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Comment by Fischgericht | Hacker News Reader

There is a reason these kind of things are no longer possible in much of the western world and especially Europe-like US states like California:

After the deindustrialization people started to enjoy healthy air and clear water.

As always when it comes to "the good old times" or "make great again", your brain will remember very selectively.

I used to live next to a large river for about 35 years. As a kid, it was forbidden to swim in it, and if you did, you had weird oily chemicals on your skin that felt unhealthy (burn, itching etc).

Back then we had huge production industries upstream, employing thousands of people.

Today you can swim in the river without any problem at all. But the industry and the jobs have shrunken a lot, because not polluting the air and water simply is expensive.

You can sum this up with: Producing stuff without polluting the environment in most cases is impossible. Reducing the pollution costs a lot of money, and can make your product non-competitive.

This is why you outsource to other countries and let them do it, because you simply do not care about them living in a polluted environment. Poison Outsourcing.

So, if the US wants production industry again, and want it to be competitive, than have a look on how the environment in the countries you will be competing with looks like, and then to an informed decision if you really want that.

I'd pick the clean air and water, and have people poisoned far away that I don't know and can ignore.

What would be your choice?

View on HN

Those are the incorrect choices. You CAN actually do these processes, and still keep the environment clean.

I believe in procedural symmetry: if you ACTUALLY care about people and the environment, then you wouldn't let other poorer do these thing. The USA being richer, can afford to do it right and safer, not through regulation, but through process. There is a difference.

So what would you do if you ACTUALLY cared about the people and environment? Put high tariffs on dangerous process products, reduce regulation (permits, etc), increase standardization and final safety measurements. Then the products we use, we make, safely.

But people don't actually care about the environment. They care about looking like they care about the environment, and sending industrial processes somewhere else. There is a difference.

The person you are replying to mentioned their personal experience. Have you seen this work in person? It might help to talk about those facts.

Also: I suggest rethinking your opening line. It's not very endearing.

In my experience, it’s the conflict of the ‘in theory’ vs ‘In practice’.

Practically, ‘in theory’ might actually be doable - if there was a single, overarching regulatory environment. That was enforced.

Chances are, that would defacto make a bunch of people starve in poorer countries, and blow a lot of stuff up, so would also likely be worse than ‘the disease’. At least right now.

But maybe I’m just being a cynical bastard.

One persons experience with a river 30 years ago doesn’t invalidate a theory about how things could be done differently.

> The person you are replying to mentioned their personal experience. Have you seen this work in person? It might help to talk about those facts.

The meat of their comment wasn't the personal anecdote, it was actually on government policy:

>>> You can sum this up with: Producing stuff without polluting the environment in most cases is impossible. Reducing the pollution costs a lot of money, and can make your product non-competitive.

>>> This is why you outsource to other countries and let them do it, because you simply do not care about them living in a polluted environment. Poison Outsourcing.

This is 100% about globalization: if some countries let their rivers catch on fire, the externality lets them out-compete anyone who tries to do the process cleanly. So if you let their externality-fueled products into your country, you just can't build similar things, because they wouldn't be price-competitive.

If labor and environmental standards were strong and global, or countries with high standards refused to trade with countries with low standards, we wouldn't have this situation. There would be an economic motivation to develop and implement cleaner processes.

Another thing is that the us and European countries build their wealth where they had los standards now other countries want to do the same but would be limited by us and European countries. It's very tricky

> Another thing is that the us and European countries build their wealth where they had los standards now other countries want to do the same but would be limited by us and European countries. It's very tricky

No, why would you say that? When America and Europe built their wealth, they were mainly (though not exclusively) producing and selling manufactured goods for themselves. This whole idea of a poor country developing by building polluting factories to make items for rich countries is a more recent and different thing.

Europe and America insisting on certain labor and environmental standards as a condition of trade wouldn't mean poor countries can't build factories for themselves. At worst, you just split the current one big market into two smaller markets: an expensive and clean one, and a dirty and cheap one.

Is it actually tricky?

Do we let other countries wage war, pillage, etc. because others gathered wealth that way previously?

Of course it would be great if a level field would be created by making sure other competing regions follow the same environmental standards.

But what will be the result? The product now has equal cost to be produced, but the market is gone.

People consume cheap stuff because it is cheap. If it is no longer cheap, they will not consume.

US americans just need to make up their minds. Do they want keep getting more and more and more cheap stuff? Fine. Then go on exploiting other regions of the planet. Or do you have enough cheap stuff now? Ok, then nobody needs another factory.

Many on HN are living in a society where it is normal to use a TELEPHONE for only two years before throwing it away.

What would happen if you instead used it for 5 years? No more factories needed. Problem solved. You don't have to compete, as there is no competition.

The result of charging the true cost of T-Shirt to the consumer is not that everybody now has 100 Fair-Traded-Ecofriendly T-Shirts at home that they don't wear. They will notice that 10 T-Shirts are more than enough if you wash your clothes once per week.

What I am trying to say is: The demand is only there due to the option of exploitation. Take away the part of ruining other peoples lives to get cheap stuff, then it's no longer interesting and will just stop.

So of course you can take the detour, try to re-industrialize, and then find out that your people do not actually like this kind of work, and that they for sure also aren't willing to buy your stuff at the price you are asking.

There is a reason nobody would be so stupid to produce "Make America Great Again" merch in America. Your target audience would not buy it if it was made in America.

It is pragmatic to simply skip this step and end up with the same result: You'll just consume less.

USA is already effectively priced out of manufacturing due to high labor costs. Doing things with the "correct choices" simply makes the impossible even more so.

I live in Texas, which is still part of the USA, and we manufacture a great deal.

I have a friend who works as an environmental engineer at a chem plant. They work hard to keep things safe and clean, and rigorously monitor their output.

I'm sure we could do even more if we weren't competing in meany areas against legal jurisdictions which DON'T care about such things. We aren't "priced out". We are regulated out and out competed by jurisdiction which have many fewer labor laws and much more lax environmental monitoring. If we are out-competed on product, then we deserve to loose, which is where libertarians and free-trade have a point. But if we are out-competed on keeping people and the environment reasonably safe? That's when we enact trade barriers.

That is how you actually keep the environment and people safe.

This is what I don't understand?

We do manufacture things. Just not in California.

So why does it even matter if California bans manufacturing dangerous things? Who cares? Just manufacture it in some other state. As a bonus, you don't have to pay those high California taxes.

In what world is this a problem?

California produces ~$350B in manufacturing GDP. It is the #1 state in manufacturing jobs in the US.

By its sheer size and population it is probably #1 in almost anything you care to rank.

