How the Crash Will Reshape America | Hacker News Reader

How the Crash Will Reshape America

theatlantic.com

16 pointsjimbokun4 comments

I was all ready to hate on this article, because an article titled something like "How The Crash Will Reshape America" might as well be entitled "I, The Author, Tell You My Political Philosophy In Boring Essay Form"... that is, most people seem to basically be predicting that the ideas they espoused all along will suddenly win out. This is somewhat smarter than I was expecting, in that some honest thought was put into the future of various regions.

But there's still a pretty strong element of "My Political Philosophy Is Now Inevitable" in the piece; the biggest example I would cite is the statement that suburbs are over. Suburbs being over mostly depends on transportation getting monotonically more expensive and more difficult, which is a perfectly rational conclusion... assuming technological stagnation.

That's a whopper of an assumption.

(Yes, I'm aware some other things were cited. The stuff about the effect of home ownership on mobility were interesting, I thought, but you can still rent your way into a suburb.)

Even without energy breakthroughs, fission can provide cheap energy for a long time. Energy breakthroughs may yet occur, and I consider at least one of "cheap-enough solar panels to be brain-dead easy buys" and "alternate fusion proposal like Polywell" to be a reasonable probability. Combine that with what I think is a reasonable chance of robotic cars, and... suddenly the disadvantages of suburbs qua suburbs pretty much disappear.

Let me make myself clear: I'm not saying this is going to happen. I'm saying that in terms of future prognostication, it's as good a guess as the one in the article. (Yes, you can extract some of my technological beliefs from my point too. I'm willing to be fair that way.)

The simple truth is that this article is at least twenty years too early. You really can't know how this is going to go. I for one have been surprised about how this recession has accelerated some trends long foreseen, but always thought to be further in the indefinite future... anyone care to place odds on the New York Times not making it into 2010? Nobody would have even entertained that bet three years ago. It might still be long odds today but it's definitely into the "worth thinking about before fixing a number" range.

(Anyone wanna guess the odds on "The New York Times doesn't make into 2010 OR the only way they make it is by selling off more than half of their concrete assets"?)

suburbs just don't scale. If the population of the USA keeps increasing, this country has to move forward into more urbanization, more density, and higher buildings and mass transit. When I moved to California, I was surprised that its architecture had more in common with the Midwest than with the more urban east coast. Appart from SF, you have to have a car to go anywhere. In the east coast, from Boston, to D.C. you can get along fine with urban transport + zip car. But I realized, most of the cities in the east coast were created centuries ago, and were made for people, and not cars, and tend to have higher densities (even comparing suburbs to suburbs). Unfortunately, most Cities in CA, were made for cars. (with SF being the exception).

There will be natural forces that will make cities to increase their density. LA is already a big giant parking lot, how much further can it expand? All the bay area highways (all 5 lanes ), are already clogged all the time. What will happen when there are 20% more cars in the street just two decades from now?

People either have to endure long hour + commutes, or live close to their working places, or choose their work and place to live according to public transport accessibility.

Necessity will shape this nation. It wont happen overnight, but in few decades things will be different.

"the crash of 1873, the Great Depression—have a way of upending the geopolitical order, and hastening the fall of old powers and the rise of new ones."

There has been much ado about the US failures, but the failures in the UK seem even more serious. I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere as the focus seems to be on the US, as is usual, but this is the last nail in the coffin for the UK as far as I can see, after this it will be an island off Europe that spends its time talking about the old empire.

- debt fueled consumption is over

- american wages will slowly revert to global standards where there is global competition...i.e. start getting used to hiring managers talk about the "bangalore price" just as people in manufacturing have been beaten about with the "china price".

- stock markets will be continuously pummeled by volatility and mandated selling (boomer 401k liquidation)

- the big "IF" - can the dollar survive. we've basically entered a zimbabwe-like state of fabricating huge volumes of new currency to prop up fiscal fractures that were themselves caused by excessive abuse of currency in the 90s. one must ask, at what point does the dollar break? my guess: US debt of 25 trillion

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