history don't exist. I bet you haven't even contemplated the world your grandchildren will inherit more than a couple times today.
pkaye 10y ago
I think in the US is the environmental regulations and other similar approvals and higher labor costs. In terms of environmental regulations, much time and money is spend researching and mitigating damage to every little critter and vegetation. That bare field you are building over could be home to some rare field cricket and you have to find a new home for them. In some other countries they just bulldoze over that field and be done with it. I got a little experience on this working for an engineering company fresh out of college. They had to write reams of reports documenting what they found in some former military bases before cleanup. From my understanding nobody ever read those documents... they just read summaries. I have a college buddy who works for the state transportation department in the engineering design division and he tells me all the red tape he has to go through in expanding a highway. They find a couple of native american artifacts during a dig and suddenly things are halted while that is being investigated. When they widened a highway, some people in adjacent houses started complaining even though the highway existed before those houses were build and space was set aside for future expansion. He ended up adding noise barriers to placate them. Then you have nimbys who will fight and further development. We use highly skilled union workers for public projects in the US while India and likely China use low cost day laborers. They get paid quite low wages.

fennecfoxen 10y ago

> Also, because we've lost the ability to build things in the US We have the ability. It's just that we've decided having a political process with umpteen layers of environmental review, and having "prevailing wage+" labor unions (who contribute to re-election campaigns) do the construction, is more important than having nice things. (+ the "prevailing wage", of course, being not the average or median wage, but the highest wage out there.)

yummyfajitas 10y ago
I think the concept of "social technology" is an important one. http://thefutureprimaeval.net/social-technology-and-anarcho-tyranny/ http://thefutureprimaeval.net/social-technology-and-anarcho-... While we have the machines and such needed to build a subway or build a bridge, we no longer have the capacity to organize men in such an endeavor.

thesmallestcat 10y ago

Lies! Technology and history don't exist. I bet you haven't even contemplated the world your grandchildren will inherit more than a couple times today.

pkaye 10y ago

I think in the US is the environmental regulations and other similar approvals and higher labor costs. In terms of environmental regulations, much time and money is spend researching and mitigating damage to every little critter and vegetation. That bare field you are building over could be home to some rare field cricket and you have to find a new home for them. In some other countries they just bulldoze over that field and be done with it. I got a little experience on this working for an engineering company fresh out of college. They had to write reams of reports documenting what they found in some former military bases before cleanup. From my understanding nobody ever read those documents... they just read summaries. I have a college buddy who works for the state transportation department in the engineering design division and he tells me all the red tape he has to go through in expanding a highway. They find a couple of native american artifacts during a dig and suddenly things are halted while that is being investigated. When they widened a highway, some people in adjacent houses started complaining even though the highway existed before those houses were build and space was set aside for future expansion. He ended up adding noise barriers to placate them. Then you have nimbys who will fight and further development. We use highly skilled union workers for public projects in the US while India and likely China use low cost day laborers. They get paid quite low wages.