Damn, don't tell the guy from Texas.

> We do manufacture things. Just not in California.

Texas beats California in total value of manufacturing shipments only because because of its petroleum and coal products manufacturing. And California beats Texas in manufacturing employment.

None of which answers the question of why we can't manufacture things in other states? Things that California clearly doesn't want to manufacture.

Again, what is the reason New Mexico, or Utah, or Nebraska, or Tennessee cannot manufacture these things? And why is it a problem if they do so instead of California?

Big companies already handle manufacturing in other states. Often in states that have the worst education systems and quality of living. It is frequently done to reduce the cost of labor.

Manufacturing jobs are also some of the most unstable because big companies will shop around for tax breaks. Once they find a political sucker ... they build a new plant and close the old one which wrecks havoc on the local economy. PR teams are designed to mitigate negative feedback when this happens.

Smart politicians know this and will not concede to tax breaks for big companies, like Amazon.

Doesn't that just make California's case for them though?

I mean if these jobs are so bad, isn't it good that California is trying to not have them in its own municipalities? The way you laid it out, shouldn't everyone be trying not to have those jobs?

Quality of a job matters. So does proper regulation so the job is not harmful to the worker or community or environment. Those others state politicians that welcome those jobs without proper regulation are willing to ignore the health and well-being of their neighbors.

Manufacturing jobs are not bad. The environment and de-regulation makes them bad.

To me a job must have a living wage tied to it and it must be in an environment that doesn't poison the employee, community, and nature.

Others have low standards like calling USA McDonald's a job when they don't even pay enough to live off of. EU McDonald's is forced to pay a living wage because of proper regulations.

> We do manufacture things. Just not in California.

California has the highest manufacturing employment and most manufacturing companies of any state, the second highest (behind only Texas) dollar value of manufacturing output.

It is just below the national average in manufacturing as a share of GDP, but its also the fifth highest state in GDP/capita; leaving it still above average in manufacturing GDP/capita.

I am not saying that you should tear down anything that works for you.

Trade barriers however are bullshit and don't work. And they are a lie. You are not building IPhones in the US because building an IPhone in the US would cost three times as much as it would doing in Shenzhen. And people would not be willing to pay that. And that's why they get an exception from the trade barriers. And that list of exceptions basically goes on and on and on...

Anyway, what works, works. This is especially true if that industry had been in the area for long, and therefore has access to a lot of skilled and experienced workers.

But it does not make sense to cry and complain that building such a thing from scratch is "banned". No, it is not banned. It's just a stupid idea, and there are laws against stupid ideas using limited natural resources.

Central/Eastern European here. Our labor costs are comparable or even lower than China today. And the manufacturing is still struggling. So it's not only that.

In Central/Eastern Europe, the problem is increasingly one of demographics. You can sometimes find somewhat cheap labour due to shitty (geo)politics, stagnant economies and poorly trained workers, but big-picture-like, the age of labour abundance is over. These economies have nowhere to go but down, down, down, starved of talent due to the twin cancers of bad demographics and emigration. Some countries are better, some worse, but the overall trend is the same all over the region. Going gentle into that good night.

(China's predicament is not much better, with the added wrinkle that there's absolutely nothing whatsoever they can do about bad demographics due to their size, whereas Central/Eastern Europe can import people once we collectively get over ourselves and let go of uppity xenophobia).

>the age of labour abundance is over.

There IS labour over abundance. Unemployment in most EU countries is at record highs. And it shows no sign of slowing down.

The problem is it's mostly white collar labor overabundance. And those college educated people aren't gonna want to make sneakers in sweatshops.

The number of kids born in 2025 in Uzbekistan (population 38 million) is about the same as the number of kids born in 2025 in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, Croatia, Slovenia, Hungary, Czechia, Slovakia and Poland, *combined* (total population 131 million). The age of labour abundance IS OVER, we're witnessing its very last days in EE. Unemployment may remain due to terrible politics and economic mismanagement.

There's not going to be any point even having sweatshops or factories in this region soon. Why bother? If it's anything low or medium-skill and low or medium-capital intense, just open up shop in... Well, why not Uzbekistan? And if double-landlocked isn't your thing, there's dozens of other options.

That, and you have to ensure your energy costs (power) are low and you have a secure source of raw materials. I'm not an expert, but from what I've heard, the economic region over there has been doing a poor job on both those fronts. Furthermore, you have to talk about regulation vs safety. The EU has regulation. Maybe too much.

There are also network effects. Your plant that is energy intensive is closing? Now other manufactures must increase their cost as transportation is increased and local contracts harder to get. Your chemical plant, which has operated within good bounds for a decade can't get a permit to expand, or is protested? Your intake products now either go up in price or become unable to attain them at all.

There's also that large scale effort ongoing to make those energy costs higher and take those raw materials away.

And even still - there's a lot of manufacturing in Easter Europe. Go to IKEA or an appliance or auto store. You might be surprised to find where things are made these days. Often they'll say "made in EU" instead of the actual country name though.

This is false, patently incorrect. With a good manufacturing line workers are not priced out by "cheap labor" they are priced out by almost zero cost labor, Robots are basically a rounding error compared to human's wages.

Robots bring very different tradeoffs on the table. But they are not built and maintained autonomously by the all mighty benevolent skynet, all working 100% on renewable energies abundant at geological scale.

Plus scaling industrial production is one thing, but if proletarians are unable to afford them because wealth distribution is exponentially concentrated, what is the point?

>But they are not built and maintained autonomously by the all mighty benevolent skynet, all working 100% on renewable energies abundant at geological scale.

No but they are significantly cheaper than an employee, A robot can pick up something and move it from A to B for upwards of 10 years. The programming and setup are a fraction of the time a robot can operate reliably

I cannot stress to you how reliable and little maintenance is required for a $60,000 fanuc robot.

A factory isn't made of workers who pick up something and move it from A to B all day.

Frankly, that doesn't need a robot, it needs a concert belt, maybe a hopper.

Robots are great for this kind of work because they require little engineering work and modifications to the base machine. There are now many old manual machines used for various machining operations that can be completely robot tended with a palette.

You don't even need manufacturer support or access to the PLC. You want to start the machine? Just have the 6axis robot hit the start button lol

It's actually not labor costs at all.

The difference between the USA and, for example, China, in manufacturing is the difficulty of getting a new factory built.

If you have a product designed and ready for production, it will take you years to build a factory in the USA. All the while you'll be losing money managing the build, paying your employees and, most importantly, letting your competitors get a head start.

