6 ms·

I read things like this and other failed infrastructure stories (high speed rail) and just get so depressed. Growing up in India, we used to read and see stori

by atonse 9y ago

I read things like this and other failed infrastructure stories (high speed rail) and just get so depressed. Growing up in India, we used to read and see stories about the West (Europe and the US) and were just amazed at what can be done with infrastructure if the people and government had the will to do so. Now, I've lived in the US for 23 years, and I look longingly elsewhere at Europe and Asia to see what can be done with infrastructure if the people and government had the will to do so. From broadband, to high speed rail, to public transportation, to food safety, to medical care. The problem is, as a population, we still haven't come to terms that we're slipping behind badly. We just say "but, but, silicon valley!" or "but we innovate!" and move on.

cobookman 9y ago
I feel like our economy still hasn't fully recovered. Sure you've got an overall increase in market cap, but the common worker isn't nearly as well off as before the crash. The scary part is when I read about the roaring 20s. It reminds me of many of my experiences in silicon valley. I often wonder, if the market crashes again will we be in another great depression that leads us to ww3.
- mercer 9y ago
  > The scary part is when I read about the roaring 20s. It reminds me of many of my experiences in silicon valley. Could you elaborate a bit on that?
- boomboomsubban 9y ago
  >I often wonder, if the market crashes again will we be in another great depression that leads us to ww3. It's still unclear that we would need another one. Going by the WWII timeline, the invasion of Poland would be roughly in the next year.
exelius 9y ago
I find it's generally a "grass is greener" thing - we envy other countries for infrastructure but ignore the serious problems in those places like high unemployment, etc. But you're right; the US got overrun by nationalism post-9/11 which led to a feeling that because we were already the best, greatest, freest nation given to man by god -- and the rest of the world surpassed us in many ways.
- arethuza 9y ago
  "we were already the best, greatest, freest nation given to man by god" The US is hardly the first nation to think that at the peak of its power and almost certainly won't be the last.
- atonse 9y ago
  To some extent, it might be a grass is greener. But the thing is, the grass here WAS often legitimately greener compared to many places. It's just that the large infrastructure projects that can only be undertaken by government have gotten so paralyzed by special interests, that the stories just sound like anything you'd hear from developing nations with woefully corrupt governments. That billions of dollars were spent, there is literally NOTHING to show for it, AND nobody was punished either. I say this living in an area (DC Metro) that now has gigabit fiber from the local telco. But I know our situation is rare.
  - abofh 9y ago
    DC is one of the only places that has competitive FTTH in the country - the same place all the regulators are saying there isn't a problem. Surely no coincidence? I miss my FiOS - I don't miss the weather :-)
    - atonse 9y ago
      Yeah I don't think it's a fluke that the DC area has decent broadband competition. That's where all the regulators live.
      - rayiner 9y ago
        It's not a fluke, it's the result of sound municipal policy. D.C. is dysfunctional in many ways, but it's not anti-development like most U.S. cities. Right now, entire neighborhoods are being razed and replaced with gleaming 12-14 story mid-rise buildings. The city is also permissive with telecom deployment. Comcast, RCN, and Verizon have all been permitted to deploy in different parts of the city without being compelled to service the whole city at once. It's not just D.C. though. The whole surrounding area is pretty lax about development. The Chesapeake Bay area in Maryland is pretty rural, but also has fiber internet because ISPs are permitted to build where it's profitable to build.
