I once kept a diary of a fake personality troll I performed back in 2001. I kept it up for about 4 months, and had many people asking around at juggling conventions if they had seen Nigel Green. It was fun, as the character took on a life of his own in the minds of other people, even though I only made about a dozen posts under his name.
One of my favorite things when I meet people from internet forums is not tell them who I am and see how long it takes them to put it together (if at all).
Or at least it was one of my favorite things until I started hanging with Pete who would introduce me by my forum handle. >_>
I think non-renewable resource depletion figures in greatly. Not just fossil fuels, but REE's and precious metals. With other nations developing, there won't be enough to go around.
Infrastructure is backward and inefficient - like Rym said. Transportation-wise, we really failed to build to a human scale. Considering that we're oil-dependent for transport, looking at a map of the Persian Gulf and the Straights of Hormuz is worrying. The new plans to build high-speed rail are shoddy, and I'm not confident there will be enough affluence to support the technology for replacing our current transportation framework's energy demands.
Decline of the US to me mostly means having to scale back and reconcentrate resources. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing if we're up to the challenge.
Really, the fact that we haven't recovered from the manufacturing bust is probably one of our largest factors. The fact that Michigan used to be a manufacturing powerhouse and now has a terrifying unemployment rate means that we have large swaths of the population who are simply not producing anything.
We need to figure out how to re-tool this country and get people back into the game.
Building rail links across the country in a spider web network would be a ludicrous idea. But building extensive passenger and freight rail infrastructure within these specific zones, coupled next with heavy freight links connecting only these zones, would work wonders.
Comprehensive high-speed rail links within and around these few regions would greatly affect the overall economic health of the nation.
This is a fairly large thing over here. Rym and Scott have seen our light rail from the airport in Sea-Tac to Seattle. i have yet to use it because it's not feasible in my commute.
They are also planning on making a light rail from Tacoma to Seattle which is a large portion of commuter congestion. There are also talks on seeing if other light rail projects are feasible for other areas of high traffic.
If my living/work situation changes, I would highly consider using the light rail system, but for now I drive.
I think the big problem plaguing all of the great ideas has been terrible inefficiency. Infrastructure projects keep getting canned, like the NJ-NY Arc tunnel, because they cannot contain the costs. They balloon so far over their bugets that they become unjustifiable.
Infrastructure projects keep getting canned, like the NJ-NY Arc tunnel, because they vastly underestimate what it actually costs to make anything...
... likely because if the true costs were accounted for at the start, no project would ever get off the ground.
Whether this happens because people suck at their job, or are being intentionally deceitful is up for debate, but I'd say we're both right to some extent. It does bring up some very interesting questions though. If people would never support these projects if they were fully and hontesly planned out ahead of time, are they projects worth undertaking? Do the people not know what is good for them, or are they defending themselves from being taken advantage of?
But yeah, why can't people just get into their heads that it is much better to invest than cut back. Invest into infrastructure and education and you will have much higher and better long term gain. The Problem with politics is way too much that politicians focus on short term gain and benefits to their constituents because that will keep people voting for them. Thus sacrificing long term plans for short term gain is the norm, and the U.S. and many other countries are circling the drain because of it.
Tax cuts now! Screw it that a couple of years from now we won't have enough money to do anything useful anymore!
Building rail links across the country in a spider web network would be a ludicrous idea. But building extensive passenger and freight rail infrastructure within these specific zones, coupled next with heavy freight links connecting only these zones, would work wonders.
And this is what happens when you are the president and try to establish a high speed rail project linking two of those regions:
Comments
Please god, I hope so.
The topic is an interesting one, and this is the right thread for it nonetheless.
I think non-renewable resource depletion figures in greatly. Not just fossil fuels, but REE's and precious metals. With other nations developing, there won't be enough to go around.
Infrastructure is backward and inefficient - like Rym said. Transportation-wise, we really failed to build to a human scale. Considering that we're oil-dependent for transport, looking at a map of the Persian Gulf and the Straights of Hormuz is worrying. The new plans to build high-speed rail are shoddy, and I'm not confident there will be enough affluence to support the technology for replacing our current transportation framework's energy demands.
Decline of the US to me mostly means having to scale back and reconcentrate resources. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing if we're up to the challenge.
We need to figure out how to re-tool this country and get people back into the game.
Rhode Island just fired all of their teachers.
I think we may have to hit a true crisis stage before this actually gets fixed.
Building rail links across the country in a spider web network would be a ludicrous idea. But building extensive passenger and freight rail infrastructure within these specific zones, coupled next with heavy freight links connecting only these zones, would work wonders.
They are also planning on making a light rail from Tacoma to Seattle which is a large portion of commuter congestion. There are also talks on seeing if other light rail projects are feasible for other areas of high traffic.
If my living/work situation changes, I would highly consider using the light rail system, but for now I drive.
But yeah, why can't people just get into their heads that it is much better to invest than cut back. Invest into infrastructure and education and you will have much higher and better long term gain. The Problem with politics is way too much that politicians focus on short term gain and benefits to their constituents because that will keep people voting for them. Thus sacrificing long term plans for short term gain is the norm, and the U.S. and many other countries are circling the drain because of it.
Tax cuts now! Screw it that a couple of years from now we won't have enough money to do anything useful anymore!
NOT high speed rail:
Or something.