Likewise, if you build that factory in China, it'll be up and running in less than a year and you can start making your R&D money back, get to market before your competitors and not bleed money keeping your companies doors open.

The labor costs are easily offset by removing the logistics of moving the product.

Tesla Gigafactories are a pretty good example of this. The first two took ~3 years to build in Nevada and New York. The third, in Shanghai, took 10 months.

'Company learns from mistakes, third time it does something it does it better, quicker'

The 4th one, in Germany, took 2 years.

Gigafactory Nevada notably became the second-largest building in the world (by volume) and was a joint partnership with Panasonic, locating two major manufacturing facilities within the same structure. Seems like a big project with additional joint partner complexities. Making the second largest building in the world as your first try is going to maybe run into some things.

Gigafactory Berlin is a different beast and produces a different product mix.

Gigafactory New York produces photovoltaic cells and Tesla Supercharger assemblies but does not produce batteries or vehicles yet another product mix.

Giga Shanghai just does final vehicle assembly (basically the easiest kind of factory and most minimally regulated) and is a million square feet smaller than the other factories and with no joint partnership/co buildout.

Famously regulated to hell Germany. There is no way that Nevada and NY have more regulations than Germany. It really is all about having experience.

You sure it is about labor prices? These are highly capital intensive businesses.

You may want to ask your LLM to do very detailed research.

Ouch!

Shipbuilding in particular has negligible labour costs, even for rich countries. Cost to build a ship is about 80% materials costs.

Which leaves plenty of room for a non-negligible 15% discount.

I don't think we're priced out, there's still a lot of competitive manufacturing in the US. I think it stems from a regulatory side, primarily in unions and logistics, which is unfortunate because these provide very little or no benefit to citizens but make it sometimes impossible to invest heavily in manufacturing here. People can't create dense factories cities like Detroit if a union may come in and destroy it, and we can't move fast enough if it's going to take years to get regulatory approval to develop a large factory (the Micron factory in Syracuse comes to mind, although there are many like it).

The USA is priced out of manufacturing due to greedy capitalists and business owners. Acting like labor is an insurmountable expense is just hilariously out of touch.

Maybe those that own the wealth should pony up more in taxes or give away their factories to the workers so they can run it themselves (something tells me they'll do a better job than greedy owners that just care about money rather than building a community).

For most industries: No, you aren't. The limiting factor mostly is natural resources. Which is what the articles author is complaining about. "I am not allowed to use up the last drops of drinking water California still has! SOCIALISM!".

And the other limiting factor is knowledge/education. Your region has been known for 100 years to be highly skilled at building $THING? That knowledge is still there and has not fully retired? That's also a resource.

"High labor cost" is a smoke screen. We are not talking about acquiring from a pool of lazy dancing monkeys. The labor you need are for tasks that machines can not yet do. Those jobs are either really shitty, or need a lot of qualification.

Due to this: If you want to build a factory in an area where there aren't already similar factories, you first need to build a University and come back 25 years later.

The articles author should next try to build a business based on offering camel riding in Greenland. Camel riding? Banned in Greenland!!!1

The trade-off to safety and caring about people and the environment is very often cost. Caring about the environment is not a binary concept, it is a matter of where your break-even point is between caring about the environment and absorbing higher costs.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_return_on_investment

I’m sure it’s possible to do both in theory but I find it hard to believe that it’s possible in practice.

If it was California wouldn’t be covered in superfund sites that originated from industrial activities that took place decades ago.

You can also use pigouvian taxation to make polluting expensive. Cost savings is generally the motivation for allowing negative externalities like pollution, so a natural way to reverse it in many cases while allowing flexibility when there is no practical alternative.

The problem is you can't enforce your taxation outside your borders without things like tariffs or subsidies.

This website is about what is banned in California, ostensibly for environmental reasons. So pigouvian taxes would enable them to unban those practices while mitigating their harms.

If you’re worried about people evading the tax, you can make a border adjustment for imports across national borders. Note California is simply forcing things to be done elsewhere.

>>without things like tariffs

Right, and if the US congress[0] properly cared about the environment, the regulation would require both A) requirements to keep the manufacturing clean if done here, and B) tariffs for goods produced with polluting processes over there, scaled so the costs are somewhat higher if produced dirty.

They can produce cleanly here or there without extra tariffs and without losing market share because some other competitor externalizes the pollution costs.

[0] Tariffs are proper the domain of Congress, not any other branch. OFC, because of this, it isn't really an option for California, since states cannot levy tariffs externally or vs other states.

You keep saying reduce regulation and then bring up things like adding permitting and taxing certain processes which is regulation.

The other thing you're not understanding is how the state can enforce regulations and how the federal government has to. States cannot levy tariffs.

> But people don't actually care about the environment.

They probably do if it's near their backyard

Corporations don't have a backyard, based on their historical behavior. The resource extraction and manufacturing sectors simply move on after they screw up or deplete one area.

Also I have significantly more influence in my local elections than elections on the other side of the world.

FWIW, California can't restrict the importation and sale of items manufactured legally in other states if the item itself (after manufacture) is safe. CA can't tell other states to ban various manufacturing techniques.

> California can't restrict the importation and sale of items manufactured legally in other states if the item itself (after manufacture) is safe.

I'm not sure about that, maybe it is based on the definition of "safe". There are tortilla chips made in Chicago that explicitly say they cannot be sold in California on the packaging. This is due to chemicals banned in Prop 65.

https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/1220zn9/...

Right, because the "bad" chemical will be in CA, harming CA residents.

CA can't say "the factory that made these chips emitted chemical X into the air during manufacturing, but none of it is in the final product", so you can't import it.

The Federal Government can, but not an individual state.

Thanks for clarifying. I believe I misunderstood your initial comment.

> The USA being richer, can afford to do it right and safer, not through regulation, but through process.

If you don't have regulation, for profit industry won't do it right “through process”, because that would be throwig away money. Regulation is how you do it right through process.

> So what would you do if you ACTUALLY cared about the people and environment? Put high tariffs on dangerous process products, reduce regulation (permits, etc), increase standardization and final safety measurements. Then the products we use, we make, safely.

Standardization and final safety measurements are literally regulations (and permitting is just a means of enforcing standardization.) So, basically, you “cut regulations” plan is actually to pair regulations doing exactly what the regulations you claim to cut do, call them a different thing, and add tariffs on top.

Which, is a long winded way of just saying “add tariffs”, which of course, a US state can’t do.

> The USA being richer, can afford to do it right and safer

We cannot. We are richer because we don't do it. We export it to areas so poor they view the environmental impact as a fair trade-off for being able to eat.

Correct. We are also richer because we won't do it. The EPA has saved countless lives, at least did, it's been basically dismantled.

