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jqpabc123

The real reason why the USA can't compete in global manufacturing --- poor leadership.

Leadership that caters to special interests instead of the overall, long term benefit of citizens and organizations.

Nothing illustrates this better than energy policy and the foibles thereof.

Ethanol is a particularly bad idea that only came about due to the farm lobby.

Solar and renewables are progressing despite policy oppostion.

Cheap energy offers a significant competituve advantage --- that USA policy openly and stupidly rejects.

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It's not just the farm lobby, it's baked deep into the constitution and the political geography so that vast empty land stretches have hugely disproportional political power.

The more acres you have, the more kWh you can generate each year

Why wouldn't land owners want to farm the sun?

Leasing land for solar installations is popular with rural land owners. Or at least popular enough that there's rarely an issue finding enough willing owners to develop a new project.

The problem is typically their neighbors agitating against allowing the actual land owners to sign leases. It's the rural equivalent of activists who fight apartment complex construction in the name of "preserving neighborhood character."

> Farm the sun

Fantastic messaging! I could see this being a great way to market this, especially with something mentioned in the article:

> Farm the sun to make 3X more money

Energy can't be moved as easily as food. If you generate electricity in Iowa you can't easily sell it to California.

Energy can't be moved as easily as food

It can be moved much easier. Electricity moves at the speed of light (through an ideal conductor).

If you generate electricity in Iowa you can't easily sell it to California.

Within the Eastern and Western grids, power generated anywhere can be easily sold anywhere else within the respective grids. For example, the Intermountain Power Project in Utah has historically supplied a significant portion of electricity to Southern California.

Moving power between these grids is a little more complicated --- only because the grids are not synchronized. But this too is technically possible and could be made easier if there was more demand to do so.

Have you seen the logistics required to move the output of 15,000 acres of food to the consumer?

A 15,000 acre solar farm generates 6000GWh a year, which can be moved via a single high voltage pylon.

Of course you don't need to move it to California, as you can power an Iowa data centre, or Chicago, instead.

People may pay more to ship "Florida Oranges" or "California wine" across the country. They won't with electric, they'll just buy locally, and if prices reduce then people will use more (building new data centres is the current vogue, but factories and other industry)

Iowa being a net energy exporter means more economic opportunities for Iowa

The Eastern and Western grids are interconnected.

Yes, but you can't just inject 100s of megawatts into the middle and hope it magically gets to the coasts. There are a lot of losses on the transmission lines and each step has a max capacity.

Talking about losses is a sign of ignorance. Generally a comment making that point can be ignored. Losses are a point that people repeat: maybe because it "makes sense".

  operating at median loads, transmission losses over a distance of 1,000 miles generally range between 6% and 15%

Other constraints are what matter - especially if any links are close to their capacity.

IAAEE

Yes, that's why I mentioned the capacity issue as well. While losses aren't significant, they do matter. Especially when we are talking about a 1600 mile distance.

No one electron goes the 1600 mile distance. An increase of cheap energy supply in one place lowers likelihood of production elsewhere, but it is more diffuse than selling Iowan energy in California.

Sure, it's not a trivial exercise, but neither is food transport. That's a much harder problem that's been solved because we had to. The main reason we don't have a continental grid is because we don't need one.

How do you think energy policy is baked into the Constitution?

People vote, so how does land have political power? Presumably you mean people in low population density get disproportionate representation in USA?

The last point is what they mean. The Senate causes a number of problems with it's setup. But even the House and how small it is causes further problems. The number of reps there needs to go up by many many times.

To add, there are many proposals[1] for Senate[2] reform[3]. Even a cursory glance reveals[4] an abundance[5] of different[6] suggestions[7].

1. https://dc.law.utah.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1378&con...

2. https://casten.house.gov/imo/media/doc/senate_constitutional...

3. https://democracybillofrights.org/how-and-why-to-reform-the-...

4. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09626...

5. https://casten.house.gov/media/press-releases/casten-introdu...

6. https://rooseveltinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/RI...

7. https://electoral-reform.org.uk/when-it-comes-to-fair-votes-...

And that's not baked into the Constitution—it was set by law in the early 1900s, and could be changed by law.

If we were to uncap the size of the House of Representatives, and instead change so that each district contains 50k people (or close to it), we would have roughly 7k representatives in the House.

That would effectively eliminate the disproportionate advantage small states have there. (It would not, of course, do anything about the Senate; that would have to be addressed separately.)

