Comment by dcosson | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dcosson | Hacker News Reader

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> why is so much of our economic policy centered around new and higher paying jobs in a certain area

There are certainly hot spots in places like NY and SF, but it's not just one area. Lots of cities are growing. And it's not all due to evil corporations running amok, at a certain level it's just capitalism itself that requires growth - the GDP has to keep growing year over year, and the population probably has to grow slightly to provide for that growth. Immigrants move in, and children grow up and need somewhere to live. Add in the generational effect of baby boomers, i.e. that older people retiring and staying in their homes mean that we need more housing for the same number of jobs.

Specific booms like tech in SF may exacerbate the problem even more, but fundamentally our way of life just requires continual growth. This is at odds with the NIMBY attitude that I have a right for not just my home, but every building in my neighborhood, to stay exactly the same as the day I moved in. It's not at odds with affordable market rate housing, that just requires supply keeping up with demand.

There is a LOT of room in the country for growth, as you mention, and most of it has more room to expand and is starting from a much cheaper price point.

So fighting residential development locally to try to push companies to other areas may be a rational strategy for some.

I'm not convinced that perpetual population growth will always be required for economic growth.

> There is a LOT of room in the country for growth

No there isn't. All the places with viable logistics and water supply are pretty much full up. Urban areas need barge transport, good rail grades, aqueducts, and rivers to carry away waste. You can't plop a city down in the middle of nowhere. The energy economics mean it will never work. All the sites worth building on have been built on. A lot of the places supplied mostly by truck are of questionable viability in coming years.

Probably the only area of the country that could long term sustain a much higher population density is the great lakes region.

I’m sorry but the US is one of the least densely populated developed countries with abundant fresh water, energy and arable land.

If Oklahoma had the population density of the Netherlands it would have an additional 72 million people living in it...and oh by the way it’s got huge oil and gas reserves and some pretty enormous inland ports...

Your comparison illustrates my point. Oklahoma is not crisscrossed with efficient water transport and reliable annual fresh water. Oklahoma is probably overpopulated as it is.

The Netherlands is, too, in the long run. But for now it's economically sustainable.

> US is one of the least densely populated developed countries

None of the other developed countries have vast interior deserts. The east and west coasts and some parts of the Mississippi and Great Lakes watersheds are plenty overpopulated.

Other than Australia...

This is typical "flyover state" bull. The Midwest has tons of water, tons of space, easy travel, great amenities, and a business friendly environment. Colleges are affordable, housing is affordable, and crime is relatively low. But the in crowd has decided that the East and West coast are all that exists, and that everything else is a "vast interior desert."

The state has does have pretty significant water transport (look up the port of Muskogee and Catoosa), not to mention a great deal of rail and pipeline as well, no idea about the aquifers etc.

I wouldn’t want to live there, but seems like a lot of bulk commodities, and products come in and out of Oklahoma and there is still plenty of room...

Water transport is comparatively cheap. Urban areas throughout American history have been able to reliably source enough water for their needs. It gets difficult in deserts, but the US was blessed with many, many rivers and abundant rainfall, it's a crucial reason why we rose to prominence in the first place.

There are a few interesting studies in this area, California's agricultural section's tug-of-war with its residents for water is the biggest one that comes to mind, and the lesson you get is that industry uses up the lion's share of the water out of greed and sloth, but enough pressure will force them to curtail usage.

All the places with viable logistics have ALWAYS been full. Nobody sane overbuilds infrastructure by much: you can't afford it. Instead civilization is constantly in a cycle of upgrade as required. It has been this way for thousands of years.

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