>> The USA being richer, can afford to do it right and safer

> We cannot.

Apple can afford to do test fabrication while abiding by the rules, but chooses not to. https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/apple-fine-over-bay-area...

Glad you said areas rather than countries. It is quite common to degrade the environment within rich countries as long as it isn't near where powerful people live.

You're both likely correct.

We can afford to do it right. It will cost more and we'll have to make more prudent, effective, efficient, etc... decisions about producing and allocating goods and services and would need to give up many of the net negative/zero economic activities we like.

We've also likely enriched ourselves by externalizing the negative externalities of some of our goods and services to other countries. That's our choice, and I don't think it's a great one.

> You CAN actually do these processes, and still keep the environment clean.

Yes exactly. And most of the complaints in this post is not stuff that's outright banned but stuff that's "hard to do".

These companies are complaining about how much more it costs to do this AND keep the environment clean. In an ideal world we would just have environmental protections all over the world so these companies don't simply find some small town with a local gov't they can buy off and do whatever they want

A lot of people are poor. The cheap Chinese shit keeps them alive and relatively happy.

In your proposal you'd also cede the global market to China- because nobody in Angola cares about how those solar panels were made.

> I believe in procedural symmetry: if you ACTUALLY care about people and the environment, then you wouldn't let other poorer do these thing

America barely cares about the domestic poor[1] - do you think its captains of industry will care about the poor abroad? Charity begins at home.

1. See locations of Superfund sites. Or for a modern example, where they are choosing to build AI datacenters powered by on-site diesel generators or gas turbines.

A note about Superfund sites: It used to be funded by a small tax on chemical production companies. 70% of cleanup was paid for by the companies who caused it.

Then in 1995, congress "chose not to renew" that provision.

Now you and I literally and directly pay for the cleanup of hazardous waste. Companies don't really. Yet somehow they "Can't make factories" here

> But people don't actually care about the environment. They care about looking like they care about the environment, and sending industrial processes somewhere else. There is a difference.

The idea that people setting pollution rules secretly don't care is silly.

California can't fix the whole world's problems.

> So what would you do if you ACTUALLY cared about the people and environment? Put high tariffs on dangerous process products

No, California can't do that. States cannot impose tariffs per the Constitution: https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S10-C2-1...

They could push for more regulations at the federal level (and indeed, Californians do this quite often!)

"So what would you do if you ACTUALLY cared about the people and environment?"

- I don't need a car, I'll use public transport. - I will only buy and eat the amount of calories I actually burn. - This 10 year old phone actually works pretty well. I don't need a new one.

etc

You need new factories because you want more stuff. If you stop wanting more stuff, you don't need more factories, and therefore nobody needs to cry about his industry being "banned".

I have visited the US a hell lot of times. I swear, I never ever in all these visits in any part of the US had the following thought in my head: "Boy, these people really need more car factories!".

> But people don't actually care about the environment. They care about looking like they care about the environment, and sending industrial processes somewhere else. There is a difference.

This is about as true as saying "But people don't care about child sexual abuse". Sure, those partying with Epstein don't.

Plenty of people do care and indeed are today making sacrifices that align with this. Including lowering living standards. If you don't then that's on you, but speak for yourself.

Also Environmental regulations are like vaccines. They're victims of their own success. In the late 1960s early 1970s, before the EPA, the air and water in the US was a disaster. The EPA documented it:

https://www.businessinsider.com/what-us-cities-looked-like-b...

https://catalog.archives.gov/id/542493

> I used to live next to a large river for about 35 years. As a kid, it was forbidden to swim in it, and if you did, you had weird oily chemicals on your skin that felt unhealthy (burn, itching etc).

That's almost exactly how my dad and many of his siblings got permanently disabling muscular dystonia. The old times were fucking bad and we don't want them back.

> So, if the US wants production industry again

It should be noted that the VALUE of US industrial output is many times higher than it was 20 years ago, even if the VOLUME is lower.

Yes, it is crazy.

The good old coal? Have a look at the life expectancy of a coal worker, and maybe a ct scan of a coal workers lung.

Good old nuclear? Will you accept the nuclear waste getting store in your neighborhood? No? What about your neighbors neighbor? No? Keep asking until you get a yes. See you again after having asked 341.8 Million people.

There are reasons we moved on from this and de-industrialized. Because the industries we got rid of simply weren't actually that great. Go visit a Foxconn factory in Shenzhen/China. I have done it a couple of times. The part of electronics production that is not done by machines is painful and exhausting work. Your back will hurt. Your eyes will hurt.

I really wonder what people are thinking how these jobs look like. Nobody would want them. The only ones in the US who would accept those jobs would be immigrants who have seen far worse and therefore view these jobs as an upgrade. But the US doesn't want those immigrants. So why try to build industries creating jobs only the kind of people would accept that you do not want in the country?

When people can't afford homes, food and medicine, environment ceases to be a priority.

It's mostly a question of when, not if.

Housing and medicine is largely a political decision with little relation to environmental concerns. The political party that favours deregulation is the same one that wants to keep private health care.

Food is slightly different, judging by the rates of obesity people can afford more than they need.

The political party that wants socialized medicine is the one stacked with NIMBYs and blocking construction of housing.

NIMBYism is more of a socio-economic class than it is associated with a political ideology.

Which political party wants socialized medicine? I'd like to join it, I say this as a current democratic party operative.

Current democratic party is currently a pro-corporate pro-deregulation party, basically Reaganites from 80s.

Rich, older homeowners tend to be NIMBYs. It's a true bipartisan effort.

Which political party is for a universal healthcare system? The largest political party with universal health care on their platform is the Green party.

https://democrats.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/2024-Democr...

This is the current DNC platform. There are zero mentions of a universal / single payer / socialized healthcare system.

There are four mentions of "healthcare" it refers to maintaining the ACA (which is a bad law), making a more integrated health care system in the US territories (Guam, Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, etc.), climate law which will improve health care nebulously, and a vague statement about the supreme court hurting healthcare decisions (which is just a statement about them supporting the murder of babies).

When you get unlimited health care, health care costs skyrocket and you end up with a broken system that no party wants to fix - and everyone ends up with NO health care. If we went back to paying cash to the doctor, people with jobs will be able to afford it. And for insane life threatening events, job insurance and other forms of umbrellas.

This is such an impossible to solve problem that every advanced nation on Earth has already solved it, except the United States.

The democrat party wanted to push socialized healthcare 70 years ago and didn't succeed. They tried again during Obama's term but couldn't get the votes because at least one "Democrat" politician openly refused to vote for a socialized health care plan.