> If we were to uncap the size of the House of Representatives, and instead change so that each district contains 50k people (or close to it), we would have roughly 7k representatives in the House.

Nice and proportional, but a completely unwieldy number of representatives. 700 reps for 500k people each would be more manageable.

(of course, that means very little if (a) they're only from two parties and (b) all 7k districts are gerrymandered six ways from sunday)

I believe the grandparent is referring to the US Senate, which was designed as the state's representation in the federal government, and where each state gets 2 senators.

This means that California gets 2 senators but so do Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, etc.

Now, the conclusion of the grandparent does not follow in my opinion.

Nothing in the constitution mandates the current state boundaries. California could break itself into multiple states (there is a population minimum) and gain more representation in the senate if it wanted.

But there are trade offs. California is a huge prize in the electoral college and has been a safe Democrat win for quite some time. Splitting into multiple states could jeopardize that. Being large also allows them to lead the way on regulation in a way that smaller states couldn't.

The US government is quite the game theory problem.

I have a different reason why the conclusion doesn't follow: while it's true that less populous states have outsized influence in the senate, the constitution doesn't require (and in fact, originally discourages) the federal government to engage in the kind of activities being discussed here. These activities should be the domain of the states. But a long history of expanding federal power (and various supreme court decisions affirming those expansions along, in my opinion, dubious interpretations of both the constitution and various statutes, especially the commerce clause) has led to this issue.

The fact that North Dakota has a lot more influence in the US Senate than California on a per capita basis shouldn't be that big of a deal, because the US Senate should be doing a whole heck of a lot less than it is, and states should be picking up that slack.

The more power and responsibility we have given the federal government, the more the issues appear....because it's doing things never intended or envisioned by the founders.

People are represented by Representatives, real estate is represented by Senators.

> The real reason why the USA can't compete in global manufacturing --- poor leadership.

I'd say it's partially that, but it's also priorities.

When the Boomers were coming of age 40 years ago, they didn't want to work in factories like their parents had, and they didn't want to pay the prices necessary to pay American workers to make goods in an environmentally-responsible manner.

So they gladly bought things made in China where - at the time - the average person would rather work in a factory than on a peasant farm, the labor was cheap, and whining about things like "air quality" and "potable water" were either not a high priority, or would get you dealt with by the local Party representatives who had been told that putting that new factory in was the difference between them advancing up the ranks or being sent to a re-education camp.

If anything, China was the ultimate caterer to special interests, those being the Western companies who wanted to do business there without having to deal with hiring Westerners.

When the Boomers were coming of age 40 years ago

When the Boomers were coming of age, there was no trade with China.

there was tiawan and japan for your cheap junk fix. Both are not known for cheap junk anymore

In other words, they were the ones who made it a reality.

Which really was the dumbest geopolitical move in American - and maybe Western - history, but whatever. Too late now.

How about Bill Gates as US's Benevolent Dictator For Life?

While the young Bill Gates did many disgusting things, after retiring he behaved quite decently in comparison with other similarly rich people.

In any case, he would have been an infinitely better president than people like Bush Junior or Trump. Probably also better than people like Biden, who is not remembered for doing something good, but only for not being so bad as his predecessor and successor.

> after retiring he behaved quite decently in comparison with other similarly rich people.

Well, except for that whole Jeffrey Epstein thing: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/local-business/gates-f...

I did not follow this affair more thoroughly, but the link provided by you shows only a suspicious relationship between Nathan Myhrvold and Epstein, without saying anything conclusive about Gates.

It's not that our leaders are uniquely bad (do you think the CCP leaders are better?) but that the incentives for that kind of economic development aren't there.

Largely due to, as you point out, special interests.

EDIT: judging by the comments everyone here seems to love China

I think phrases like 'love China' set this up as an emotional argument when it isn't one.

I have no idea what China or Chinese leaders are like. I have no relation to China.

However, I can say that their policy choices on these technical issues are better than ours. The only emotion I feel when saying this is disappointment in my own country, rather than pride in China. I wish America had more energy production. Almost all American problems are the result of lacking energy production capacity.

> do you think the CCP leaders are better?

Based on their public statements and policy actions, absolutely. America these days sounds and behaves like a country being run by absolute cretins.

At a 30,000 foot view the purpose of politics is to keep corrupt people and stupid people away from the levers of power. Voting is one possible way, fiat is another.

Readers can assess for themselves the degree to which the U.S. government has done this, as well as the CCP.

