Is the American inability to build infrastructure a good thing?

[Phil P]

Originally Posted by EDS_

Per your, "are dense cities really needed" point. That's a long-wave question and I'm betting the answer will prove to be less and less so over time.

An anecdote.....my wife is a self-actualized workaholic, very successful C-suite type. She claims she gets more high value work done remotely than in the office.

It's because of this that I think the lack of infrastructure building hasn't been all that bad. The more infrastructure that's constructed, the more locked into a certain mold of living / commuting we are. With housing and infrastructure, we're on the minimum viable product mode as a nation now; this means that whatever our post modern-industrial / digital paradigm of working and living is, we have more room to build new than try to work around existing builds. I'm the same way as your wife in feeling more productive at home - and allocating more SQFT to residential vs commercial office is a choice we can make since we haven't overbuilt.

You can experience this first hand playing city simulation videogames. If you give yourself the constraint of not tearing up existing development it's pretty tricky to design. It means you end up doing the smallest possible option and leaving space.

Inefficiency isn't good, but never starting isn't inefficient - that's just leaving the slate blank.

[EDS_]

Originally Posted by Phil P

It's because of this that I think the lack of infrastructure building hasn't been all that bad. The more infrastructure that's constructed, the more locked into a certain mold of living / commuting we are. With housing and infrastructure, we're on the minimum viable product mode as a nation now; this means that whatever our post modern-industrial / digital paradigm of working and living is, we have more room to build new than try to work around existing builds. I'm the same way as your wife in feeling more productive at home - and allocating more SQFT to residential vs commercial office is a choice we can make since we haven't overbuilt.

You can experience this first hand playing city simulation videogames. If you give yourself the constraint of not tearing up existing development it's pretty tricky to design. It means you end up doing the smallest possible option and leaving space.

Inefficiency isn't good, but never starting isn't inefficient - that's just leaving the slate blank.

I'm not even sure the OP's title is logically sound. For certain we have infrastructure weaknesses old bridges, faltering water treatment plants, poor dams etc. etc. However, Texas in short order has become the #1 green energy producer in The US.

The second graphic shows some large infrastructure projects in progress........
https://www.forconstructionpros.com/...ng-and-planned

[EDS_]

Originally Posted by moguldreamer

Technology is improving. Work-from-home originally was questionable for many employees. Two decades ago, I remember telecommuters calling in to audio conference meetings, and in the background you could hear the noise of retail shopping centers. Of course, it all depends on the employee, the nature of the job and how the employee is evaluated & managed.

Nowadays, it is getting much more effective.

Work-from-home has spurred one minor phenomenon: a few employees have two simultaneous full-time jobs, with the employers not knowing about the conflict. Reddit has threads with employees talking about how on Zoom calls they see other employees clearly participating in two separate zoom calls on two computers, each with a different employer. Some authors admit to it. One talked about getting a promotion to a Senior Director position all the while being a Director at Company A and a Director at Company B.

It some sense, it comes down to how goals and objectives are articulated and how deliverables are managed.

There is a reason that during the pandemic the population of sleepy little Park City Utah, last measured at 8,400 people, has swollen with full-time employee transplants from San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Houston, Chicago, Boston and New York City.

And they are not relocating back to the big cities.

Good posts thank you.

We are based in Northern Virginia for the next ~18mos. Here I am flanked by a family from Harlem and another from Manhattan both families fled during covid. Neither will go back.

[BugsyPal]

Originally Posted by albert648

Politicians fetishize it because major CAPEX means major grift opportunity. And people fetishize incompetent politicians who waste their money because wasting money makes them look like they're doing something. Rail travel is a solution in search of a problem. The problem hasn't existed since the advent of air travel and highways.

Rail, like large ships, is good for low value bulk freight that can afford to spend a week in transit trudging along at 30mph.



Agreed. The perpetually insolvent Amtrak is reason enough for me to switch between "ABSOLUTELY NOT" and "FXXX NO" to any public infrastructure initiative.

Amtrak is insolvent because it basically was designed from get go to be that way.

Even going back to glory days of railroads passenger service either lost money or maybe broke even; *FREIGHT* paid the bills. It is still that way today which is why USA has a number of freight railroads *none* of them want anything to do with passenger service. They happily got rid of that when federal government realized how much damage it was causing railroads, now none of them go near. They must allow Amtrak access to their ROW, but that's far as things go.

It is a proven and known fact; passenger rail in any form from commuter to long distance trains cannot operate without some sort of subsidy.

In old days freight service subsidized passenger trains. Arrival of motor vehicles, built up and out of local highways and interstate took away huge part of railroads freight customers. Yet federal government refused to allow many RRs to drop passenger service even though they were losing money. Post WWII as more highways rolled out railroads faced another threat to passenger service; airlines began using jets for domestic flights. Once you could get from Chicago, IL to Los Angeles, CA in three hours by air instead of three days (if you were lucky) by train, it was all over for the latter.

Amtrak is a creation of politics; as such it is also beholden to Washington, D.C. just as much as railroads of past.

Outside of North East Corridor which Amtrak owns it makes very little money on other trains, in fact most operate at a loss year to year. Amtrak would love to cancel some of these trains but then some grandmother out in Podunk, USA who takes Amtrak once a year gets all worked up and contacts her local congress person. Soon whole town is riled up and local congress person pushes to "save" whatever low use Amtrak line was on cutting block. In end Amtrak is forced/shamed or whatever into keeping service.

Because of way Amtrak is funded via congress it cannot afford to tick off too many in senate or House. Just one or a few members of congress who get together and decide since Amtrak does nothing for their state or local area and should thus not get funding can cause Amtrak headaches.