What do you want? If there were more Democrats in office in 2010 we would have already had socialized healthcare.

People keep getting pissed that the party without power can't do things. If you want a politician to change something, you have to vote for them first

Even the people who vote for Trump understand that, but so many people who think they are smart can't understand that about voting for democrats. They continue to get pissed that the democrats secure the presidency and nothing else and can get nothing done as is intentionally the design of the american system

FDR's New Deal was possible because the Democrat party held about 80% control of both houses of congress and the presidency. Their threat to pack the supreme court to bypass them worked because it was trivially doable for them. You want a New New Deal? You have to vote for more Democrats.

> What would be your choice?

Less stuff and less pollution everywhere.

It’s an inconvenient truth that the better off don’t want to face up to. Your environmental impact is going to be correlated to your consumption. More spending == more damage.

Something to bear in mind when you are being told environmental damage is being caused by the poor or some foreign country.

There are some scenarios where it’s a coordination problem. People could drive light fuel efficient vehicles if so many other people weren’t driving large, heavy, dangerous ones, for example.

Those large heavy vehicles are incentivized by loopholes in regulations because politicians were afraid of affecting "domestic jobs" as US automakers weren't even trying to compete with JP fuel-efficient imports.

Yeah, apparently it was originally to try to stop the rules from killing Jeep, which was having a hard time. New ones that allow more emissions for bigger vehicle footprints are also a big issue since it encourages larger vehicles.

There's not much point in being better off if you don't use that money for a holiday to Japan.

After all most of us work hard so that we can buy things.

You could work less hard and buy less things, spending the time and energy you save by working less hard on more enjoyable things than buying more stuff.

As I said more spending == more damage:

https://iere.org/how-tourists-affect-the-environment/

Yes, I fully agree.

And that choice is basically the exact opposite of what western civilization is heading for, and thanks to the AI boom, it has never been worse at any time in human history, I guess. Which means you are likely surrounded by people who want the opposite of what you want. That will be problematic.

However, this really only would be the proper answer if given by a majority as a community. In a crowd of people who want more, more, more more MORE, you will just drown and die.

But in principle you are right:

No, you do not really need to re-industrialize your country. Instead think about how endless growth in a reality of finite resources is going to play out. California is just fine as it is. Let's think about where Californians will get drinking water from in the near future, instead of thinking about building water-consuming factories.

As someone born in a socialist country that doesn't exist anymore (i'm still here), a very common progress of time over here was:

- a factory is built relatively far away from populated areas

- workers were moving closer to the factory, building houses (when factory workers could still afford them and were allowed to build them) closer and closer to the factory

- workers retire, die, their now adult children live in, or inherit, the houses

- adult children complain about factory being too close to the city, complain about trucks, noise, pollution, dust, demand this and that

In some cases, there is the next step too:

- factory eventually closes down, people complain about having to drive to work far away, usually to the capital city where factories and many other businesses still operate. Centralization bad! Same people protest when someone else wants to start a new factory, industrial zone, anything in their city.

In some more extreme cases:

- since everyone is driving to the capital city, they also shop there, send post there, visit doctors there, do bank stuff there... this means that the store, post office, the bank, etc. close down in their smaller city. Again, people protest. Sometimes literally: https://siol-net.translate.goog/novice/slovenija/krajani-gri... & https://www-nadlani-si.translate.goog/novice/zapirajo-kar-dv... & https://www-kostel-si.translate.goog/objava/1129317?_x_tr_sl...

You can avoid this scenario with trains.

My choice would be, if banning a particular process, also ban imports of products made with this process.

Another facet is that not only we got to enjoy clean air and outsourced pollution, we also paid our strategic enemies enough for them to transcend us.

The EU started charging carbon tariffs from 1 January- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EU_Carbon_Border_Adjustment_Me...

Right now, there are Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanisms (CBAMs) going into place that put a price on the externality of carbon pollution in other countries with lower standards than your own. It's basically a carbon tax, the EU's just went into force. All the recordkeeping is probably not going to be cheap, but it seems like in theory, you could do something similar with other industrial emissions, and try to bring others onto the same level playing field, so that there's not that same pressure to cut corners.

There a lot of processes like those done in other states and in europe. PCB etching, cnc milling, allumunium anodizing are some of the ones that I order on a regular basis from european manufacturers.

One thing is to regulate the industrial sector to be cleaner if waaaay more expensive and another is to just forbid stuff that can be reasonably be done cleanly (but again, waaaay more expensive than in asia, for example)

Well than it’s good that none of this is literally forbidden despite the dramatics.

Then author just wanted to be over dramatic about how it’s not cost competitive to build in the Bay Area vs places like Reno where the land is cheaper and labor is less. Their scape goat or whipping boy is regulations but that’s highly myopic at best.

All true. But these are done in areas where the required resources are available.

A hell lot of industries, including most the original author is mentioning, simply would not work in California. California is running out of drinking water for humans. You can de-regulate all that you want, even cancel all environmental laws, but that will not change the reality: You don't have water. Want to build a water-consuming factory? Great, but please go to somewhere where water is available.

Yes, bureaucracy can be annoying, and of course California has a hell lot of "let's not fix the actual problem, but make it mandatory to put up a sign about it" regulations that for someone from the outside (like me) look silly. If the state of California knows this substance REALLY is harmful, why... is it here?! Either it's not really harmful, but if it is... what? A sign is the solution?! ;)

So I understand people complaining about environmental regulations in California. We had the same in Europe for decades. Everybody was complaining and making fun about all the EU regulations. Then the UK left via Brexit. And learned a lesson. And today nobody is joking about EU regulations anymore.

Anyway: One may call it "banned", or "expensive" or whatever. But it really is "does it really make sense to put this here?".

This is the conclusion anyone who look at things rationally must come to. The problem is, there's an endless influx of people, drunk on space-age optimism from their K-12 education system, that think "I reject that reality, there MUST be a way to have it all". They haven't learned that the universe hates us and wants us to suffer, not the opposite.

Gen Z spends less than 30 minutes outside a day, that's with 1/5 having no job/school at all. The choice is obvious, they aren't swimming either way.

Green manufacturing tech is much closer in viability, now is the best time to re-industrialize. 1/5 of people having no work is a crisis, how can they support their family?

>than have a look on how the environment in the countries you will be competing with looks like,

You are absolutely relying on some very outdated tropes, especially because I know China is in your mind. China remains a production powerhouse and has radically overhaul the country environmentally in the last 15 years. It's pulling away fast and hard in green energy. It's a country that had to go from mass poverty to modern era in 50 years compared to the hundreds of years. They aren't perfect yet, not California level of drinking water from sewers, but I fully believe they'll get there and still be a production power house by not having delusions and anti-engineering drive decisions.