Leader2light 9y ago
The USA could do better, but Europe / Asia are also very different beasts from the USA in terms of geography.
- arethuza 9y ago
  Yes, both are larger than the US.
cmurf 9y ago
The U.S. is going through a greedy oligarch phase. The silent generation was the one that built all that infrastructure and had the proper tax incentives to make both public and private infrastructure projects happen. Massive ones. And then the baby boomers came along. And they have just cash cowed that infrastructure, not doing a good job maintaining it, not advancing it, letting it rot, while they pocket the benefit, stuffing it into the stock, bond, and real estate markets, benefiting really no one but themselves. They are a hoarding generation. And they seem fairly OK with a re-emergence of aristocracy as a result: I've got mine, you go get your own. Everything is a product. Rich people get more. Cooperation is socialism. Etc. So it'll be up to gen X and millenials to decide what comes next.
- atonse 9y ago
  Well put. I can think of no better way of explaining our situation than this.
  - tfvghbv 9y ago
    You mean you can't do better than name calling?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - atonse 9y ago
    Actually I kind of forgot the baby boomers line. I got hung up on the "oligarch phase" which is totally apt. I don't know if we can just blame baby boomers, unless somehow they were responsible for voting all the current politicians in.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > And then the baby boomers came along. To be fair to Boomers and contrary to the popular current Boomers.v. Millenials (with Gen X occasionally acknowledged) narrative, the effects you describe began under the social, economic, and political dominance of the “Greatest” Generation, not the boomers. Further, it's not really a generational thing, it's about shifting distribution of power among economic classes over time; which generation is ascendant at the time isn't the controlling factor, and generation v. generation narrative obstructs the kind of coalition building that could work to reverse the problem.
Vadoff 9y ago
I thought US has one of the highest food safety standards in the world? Also, broadband and high speed rail are infinitely easier when the landmass is over 15-40x smaller and population density 2-10x greater than the US. Our medical care system sucks though - service is excellent, costs are not.
- te_chris 9y ago
  I know nothing about the specifics, but the quality of produce at the supermarkets is light years better in the EU than in the USA, in my personal experience.
  - ghostbrainalpha 9y ago
    Which European countries are you thinking of? My favorite thing to do when I visit a different country is tour the grocery store. I compare the price of milk, bread, eggs, cheese, and beef. In Italy and London I have found that similar quality products are much more expensive usually. However the stores caring more high quality local foods, and less of the cheap processed foods that we American's love.
- DanBC 9y ago
  > service is excellent Lower life expectancy suggests the service isn't that excellent.
- atonse 9y ago
  Yeah we've made this density argument a thousand times. But it falls flat in a second, because broadband in US cities (which are very dense) still mostly sucks. No excuse for that. I can understand if our city broadband was amazing and rural internet was no good. But that's just not the case. No, the US has MUCH worse food safety standards than the EU for example. I am tired of reading articles about all kinds of toxins and carcinogens that are byproducts of mass production, that are allowed by the FDA in "small quantities" but are completely banned in the EU. Same goes for food labeling. Update: Regarding high speed rail and density, it should actually be the opposite. The hard part of building something like HSR is getting the correct permits and buying land, not just the construction. With the US being so spread out, there's fewer parties to negotiate land purchases from.