By the way Sortition, which is picking random people to run government for a period of time, would probably be better than what we have now in my opinion. We are worse than random.

What you want out of politics is not the purpose of politics. Politics is an emergent phenomenon that appears naturally within groups of people.

People/groups engage in politics to exert control over the social environment.

It’s not about what I want. The view I shared above was shared the Founding Fathers of the US, and the writers of its constitution. For example Federalist 57, 68, and 76.

So I’m not talking about “politics” as an emergent social phenomenon I am talking about the deliberate process of setting up a government.

> judging by the comments everyone here seems to love China

It is possible both to be impressed by China's accomplishments over the past 30 years while remaining critical about its imperfections (and America's as well). It's not about "loving China;" it's about being open-minded, objective, and thorough in considering the matter.

"do you think the CCP leaders are better?"

Yes, unambiguously. They appear to be aggressively investing in collaborative foreign policy projects globally, have a stellar track record when it comes to not starting random wars around the world, and their economic planning and engagement with decarbonization efforts massively outshine the US.

There's an invisible tradeoff here. The US has an extremely expansive view of free speech, so you get a very noisy picture of its politics, half of which is Infowars-level insane lies. This is a large cause of its problems. China absolutely does not have free media, and if it did it wouldn't publish primarily in English, so its negatives are very hard to see. Even for Chinese speakers.

You just need to stomach slavery, violent repression of political dissidents, live organ harvesting and a handful of other unpleasantries.

I'm not an apologist for Chinese repression, but America still has or once had slavery, child labor, torture (Abu Ghraib), patent medicine and unsafe food, racist policies that prevent wealth accumulation (redlining), mass pollution, racism and mistrust of non-white-skinned people, a terrible healthcare system for most, and still debates over the utility of vaccines, has a poor K-12 education outcome, refuses to severely punish notorious white-collar criminals and make their victims whole, immunizes its law enforcement from prosecution when it violates others' civil rights, and vests the President with absolute immunity or a presumption of immunity in exercising its powers. And those are just the embarrassments and atrocities I can think of right now.

We still have a lot to answer for.

If it's already changed don't you think it's answered for? What level of performative apologetics will make it better in your estimation?

I don't want performative apologetics; I want the still-existing problems to be remediated. I also want my fellow Americans not to deny our history and present reality. Recognition and apology are not identical.

You seem to be not distinguishing things that have happened hundreds of years ago with things that are present, exaggerating the scale of things that are still present, and not acknowledging that those things are widely recognized and even taught in American history classes.

The For Profit Penal System (tm) and the resulting recidivism rates associated therewith, while not technically slavery, isn't exactly not slavery either. Anyway was there something specific you're trying to defend here or is this merely an exercise in performative nitpicking?

I made clear that some of these were past (and they reverberate still today), and some are present: "America still has or once had"

> exaggerating the scale of things that are still present

What am I exaggerating, exactly?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/polic...

https://mappingpoliceviolence.org

https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/quality...

https://www.npr.org/2026/03/14/nx-s1-5734051/measles-outbrea...

> not acknowledging that those things are widely recognized and even taught in American history classes

In some states, yes. In others, the content is being censored (another embarrassment for America, which once censored the teaching of evolution!). See, e.g.:

https://pen.org/educational-censorship/index-of-educational-...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_school_curricula...

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/a-look-at-whats-behind-the...

Yeah, people here are insane to believe the CCP is some kind of technocratic benevolent autocracy.

The same can be said without irony about the current administration in the US so there is that. Anyway it's perfectly reasonable to point out the ways in which the CCP is outperforming western governments. If that bothers you then I'd say you may want to contact your representatives.

It helps that they spend billions to manipulate public perception on forums like this one

CCP leaders are largely technocrats unlike in the US. There are many engineers and doctors in the upper ranks.

Well, Xi Jinping and his lackeys are known for their poor educational background, maybe not quite well known in the West.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSYQpaAI90A

Many of us have personal experience watching good engineers become bad managers.

Politics is harder than it looks.

In theory an engineering background should help make better politicians. In practice it isn't the slamdunk you imply.

In practice it isn't the slamdunk you imply.

In practice, China is very different from the USA. For example, China doesn't have open presidential elections.

My statement was descriptive not prescriptive. I make no claims about, in a vacuum or for all situations, whether a technocrat is better than one who is not, just that many of their government is made up of them and they seem to be doing well.

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