It's not about clean inputs, its about industrial outputs and waste product. China is NOT a leader in that field. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-57853-z

No, China wasn't "on my mind". Last been there two weeks ago. I am well aware that China in most areas is lightyears ahead of the Western world. I like highspeed trains ;)

I really meant what I wrote: Compare the environment. Pretty much everybody in Shenzhen hates Shenzhen. People live in tiny apartments. And not because they are poor: Even if you have money, you live in such a tiny box. Because everybody understands that Shenzhen is a Machine, and you are a part of that machine. Your goal is to one day be able to have made enough money to be able to exit that system, and unlike the USA, that actually really works.

Want to build electronics manufacturing and be able to compete with Shenzhen? Start by first building 50,000 box apartments of 200 square feet in size. Next step: Find 50,000 US Americans who want to work in that machine.

So yes, when it comes to electronics, it's not so much about getting poisoned by a poisoned nature, but by suffering in another way.

For clothes it's a different matter, for example. There you still have the oldschool stuff - want the US to be able to compete? Let's give the kids some cancer!

Let me try to re-phrase: Go to the place where stuff is successfully made that you want to in-source into the USA. Then make an informed decision if you really want the baggage that comes with it at home.

I am massively benefitting from something like Shenzhen existing on this planet. It is so effective and productive because it was designed for that from the ground up. Would I want anything like Shenzhen anywhere near me? Hell no!

Most US Americans asking for re-industrialization have neither worked in those industries nor even have a clue what it feels like working in those industries. The people who are asking for these industrial jobs to be re-created are those who do not have any intention to take one of those jobs.

Wasn't there some magical thinking about how by outsourcing industries to those poor countries will bring them money and raise their standard of living to a point where they care just as much about their environment as us and it will all eventually equalize. Didn't quite pan out like that, did it.

China deploys more solar and wind power then the US.

Americans seem to love to count their past successes and then declare the game is over and they won.

History doesn't end though.

They are not quite there yet. China now has a huge middle class, but they also still have a massive underclass. It’s too early to claim these projections were wrong. I think they are misguided, but there is no denying that China now pays more attention to pollution than it did a decade or two ago. There are massive investments to clean the air in large cities. Same in India: the situation is dire but the political cost of supporting the status quo keeps increasing.

Actually it did pan out. You just weren't paying attention.

Chinese cities had terrible air quality 20 years ago. Now they don't.

The Chinese and Indian governments have climate change plans that they're actively working on, sometimes ahead of schedule. The current US government has banned the words "climate change" in official documents.

China

It's not magical thinking; it just doesn't happen overnight. The real question is as we get relatively less wealthy in the West, will we start moving the other direction?

All these things can be done with healthy air and clean water, but the cost goes up, and people don't want to pay that cost. So we send them elsewhere instead.

The same is true re: data center water use. Evaporative cooling is cheaper. You can build a DC that uses little or no water but it costs more.

Yea, this romantizing of a past is doing no good to us. For example, It's weird how people romantize back breaking work on farm as "simple life". But I guess this was here with us every time. Grass is greener somewhere else and was greener in good old times.

Simple != easy

hah yeah same goes for blue collar trades type jobs, it's weirdly romanticized here. My mom's side of my extended family were all blue collar types in West Texas, ranch hands, truckers, welders, that sort of thing. All of the men were basically crippled by 55 from using their bodies to make money and died in their 60s of various diseases. My father's side is all white collar and they're all still around, my dad is a minor pickleball celebrity in FL at age 80.

>But the industry and the jobs have shrunken a lot

And those people left jobless still have the right to vote. So you'll have to bribe them with welfare or invest in their upskilling, otherwise they'll turn to crime to survive and vote the most extremist parties to power that will undo all your environmentalism.

It also leaves you economically and militarily vulnerable to the countries you outsourced all your manufacturing too, as you can't fight back an invading army of mass produced consumer drones with just your remaining HR and software departments.

>I'd pick the clean air and water, and have people poisoned far away that I don't know and can ignore.

Until they mass migrate as refugees out of their polluted hlleholes you helped create, and move into your clean country straining your resources, making it your problem once again. Or, they tool up and economically or militarily crush you, turning your country into one of their colonies.

You(the West in thsi case) reap what you sow. There's no free lunch where you can have your cake and eat it too. In a highly globalized, highly mobile world, things tend to come back at you pretty quickly and the only ones safe from this are the ones who profited the most form this, the billionaires with private islands and doomsday bunkers.

Just to clarify: When it comes to myself, my post has been a provocative hypothetical scenario in which I would need to make that choice.

In the real world, decided to move to a part of the planet where this question doesn't even come up, due to society having different priorities and a different base definition of "quality of life".

>Just to clarify: When it comes to myself, my post has been a provocative hypothetical scenario in which I would need to make that choice.

I know, that's why I wasn't judging it as being your own perspective but the general business perspective of the west that lead to the current situation.

> due to society having different priorities and a different base definition of "quality of life".

What is their definition of quality of life?

What we actually need to get to is a world where countries have somewhat equal quality of life. This would allow a country to invest in processes that reduce pollution without fundamentally making them uncompetitive.

Of course a world where everyone has an equal quality of life is almost a dream but I’d say humanity has been very slowly, very slowly getting there.

What we do now is that “1st world countries” focus on high value manufacturing and growing countries unfortunately take up the dangerous and polluting manufacturing — but bear in mind, the US and other industrial countries also had the same phase.

What fucks up this is when trust breaks down between countries. Now suddenly you need to bring lower value manufacturing in house for national security even if it doesn’t make economic sense. It’s inefficient, puts the world back at square one, causes everyone to fight for survival instead of progress, and frankly leads us away from that “Star Trek” future.

This is also why we’re having to worry about asking these questions now when we didn’t so much have to 20 years ago. We’re living in a mildly cooked part of humanity’s timeline where trust seems to be fleeting.

I'd pick the advanced components and find ways to protect the environment as well, both can co-exist together, Why not Fischgericht?

> "Europe-like US states like California"

This statement makes me smile. Although I see where this comes from...

I'm not judging here. From my experiences in California I would say that the general mindset and cultural approach to life is comparable to that of south-western Europe.

In part that's simply because while looking different, the general environment is fostering respecting nature, giving room for arts and creative and having an open mind.

(This example of course is coming from a past world where you could safely travel to/from the US, say, 10 years ago:)

Travelling from say Portugal to Miami ) would give you a massive culture shock. Portugal to San Diego? Not so much.