by atonse 9y ago

cobookman 9y ago

I feel like our economy still hasn't fully recovered. Sure you've got an overall increase in market cap, but the common worker isn't nearly as well off as before the crash. The scary part is when I read about the roaring 20s. It reminds me of many of my experiences in silicon valley. I often wonder, if the market crashes again will we be in another great depression that leads us to ww3.

mercer 9y ago
> The scary part is when I read about the roaring 20s. It reminds me of many of my experiences in silicon valley. Could you elaborate a bit on that?
boomboomsubban 9y ago
>I often wonder, if the market crashes again will we be in another great depression that leads us to ww3. It's still unclear that we would need another one. Going by the WWII timeline, the invasion of Poland would be roughly in the next year.

exelius 9y ago

I find it's generally a "grass is greener" thing - we envy other countries for infrastructure but ignore the serious problems in those places like high unemployment, etc. But you're right; the US got overrun by nationalism post-9/11 which led to a feeling that because we were already the best, greatest, freest nation given to man by god -- and the rest of the world surpassed us in many ways.

arethuza 9y ago
"we were already the best, greatest, freest nation given to man by god" The US is hardly the first nation to think that at the peak of its power and almost certainly won't be the last.
atonse 9y ago
To some extent, it might be a grass is greener. But the thing is, the grass here WAS often legitimately greener compared to many places. It's just that the large infrastructure projects that can only be undertaken by government have gotten so paralyzed by special interests, that the stories just sound like anything you'd hear from developing nations with woefully corrupt governments. That billions of dollars were spent, there is literally NOTHING to show for it, AND nobody was punished either. I say this living in an area (DC Metro) that now has gigabit fiber from the local telco. But I know our situation is rare.
- abofh 9y ago
  DC is one of the only places that has competitive FTTH in the country - the same place all the regulators are saying there isn't a problem. Surely no coincidence? I miss my FiOS - I don't miss the weather :-)
  - atonse 9y ago
    Yeah I don't think it's a fluke that the DC area has decent broadband competition. That's where all the regulators live.
    - rayiner 9y ago
      It's not a fluke, it's the result of sound municipal policy. D.C. is dysfunctional in many ways, but it's not anti-development like most U.S. cities. Right now, entire neighborhoods are being razed and replaced with gleaming 12-14 story mid-rise buildings. The city is also permissive with telecom deployment. Comcast, RCN, and Verizon have all been permitted to deploy in different parts of the city without being compelled to service the whole city at once. It's not just D.C. though. The whole surrounding area is pretty lax about development. The Chesapeake Bay area in Maryland is pretty rural, but also has fiber internet because ISPs are permitted to build where it's profitable to build.

Leader2light 9y ago

The USA could do better, but Europe / Asia are also very different beasts from the USA in terms of geography.

arethuza 9y ago
Yes, both are larger than the US.

cmurf 9y ago

The U.S. is going through a greedy oligarch phase. The silent generation was the one that built all that infrastructure and had the proper tax incentives to make both public and private infrastructure projects happen. Massive ones. And then the baby boomers came along. And they have just cash cowed that infrastructure, not doing a good job maintaining it, not advancing it, letting it rot, while they pocket the benefit, stuffing it into the stock, bond, and real estate markets, benefiting really no one but themselves. They are a hoarding generation. And they seem fairly OK with a re-emergence of aristocracy as a result: I've got mine, you go get your own. Everything is a product. Rich people get more. Cooperation is socialism. Etc. So it'll be up to gen X and millenials to decide what comes next.

atonse 9y ago
Well put. I can think of no better way of explaining our situation than this.
- tfvghbv 9y ago
  You mean you can't do better than name calling?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- atonse 9y ago
  Actually I kind of forgot the baby boomers line. I got hung up on the "oligarch phase" which is totally apt. I don't know if we can just blame baby boomers, unless somehow they were responsible for voting all the current politicians in.
dragonwriter 9y ago
> And then the baby boomers came along. To be fair to Boomers and contrary to the popular current Boomers.v. Millenials (with Gen X occasionally acknowledged) narrative, the effects you describe began under the social, economic, and political dominance of the “Greatest” Generation, not the boomers. Further, it's not really a generational thing, it's about shifting distribution of power among economic classes over time; which generation is ascendant at the time isn't the controlling factor, and generation v. generation narrative obstructs the kind of coalition building that could work to reverse the problem.

Vadoff 9y ago

I thought US has one of the highest food safety standards in the world? Also, broadband and high speed rail are infinitely easier when the landmass is over 15-40x smaller and population density 2-10x greater than the US. Our medical care system sucks though - service is excellent, costs are not.

te_chris 9y ago
I know nothing about the specifics, but the quality of produce at the supermarkets is light years better in the EU than in the USA, in my personal experience.
- ghostbrainalpha 9y ago
  Which European countries are you thinking of? My favorite thing to do when I visit a different country is tour the grocery store. I compare the price of milk, bread, eggs, cheese, and beef. In Italy and London I have found that similar quality products are much more expensive usually. However the stores caring more high quality local foods, and less of the cheap processed foods that we American's love.
DanBC 9y ago
> service is excellent Lower life expectancy suggests the service isn't that excellent.
atonse 9y ago
Yeah we've made this density argument a thousand times. But it falls flat in a second, because broadband in US cities (which are very dense) still mostly sucks. No excuse for that. I can understand if our city broadband was amazing and rural internet was no good. But that's just not the case. No, the US has MUCH worse food safety standards than the EU for example. I am tired of reading articles about all kinds of toxins and carcinogens that are byproducts of mass production, that are allowed by the FDA in "small quantities" but are completely banned in the EU. Same goes for food labeling. Update: Regarding high speed rail and density, it should actually be the opposite. The hard part of building something like HSR is getting the correct permits and buying land, not just the construction. With the US being so spread out, there's fewer parties to negotiate land purchases from.