Because Europe is a malaised society that lost its vigor, its lust for glory and adventure, long ago.
Is it now a HackerNews rule to deny the existence of cultural differences?
Please don't create accounts to break the HN guidelines with.
Sure Europe is in a difficult place right now, but who knows, they might emerge beter off and more ready for space exploration down the track?
Most plans/suggestions don't even look at the economics, or secondary factors. Like open-mining of rare minerals, mercury, etc in the mfg of low-energy light bulbs.
I'm all for reducing pollution and waste... I have a hyper-sensitive sense of smell, and the smog even in Phx is getting to be too much, let alone other cities I've been to. And, littering in general just pisses me off... but having 4-5 containers for recycling to sort things into, and then having that basically be a jobs program for sorters, when in the end most of it is still land-filled is a bit wasteful in itself.
There needs to be some pragmatism in terms of getting the biggest bang for the buck, and ineffective feel-good programs aren't the way to do get real impacting change.
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In terms of trade, not allowing trade with countries that don't meet or exceed U.S. quality of life requirements for workers would be a start. Disallowing diesel ships the ability to dock in U.S. ports over the next decade would do a lot as well. Disallowing airmail transport of packages, or heavily taxing would help a lot too.
Tax credits for hiring employees with less than a 20 minute commute could also go a long way too. Include employees able to work from home at least 60% of the time.
Enacting a national energy tax on companies with over 1000 employees could be a large impact as well.
It's possible to do a lot of these things without creating a lot of hard to manage subsidies that will exist long beyond the reasons for making them in the first place.