) Yes, Portugal to Key West would have worked.

Yeah as a New Yorker and someone that's lived in the Boston to Washington megalopolis basically my whole life, a lot of Europe feels very familiar. I felt right at home in Lisbon.

> Reducing the pollution costs a lot of money, and can make your product non-competitive.

Make it non-competitive with what?

With products made via "poison outsourcing" so other people can suffer what we refuse to suffer ourselves?

Seems like if an economy like the US or the EU actually wanted to, they could pretty easily say it's the clean way or no way at all, and voila, these things would magically be competitive again.

In a modern money/fiat money regime, the federal government can afford anything in nominal terms. As such, the solution would be to subsidize the industries that make the most sense for standard of living and national security so they can participate in the market. Use government subsidies to offset the costs of environmental remediation .

> You can sum this up with: Producing stuff without polluting the environment in most cases is impossible. Reducing the pollution costs a lot of money, and can make your product non-competitive.

I mean, the true reason here seems to be that producing stuff without polluting is impossible if you have to compete with stuff produced with lesser pollution standards.

In theory, this could be an argument for heavy import tariffs from countries with lesser pollution standards. The downside, of course, is that at the end of the day this would still mean "stuff is more expensive, maybe a lot more", which is obviously unpopular as it means fewer people can get the stuff. (And of course, a US state's ability to restrict trade with other US states is extremely limited)

Who can forget when China closed some factories in 2008 and 2022 so the smog would clear out before the Olympic games could begin? Could we potentially have "clean" factories built in America, maybe. But then could we afford the products they produced, hell no! If it was affordably possible, it would have already happened.

The working class citizens of China have paid the price for all the industrial factories. Don't believe it, look up the cancer studies China has published. (Oh right, communist countries always tell the truth, right?)

It would have worked out fine. We would have just bought less useless junk.

If it is not profitable, then it must be subsidized. Trump could have supercharged the EPA and expanded the grants for clean manufacturing, but he destroyed it instead. Now we get the worst of both worlds and our higher taxes go to his own pocket.

It's not black and white - do things smarter. But make jobs - top priority. We need jobs otherwise wealth concentrates.

Wealth concentrates because of shitty tax policy and lack of enforcement of existing, on the books regulation to enforce a competitive market.

Famous Trust Buster Teddy Roosevelt was a progressive republican who openly stated he had no desire to harm or kill industry in the USA but was instead working to ensure there continued to be competitive pressure to make that industry work better.

Employment has never effectively redistributed wealth. Possibly it improved things a little bit after the black plague reduced the labor pool by about 25%.

The only peaceful and low death form of fixing obscene wealth inequality has always been government, through taxes.

In the US, you could work 400 hours per day, and still nothing would change in regards of wealth concentration.

Inheriting money from your parents is taxed lower than earning your own money through work. Making more money due to already having money is taxed lower than earning your own money.

US Americans by a large majority over decades got trained to believe changing that would have something to do with "socialism", which was made a bad word.

But this isn't about re-distribution, making people equal or anything.

It's just that it is not logical, does not make sense, and in the end will destroy your society if already having money, which provides no benefit to society whatsoever, is rewarded over producing something, which does provide a benefit.

Why does a teacher who provides REAL benefit to society in the US has less yearly net income than someone who does not work at all but has once inherited 200k from his parents?

You have been trained to find all of this normal, and to believe it's your fault. Just work harder! No, it's not your fault. Working harder won't change anything.

So imagine you have one of the richest countries on this planet. But you don't really have enough work for every human to work full-time. Why is this a problem instead of an ideal? What strange goal is "everyone should work hard" when it comes to enjoying life? If you have an insanely rich country, there are far better solutions than trying to artificially create jobs that make no sense.

You can not compare this to a POOR country with high unemployment. There unemployment is a problem. In the US? Who cares if there is no factory to work in? Instead go help your neighbor. Study something. Become an artist. Do a public gardening project.

Again, the problem is that "having money already" that is of no use to society whatsoever is valued and awarded higher than any of those useful things above.

So, Step 1 for the US would be: You don't have to take away anything from anyone. But stop rewarding people for already having money.

As the CEO and owner of a German limited company I can choose between paying me a salary, getting taxed 45% ) for that, or paying myself a dividend, getting taxed 25% ). The first time I learned that 20 years ago I found it totally crazy and could not believe it. I still find it crazy today. Even in my own f'ing company my OWN work is valued less by society than me owning my company!

*) Oversimplification, but the ratios are correct

I'd choose to be the powerful and rich industrial country every single time. If I had a button that would wipe out the entire Amazon jungle and replace it with a world class high technology industry, I wouldn't even think twice before pressing it. Clean water to swim in? Build a pool.

Frankly, any deindustrialized country is quite simply irrelevant. You need industry to have a middle class. You need middle class for capitalist consumption. There's a reason why american corporations kowtow to China now. The USA thought it could deindustrialize and act as the world's boss. China is proving them wrong via relentless industrialization. I only wish my own country had the balls to do the same.

> Clean water to swim in? Build a pool.

Where do you find clean water to fill the pool with?

> You need industry to have a middle class.

Your average industrial assembly-line worker is _not_ middle class. They are horrible jobs no-one really wants back, or at least not for themselves.

It is very much possible to keep your air and environment clean, and still reasonably grow and remain relevant - look at France.

> You need middle class for capitalist consumption.

Again, industry workers were not middle class, and if you pay them enough to be middle class, your product's price stops being competitive.

To have middle class for capitalist consumption, you need to stop funneling literally _all the money_ to single-digit amount of people and companies, leaving everyone else poor, regardless of what they do for work.

> Where do you find clean water to fill the pool with?

The Earth is literally surrounded by water. I'm sure people will find a way. Treat the water if needed.

> if you pay them enough to be middle class, your product's price stops being competitive

Tell that to China's growing middle class, not me. We have western corporations shitting all over western values and culture and kowtowing before China and their censorship because they can't afford to lose the chinese market. That's where money is flowing now. It's one of the reasons why Trump wants to weaken the US dollar.

> Your average industrial assembly-line worker is _not_ middle class. They are horrible jobs no-one really wants back, or at least not for themselves.

That's incorrect. Factory work is a ramp from low to middle class. It's low skill on entry but teaches on the job. Long term employees are valuable because they have expertise on the process and are, therefore, more valuable.

Ask Detroit if they want the Auto Industry's manufacturing back.

> If I had a button that would wipe out the entire Amazon jungle and replace it with a world class high technology industry, I wouldn't even think twice before pressing it.

