How the United States is reinventing itself yet again | Hacker News Reader

How the United States is reinventing itself yet again

washingtonpost.com

24 pointsryutin24 comments

This is an atrociously optimistic view. The fundamental inequalities between the rich and the poor are more getting more and more out of balance. There is chronic long-term unemployment, the Debt has ballooned beyond reason and Fundamental Liberties are under sustained assault.

So the "reinventing" might work out for a measured few while the rest have a hopeless, orwellian future ahead barring some serious course correction.

While the present has bad spots, we've lived through the gilded age, japanese internment, slavery, trail of tears, etc.

Good things and bad things are always happening.

>we've lived through the gilded age, japanese internment, slavery, trail of tears, etc.

Having overcome stuff in the past is not a guarantee of othercoming other stuff in the future.

To put it in another way, your words could might as well have been uttered by some roman, just before the fall of the Roman Empire. They also had a long history of "living through" troubled times.

Plus, "we went through this before" seems to miss the whole point. As if it's not a VERY bad thing. As if we shouldn't be upset about it. As if 5-10 years of shitty life (or however long this is gonna last) is trivial; like we're all going to live forever or something.

True -- not to mention that some will even be, well, killed or severely affected by it. He mentions the "trail of tears" as something people survived, but how many died during that?

The attitude may appear cynical, but it seems totally in line with the ideas feed to the public. If in the Hollywood movie the kitty is saved then it is not a drama no mater how many die, right?

This is written like some kind of sales pitch for US Treasury bonds.

It's so lopsided that I doubt the authors believe their own thesis. They're trolling -- http://xkcd.com/386.

> a new era where the precepts of Moore's Law can be applied to virtually any field

It was at this point that I started reaching for my revolver.

Especially considering that Moore's Law is stopping to work in its original field...

Is it though? People say that all the time, since I have been aware of Moore's Law.

IBM has demonstrated the smallest possible working gate. We're still a little ways off from that but - the problem with exponential traversal is you rapidly reach the end of the road. That and the last few iterations of Moore's law are going to be very expensive. It's the economic aspect people are referring to when speaking of Moore's law coming to an end.

As a consumer I never kept a log, but both desktop and laptop computers used to "prove" Moore's Law continuously, in your face. I grew up going from under 1MB of RAM to 2MB, 4MB, ... up until what we have now, where things seem to have plateaued in the 2GB-8GB range for what seems like ages. Showing my age here...

tl;dr -- Happy days are here again!

Not very much content, except that solar panels and natural gas continue to get cheaper. Don't get me wrong -- I love to hear the US is about to return to being a world class manufacturing nation, and it might even be true, but this seemed like a pretty content-free article.

Natural gas may be getting cheaper, but in the short term electricity is going to get more expensive as the relentless assault on coal generation continues. Utilities are building and converting natural gas generation plants but coal still dominates in many areas. Our local utility is telling us to prepare for a tripling of rates.

The relentless assault is justified IMHO.

I drove through Pennsylvania (my home state) twice in the past couple of weeks to go from my duty station to home and return. The state is as beautiful as ever but I often had to switch my car's ventilation system to recirc to avoid the smell of coal power plant exhaust, even miles from the plant. I don't know how the residents handle it.

It's a pity that TMI effectively shut down nuclear in the USA as nuclear could, if nothing else, help replace the single most-polluting power generation method still in wide use.

Reinventing itself as an Orwellian dystopia.

And taking the whole World with it.

Some of the World is just as involved as the US. They are spying on everyone too.

Similar articles have been printed in the Sowjet Prawda 30 years ago.

...and the prophecies went true, right? If not, they need to wait just a little bit more!

> Because the United States continues to lead the world in its ability to adapt to, incorporate and develop new systems and new technologies, we are uniquely poised to reap a disproportionate share of the benefits of these shifts.

That was funny!

O Canada! Maybe the picture is a lil more complex... http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/fyi/Local-scientist...

I guess he was told to write something with a possitive spin for the new year...

Much of this article is unsupported happy talk Here is what's really happening on the specifics:

The only thing the US has going for it is the oil/gas boom, while it lasts, and if we don't get sucked into a a resource-curse economy. Rooster, meet sunrise.

The "manufacturing revival" is hugely overhyped and puffed up with weapons and military supplies manufacturing.

K-12 education sucks. It needs an individualized education revolution. But all the money is in NCLB.

The solar boom is real, and we might luck-in to a postponement of Peak Oil, but, for now, there is no replacement for oil and not enough capex in nuclear and renewables to fill the gap. That will SUCK. But not in 2014.

The NSA has pooped in the Internet punch bowl. Who wants an Internet of Things That Spy On You? Yeah.

So frack all the things, and party while it lasts. Everything that was wrong before the fracking boom will be there when we're done, bigger, uglier, and more dangerous.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com