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The United States will not be a part of the “developed” world in 20 years; too much aging infrastructure is being neglected because the country is too corrupt t

The United States will not be a part of the “developed” world in 20 years; too much aging infrastructure is being neglected because the country is too corrupt to actually govern effectively.

ericlewis 6y ago
I’m curious what aging infrastructure you’re referring to. Where I live, things are very nice and it’s maybe fairly unique to my exact county. But if you are referring to overall infra like highways or something- I don’t share the sentiment it’s in anyway a problem where we live. Im not plugged into interstate trade or things like that. So maybe I’m not totally aware of the problem. But it hasn’t seemed locally problematic. Edit: downvote, really? I’m trying to know more about crumbling infrastructure.
- hobs 6y ago
  Didn't downvote you, but its a pretty well known issue https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Full-2017-Report-Card-FINAL.pdf https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/wp-content/uploads/... tl;dr the USA earns a D- in infra.
  - jimmaswell 6y ago
    I've driven cross country a bunch of times. I'd give the roads a lot better than a D. I have to wonder if this institute is biased in some way.
  - anonuser123456 6y ago
    That’s like your broker saying your investment strategy is D- because you don’t have enough money in his firms managed funds. The D- is a bogus rating meant to increase spending, not improve value. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2011/12/12/best-of-blog-asce-and-the-infrastructure-cult.html https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2011/12/12/best-of-blog-... https://usa.streetsblog.org/2013/03/20/is-the-asce-failing-to-tell-america-to-spend-wisely-on-infrastructure/ https://usa.streetsblog.org/2013/03/20/is-the-asce-failing-t...
    - hobs 6y ago
      One of your sources is a decade older than the link, and the other is quoting a guy critiquing their methodology but "Marohn said he could be convinced that more spending is justified, but not before he sees a smarter analysis based on the return communities get on their investment." You probably could find better ones without much effort, as I also didnt use a ton to find mine in the first place - I was just referring to a document that was pulled up when the bridge collapsed in my home town. If you want to quibble about specifics sure, but that's different than the parent's "I dont know what the conversation is about"
- traek 6y ago
  There's a ton of literature out there on America's infrastructure problems. This is a good summary from a neutral source: https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/state-us-infrastructure https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/state-us-infrastructure
  - PragmaticPulp 6y ago
    These studies aren't nearly as dire as the grandparent comment that claimed the United States wouldn't be part of the developed world in 20 years. Much of that report focuses on things like traffic congestion and delayed flights from busy airports: > According to Petroski, the delays caused by traffic congestion alone cost the economy over $120 billion per year. Ironically, the abrupt shift to remote work and work-from-home due to COVID has significantly reduced traffic burdens in many cities. I'm all for improving infrastructure where necessary, such as the ~10% of bridges that are structurally deficient or improving access to cheap broadband. I'm not enthusiastic about rallying cries to encourage more car traffic, though.
kodah 6y ago
Water technology infrastructure is not what I'd really call "aging". Most municipal automation systems are quite old, but they're very functional. The underlying technology is called SCADA, which is still used today. SCADA is an offline ecosystem by design because the innards of the system are mostly just signals flying around. There's no encryption or IAM in place to defend against bad actors. More recently the cities want their municipal infrastructure that runs on SCADA to integrate nicely with other information systems to either retrieve data which is useful for generating reports, like the delta between water pumped and water served which indicates total loss. The other use case is to perform actions. If I know there's a fire on one side of the city that is a four alarm fire, which will put pressure on service lines as multiple firetrucks begin to demand water, I can decrease pressure on one section while increasing pressure on another. You could perceivably do this in an automated fashion, but there's no such capability in any SCADA systems I know of. Hence, municipalities end up finding integrators who will build them custom devices to interface with their systems. So, this is less an "aging infrastructure" problem and more "new capability demand".

The United States will not be a part of the “developed” world in 20 years; too much aging infrastructure is being neglected because the country is too corrupt to actually govern effectively.

ericlewis 6y ago

I’m curious what aging infrastructure you’re referring to. Where I live, things are very nice and it’s maybe fairly unique to my exact county. But if you are referring to overall infra like highways or something- I don’t share the sentiment it’s in anyway a problem where we live. Im not plugged into interstate trade or things like that. So maybe I’m not totally aware of the problem. But it hasn’t seemed locally problematic. Edit: downvote, really? I’m trying to know more about crumbling infrastructure.

hobs 6y ago
Didn't downvote you, but its a pretty well known issue https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Full-2017-Report-Card-FINAL.pdf https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/wp-content/uploads/... tl;dr the USA earns a D- in infra.
- jimmaswell 6y ago
  I've driven cross country a bunch of times. I'd give the roads a lot better than a D. I have to wonder if this institute is biased in some way.
- anonuser123456 6y ago
  That’s like your broker saying your investment strategy is D- because you don’t have enough money in his firms managed funds. The D- is a bogus rating meant to increase spending, not improve value. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2011/12/12/best-of-blog-asce-and-the-infrastructure-cult.html https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2011/12/12/best-of-blog-... https://usa.streetsblog.org/2013/03/20/is-the-asce-failing-to-tell-america-to-spend-wisely-on-infrastructure/ https://usa.streetsblog.org/2013/03/20/is-the-asce-failing-t...
  - hobs 6y ago
    One of your sources is a decade older than the link, and the other is quoting a guy critiquing their methodology but "Marohn said he could be convinced that more spending is justified, but not before he sees a smarter analysis based on the return communities get on their investment." You probably could find better ones without much effort, as I also didnt use a ton to find mine in the first place - I was just referring to a document that was pulled up when the bridge collapsed in my home town. If you want to quibble about specifics sure, but that's different than the parent's "I dont know what the conversation is about"
traek 6y ago
There's a ton of literature out there on America's infrastructure problems. This is a good summary from a neutral source: https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/state-us-infrastructure https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/state-us-infrastructure
- PragmaticPulp 6y ago
  These studies aren't nearly as dire as the grandparent comment that claimed the United States wouldn't be part of the developed world in 20 years. Much of that report focuses on things like traffic congestion and delayed flights from busy airports: > According to Petroski, the delays caused by traffic congestion alone cost the economy over $120 billion per year. Ironically, the abrupt shift to remote work and work-from-home due to COVID has significantly reduced traffic burdens in many cities. I'm all for improving infrastructure where necessary, such as the ~10% of bridges that are structurally deficient or improving access to cheap broadband. I'm not enthusiastic about rallying cries to encourage more car traffic, though.

kodah 6y ago

Water technology infrastructure is not what I'd really call "aging". Most municipal automation systems are quite old, but they're very functional. The underlying technology is called SCADA, which is still used today. SCADA is an offline ecosystem by design because the innards of the system are mostly just signals flying around. There's no encryption or IAM in place to defend against bad actors. More recently the cities want their municipal infrastructure that runs on SCADA to integrate nicely with other information systems to either retrieve data which is useful for generating reports, like the delta between water pumped and water served which indicates total loss. The other use case is to perform actions. If I know there's a fire on one side of the city that is a four alarm fire, which will put pressure on service lines as multiple firetrucks begin to demand water, I can decrease pressure on one section while increasing pressure on another. You could perceivably do this in an automated fashion, but there's no such capability in any SCADA systems I know of. Hence, municipalities end up finding integrators who will build them custom devices to interface with their systems. So, this is less an "aging infrastructure" problem and more "new capability demand".