I used to think this way, but I've come to realize that it's very short-sighted. It's not sustainable, and we're already seeing how unchecked industrialization over the last couple centuries is leading to unintended/undesirable effects on our health, and indeed the suitability of the environment we need to live in. Sure, those problems can be pushed onto future generations, and so far (maybe) we've been able to solve them. But if we care at all about humanity's ability to thrive, we need to be more careful.

In developed countries, nobody has to struggle anymore just to stay alive, which is a far cry from the way it was 200 years ago. Advancements now are along the lines of increasing entertainment, or quality of life. But enjoying a good life doesn't have to be a zero-sum proposition, and I think society should put a higher cost on the ability of wealthy people to use up irreplaceable natural resources for their own benefit.

> It's not sustainable

You know what's not sustainable? Exponential growth fueled by credit.

Banks loaning money at nearly zero percent interest. Money that gets loaned out, spent, deposited back into the bank and loaned out again, and again, exponentially, until a ludicrously huge financial callstack is created.

This financial callstack wants to unwind. It can only do so safely by the payment of debts. At some point, someone will actually have to go out there and extract value out of this planet in order to pay back those debts. Since debt grows exponentially, so does the harvesting of the resources of this planet.

If you want to solve the problem, you need to go to the source. You need to get rid of credit. Without this, environmentalism is nothing but national suicide. You're opting out of exponential growth and promptly outcompeted by the countries that didn't opt out.

> In developed countries, nobody has to struggle anymore just to stay alive, which is a far cry from the way it was 200 years ago.

Yeah... Because they industrialized and got filthy rich. Now they can afford to give so called "rights" to their citizens.

Rights cost money. They don't appear out of thin air. Somebody's gotta work to provide them. Even the right to not get killed in broad daylight only exists because extremely violent men with guns are protecting the rest. Those men gotta be paid.

Money is not infinite. It runs out. The music can't stop. Gotta keep making money in order to keep providing all those nifty rights. The simple reality is if you don't have real industries you're probably not making that much money. My country is essentially the world's soy farm, nvidia stock alone probably moves more money in a day than my entire country put together.

Look at the national debts of countries the world over. That's money they don't have. Money future generations will be paying interest on for a long time. You want to get reelected but you're broke, so you borrow money you don't have and spend it all giving "benefits" to a population that is dumb enough to think it comes for free. Then there's so much money circulating the value of the currency is inflated away, and people's children grow up and get radicalized when they realize most of their taxes are spent on interest payments on loans made by the previous generation.

> At some point, someone will actually have to go out there and extract value out of this planet in order to pay back those debts.

Not a single atom on the planet has to be moved to extinguish all debts. Money and debt are (very useful and powerful!) bookkeeping constructs only.

> Look at the national debts of countries the world over. That's money they don't have.

Then who has it? Modern money is based on debt, and where there's a debt, there must be a creditor.

> Banks loaning money at nearly zero percent interest. Money that gets loaned out, spent, deposited back into the bank and loaned out again [...] Money is not infinite.

You seem to be basing your argument on some seriously outdated and thoroughly refuted models of money.

> Not a single atom on the planet has to be moved to extinguish all debts.

You should elaborate more on this bold claim.

> Then who has it?

Plenty of people. Treasury bonds holders. Pension funds. Insurance companies. Other countries. The government owes all of those people and regularly pays them interest.

> You seem to be basing your argument on some seriously outdated and thoroughly refuted models of money.

Fractional reserve banking is outdated and refuted?

> If you want to solve the problem, you need to go to the source.

Which is precisely why it's so short-sighted to try to solve your problem by "wiping out the entire Amazon jungle and replacing it with a world class high technology industry." If you're going to have a magic button to solve problems, then why not use it wisely, instead of propagating the spiral towards destruction?

> The simple reality is....

True -- there are no magic buttons. The reality is that people with wealth and power use them to take finite global resources and leverage them to ensure they they stay wealthy and powerful. That is implicitly not sustainable, as well as being questionably moral. It's not possible to avoid being part of the system, but you don't have to actively make it worse. You can advocate for fairer alternatives, or at least not wish for the destruction of entire major global ecosystems.

> Build a pool.

How does this work without water?

The Earth has a functionally infinite amount of water. If it's dirty, clean it.

That's not how it works. Transporting water from a different location will be an extra cost. Cleaning will be an extra cost. And cleaning is also not perfect. Those who will need water, are usually not those who can afford all this. So at the end you are just moving the problems to someone else, out of greed and ignorance.

We've been building canals for thousands of years.

Not a problem. Countries should get rich first, then they can afford all of those costs and have money to spare.

California has droughts, but never water shortages.

Depends on the usage. According to news, there were water shortages in the past in California. Though, we are not talking just about California here.

The only shortages are for farmers, and a few isolated and very poor towns.

IMO, the (existing) towns should get more state support to have affordable safe domestic water. The shortage is not raw untreated water, but just transporting it and treating it.

The farmers? I sympathize, but they are trying to grow crops in an extremely fertile but arid valley. It's going to be constrained by the natural environment.

Municipal water usage in California is only 20% of all water usage. The rest is almost entirely agriculture, and all that agriculture uses a strange system of water rights where you do not have to reduce consumption during a drought, and the last person in line instead absorbs all the drought problems.

This creates an insane political environment where the rich as fuck agribusiness which owns that final water right is incentivized to get that tiny municipal water usage reduced as much as possible to squeeze out a tiny bit more water for their own business, rather than reform the dumb water rights system which would ensure that they only shoulder a tiny tiny portion of drought scarcity but probably force them to pay a little bit for irrigation improvements or stop growing almonds as cheaply.

The only reason the rest of the country even knows about the California water situation is because those bottom rung agribusinesses are still wealthy as all fuck and have actively paid for national political campaigns

Most municipalities get their water out of the same system, it's just they need so much less so they get by. Also, of the 20% that used by urban water systems, 50% is for outdoor irrigation.

The definitive book on the subject is "Cadillac Desert"

> If I had a button that would wipe out the entire Amazon jungle and replace it with a world class high technology industry, I wouldn't even think twice before pressing it.

Wow. Why, because the Amazon is just a bunch of trees or something boring? If "high technology industry" is so much more valuable without even thinking twice about it, you probably don't understand very much of the world.

I understand. I just don't care. I'd rather my country got rich and powerful instead. Would be nice to industrialize and keep the Amazon but I'd totally sacrifice it if needed. It's home to huge rare earths reserves.

> What would be your choice?

Stop promoting overpopulation. The USA adds ~1.8 million of people every year. That's one more Phoenix city, every year.

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