America: The Build-Nothing Country | Hacker News Reader

America: The Build-Nothing Country

noahpinion.substack.com

16 pointsjseliger15 comments

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We make more things than we ever have, just not end user items.

Arms, ammunition, tanks?

Regulatory capture by the military industrial complex

Not even those.

Replenishment for what we've expended in Ukraine is on a 5-10 year timeframe at present.

Today I read how in a section of Philadelphia chemicals have been spilled into part of the water and there is an alert that the water may be unsafe to drink for some time. The question that came up why how are there not regulations to prevent this. Utahs Great salt Lake is drying up possibly due to over building. Yet every article I see come up about housing frames it as we don’t build enough and nimby people being over protective and in the wrong trying to protect their assets. I live in an area with well and septic and a massive over build tainting the water table is a serious risk that should not be so easily over ridden by a builder lawsuit who will build with out a thought for the local area and it’s available resources while the people who live their have the consequences of those actions.

What country? All I see is different capitalist interests competing with each other for various opportunities to exploit working people for a profit. If these whiners are serious about wanting to build something, they should start with a society.

Can you really blame people? As a country, we still remember all the horrible crap that was built in the 1950's and 60's in the name of the "greater good". Neighborhoods bulldozed to build highways, downtowns hollowed out to build malls and parking lots, and strip mall after strip mall. Practically everything built in this country after World War II looks ugly and cheap. It's not that Americans don't want new things to be built, it's that we don't trust the government and the real estate developers not to fuck it up. As they say, "trust is earned".

> As a country, we still remember all the horrible crap that was built in the 1950's and 60's

Nonsense. As a country, Americans know practically nothing about our history at all. Furthermore, Americans know practically nothing about the alternatives that exist elsewhere. This is glaringly obvious to virtually everyone who interacts with even small aggregate samples of average Americans. I wish you were right, but I'm afraid your thesis just falls flat on its' face.

I will gladly get in line to trash talk American post-war urban development, but even if average Americans shared our disposition, it's pretty naive to think average Americans' opinions would have any meaningful influence politically.

Exactly. The Americans who trash-talk American post-war urban development are not normal Americans; they're well-educated and well-traveled Americans. Most Americans actually like things that way and can't really imagine living any other way. Things aren't the way they are because of a few "evil developers"; it's because that's how most Americans really want things, and they vote for it.

> Most Americans actually like things that way and can't really imagine living any other way.

If people cannot imagine anything but one way of living, then it isn't really reasonable to describe whether they like it or at least to use the supposed liking as evidence of anything.

Having people imagine alternatives is a prerequisite to evaluating anything meaningful about what people like.

There are alternatives, right in America. Americans aren't completely clueless about places where cars aren't necessary to live. NYC is the poster child for that inside America, and other big cities have downtown areas where some people live car-free: Chicago, DC, etc.

The vast majority of Americans don't want to live in those places. They complain that they can't park their cars, that it's too dense, too expensive, etc. They deride these places and the people who live in them as latte and avocado toast eaters, while they make their huge monthly payments on their $50k-$100k SUV or pickup truck.

Is this one of those "why dont you let us build a windfarm in your state so we can power new york" articles? Because farmers dont want them, they see them as a waste of land.

No. Actually for many decades they've existed, it has never been that way in reality. Wind farms use up little land and net a consistent profit for farmers, which is why there are more wind farms in red states. https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/22/politics/wind-energy-oklahoma...

Did you read the article? It talks about over riding local bodies for the greater benefit the "nation".

That cnn article is doing a reverse sales pitch. look at these people they are making money you can too!

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