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Comment by earthwalker99 | Hacker News Reader

so it's possible but not under capitalism

It’s not possible under any system where the median American house is over 2,000 square feet. In a system like say colonial India, you can build things out of old growth hard woods (but the majority of the population lives in a hut).

Hell, why build with wood at all when other materials like bamboo are around? Because nobody is trying to sell you bamboo. Our use of wood has everything to do with market effects run amok.

Because bamboo is really bad at many things we do with wood.

Wood is different. Each type of wood has its advantage and disadvantage. A pine tree is more different to a Maple tree than you are to a great white shark in the evolution chart.

If bamboo could be easily used to make SPF studs we'd be all over it - it's a $100B industry and bamboo grows extremely easily.

> Because bamboo is really bad at many things we do with wood.

This is simply not true for use as a material for buildings, which is why it's used as a replacement for wood all across east asia.

I feel it would be difficult to make guitars with bamboo. Love to see one if they do thought.

This: https://rizomebamboo.com/

Up to 1/2 inch thickness... Great. Just need to 4x that to replace 2x4s, the construction material that the entire US home building process is built around.

But looks like it's ready to go for some applications (plywood). Hopefully they can get it thicker and replace more dimensional lumber. Or maybe I'm reading their site wrong?

Why is something full of glue and binders better than quickly grown softwood?

Well it doesn't use softwood

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